Abstract
In England, the government has encouraged state secondary schools to be more diverse by becoming specialist. This paper reports estimates of the relative effectiveness of specialist schools for pupils' attainment in General Certificate of Secondary School examinations in 2001 compared to nonspecialist comprehensive schools, controlling for pupils' prior attainment at Key Stage 2, gender, age, and school context. Attending a specialist school is found to add 1.4 grades on average to a pupil's GCSE points score. Effectiveness differed according to subject specialism and length of time specialist. This is similar to NFER and DfES findings but smaller than the effects reported by the Specialist School Trust studies.
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