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This paper provides estimates of the causal effect of neighbourhood characteristics on children’s educational outcomes. We develop several strategies in order to address the endogeneity issues. One of our strategy uses the available information on the socio-economic status of families who have just moved into a neighbourhood. Another strategy builds on the fact that — in France — the distribution of families living in public housing across neighbourhoods is under the control of administrative authorities and can be assumed exogenous. Generally speaking, our different strategies provide consistent findings. The estimated neighbourhood effects are significant and not small compared to the direct effect of parental education.