Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
This paper investigates the effect of religion on the educational attainment of pupils in their final year of compulsory education in England. The results show that pupils that identify with any religion have better academic performance than other pupils, after controlling for various family, parental and neighbourhood characteristics. The outperformance is reinforced by previous attendance at religious classes but there is no similar effect from considering religion to be very important to their life. Allowing for religion-specific effects shows that Muslim pupils outperform Christian pupils although the performance of the latter group is boosted by attendance at religious classes.