course materials

1. Write an essay to answer the four questions in the assignment sheet,
each questi
Write an essay to answer the four questions in the assignment sheet, each question should
carry around 450 words. I uploaded four lecture slides and two reports, please consult
these materials and write the paper based on these materials. Read the hints after each
question carefully and answer based on the hints.1. Briefly describe the school finance
structure in England. What are the recent reforms that have been adopted and implemented
with respect to school financing? (Hint: Read Ogden et al. (Does funding follow need),
Chapter 5, School Funding, particularly the first few pages. Talk about the National Funding
Formula, and the system that it replaced.)2. How would you go about measuring the equity
of the English school finance regime? Think about the relationship that you would like to
explore, and describe the empirical framework and the exact variables that you would like
to include. Why do the authors say, “A natural follow-on question to ask is whether the
distribution across councils is in proportion to the level of assessed spending needs across
councils. Due to the nature of education and the funding system, it is hard to provide an
objective answer to this question”?(Hint: Think of calculating school finance equity at the
national level, council level, and school level – do we have data to conduct an equity analysis
at each of these levels? But focus most on calculating council-level finance equity – think of
the “council” as analogous to a “school district” in the U.S. – intuitively, you can think of
England as a large U.S. state like New York, which has about 700 autonomous K-12 school
districts.)3. Should local councils be granted more autonomy with respect to school finance?
Should they be given discretion to raise additional money – or should the central
government try to limit or eliminate any additional spending by the councils (so as not to
exacerbate inequality of spending)? What are the recent trends in school funding and its
allocation?(Hint: Read section 5.2 The resulting funding allocations and section 5.3 Changes
in the distribution of funding across schools – also, draw upon the lessons from the U.S.
experience (this coming week and the next we will talk at length about local revenues and
state revenues in the context of school financing in the U.S.)4. Read the chapter on Higher
Education in the Annual Report on Education (Chapter 7, pages 51-62 of the print report).
What is the distinguishing feature of English higher education system with respect to
financing of college education? Describe the current scenario and mention the factors that
the authors note under “Funding Pressures for Universities” – what do they say about the
cap on tuition fees? Think about the lessons from Murphy-Scott-Clayton-Wyness paper (End

2. of Free College) – what do you think will happen (to students, to universities) if the cap is
raised, or if it is lowered?