Can the Elite Stream Improve the Academic Achievement of Senior Secondary School Students? A Study of High School Students from X City in western China based on Regression Discontinuity Analysis

The fairness and efficacy of the elite stream in general senior secondary education have long been a contentious issue. Based on the longitudinal data of the students who were enrolled in five senior secondary schools in X City in western China in 2017 and 2018, this study examined the effects of elite class streaming in improving student academic performance, using regression discontinuity analysis. The research findings showed that: despite the significant differences in the grade-10 streaming examination results and the grade-12 academic achievement between the elite class and regular class students, the gap was not markedly widened after three years of senior secondary education; the elite stream did not exhibit distinct promotive effects on the advancement of students’ overall performance when the cutoff point of elite class admission was utilized as the exogenous variable to evaluate the effects of the elite stream on student performance; both the parameter estimation and non-parametric estimation results demonstrated that the elite stream had no marked effects in improving student performance and there was no gender difference or urban vs. rural difference in the impact of the elite stream on student academic achievement.