Mismatch, school type and Covid-19

A growing body of research has examined the match between student ability and degree quality, revealing that mismatch is widespread, and that disadvantaged students are more likely to undermatch, enrolling in lower quality courses than expected, given their achievement. In this paper we examine a major shock in the UK education system due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in which all national exams were cancelled and instead, students were given teacher predicted grades (also known as centre-assessed grades, or CAGs). We also document gaps in mismatch across students from different school types in England (private vs state), finding that students from private schools are significantly more likely to overmatch than their state educated peers, throughout the ability distribution. The CAG-driven grade inflation led to an overall increase in mismatch, with overmatch increasing and undermatch falling slightly. Surprisingly, we see little to no impact of the exam cancellations on gaps in mismatch across school types or SES groups.