Are efficient schools more inclusive?

by Tommaso Agasisti
Thomas J. Alexander Fellow, Directorate for Education and Skills

Distribution of efficiency scores by country
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Analysing the efficiency of education systems and organisations is at the forefront of today’s policy and academic debate. Various factors make efficiency more important than ever: declining public budgets, rising competition across public services for limited public expenditures, increasing demand for transparency in information about the costs and results of schools’ activities. From this perspective, fiscal consolidation in many countries depends on the ability of governments to proactively use information concerning the efficiency of public spending. When focussing on education, providing clear quantitative information about the efficiency of educational institutions has become more important than ever.

In the working paper, we propose an innovative use of PISA data for measuring the efficiency of schools in an international comparison; more specifically, we compare the efficiency scores of more than 8 600 schools in 30 countries using PISA 2012 data. The study deals with the following key research questions:

a)    How relevant are the differences in the efficiency of schools across the selected 30 countries? Are these differences driven more by between-schools or between-countries variance?
b)    Which factors are associated with schools’ efficiency scores? And, are these factors common across all countries?
c)    Is there a trade-off between efficiency and equity at school level?

All three questions can have policy and managerial implications, and each of them also opens the door to potential benchmarking exercises that can prompt school principals to look at the most efficient schools in the world, investigating the drivers of their performances.

Using a non-parametric technique, called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), that measures efficiency scores from 0 to 1 (where 1 is maximum efficiency level observed in the sample), we find that efficiency scores vary widely both between and within countries. When considering all schools together – so allowing for the existence of an international common benchmark – we find that on average schools can raise their scores by 27%, ranging across countries from 15% for schools in Singapore to more than 33% for those in Slovenia. The Figure 1 highlights how dispersed efficiency scores are within countries; these efficiency scores of schools within countries encompass the entire range of the international distribution of efficiency, underlying the fact that country average efficiency scores mask substantial internal variation.

When we compare each school with those operating in the same country, the average improvement in output is estimated at 15%, ranging from 6%, on average, among schools in Ireland to 22% among those in Slovenia. This result suggests that it could be necessary to consider an international benchmark for efficiency analysis; indeed, the room for improvement is much larger when considering in the sample institutions from various contexts. International benchmarking exercises are really options for opening the mind to more ambitious performance goals – and at lower cost.  

We also investigate if are there factors at the school and country levels that are associated with efficiency. These second-stage variables have been classified in three main groups: students’ characteristics, other than socio-economic status, general characteristics of the schools, and schools’ practices and processes. This last group of variables can help policy makers and school managers to act for improving institutions’ efficiency. The results reveal that the characteristics of the student intake in each school (i.e. the proportion of girls and immigrants, the diversity of socio-economic background, etc.) explain most of the variation in efficiency across schools; however, school-related factors (i.e. practices such as extracurricular activities, principals’ leadership style, etc.) also play a role in describing differences in efficiency across schools.

In the last part of the study, we discuss how we find no evidence of a trade-off between efficiency and equity; in other words, more efficient schools tend to be more inclusive. Efficiency scores are related to greater inclusion, as measured by the percentage of students in the school who score above proficiency Level 2, the baseline level of performance in PISA.

Limitations on methods and data sources imply that the estimated efficiency scores are only proxies for true efficiency. Most importantly, they do not provide precise measures of efficiency at the school level and any attempt to use these measures to rank schools would be ill conceived. Yet, these estimates provide a clear picture of the distribution of schools’ efficiency scores across and within countries. 

We hope that this contribution can help to direct researchers’ attention towards this topic, to explore further the factors that affect efficiency in education.

Links:
The Efficiency of Secondary Schools in an International Perspective
PISA 2012 Key Findings
Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship
Photo source: Authors’ elaborations on PISA 2012 data, www.oecd.org/edu/Figure2.pdf

School size: A literature review

by Deborah Nusche
Analyst, Directorate for Education and Skills

How big should schools be?

Is bigger better? Or do all the best things come in small packages? For education systems, the question of how school size influences quality and efficiency has long been an important issue. It has become especially pertinent in recent decades, as fiscal pressures and a falling school population in rural areas have meant that countries are looking for the best way for their schools to be effective.

A new OECD working paper on school size policies, published today, shows that there are many ways in which school size may influence learning environments. Small schools make personal contact easy and are often strongly defended by local communities, while larger schools can provide more options to meet a diverse range of interests and needs. Sometimes, due to demographic or geographical challenges, there may be little choice regarding decisions on school size. But disadvantages can be offset, whether through connecting small schools using ICT, or through providing incentives to make larger schools more attractive for teachers and students.

Australia, for example, has used technology to help small schools in rural areas connect with each other through blogging, emailing and engaging in collaborative projects. This has reportedly led to students being more excited about their learning and more motivated to work. In Korea, where over a third of schools have fewer than 60 students, there has been a focus on consolidating schools in rural areas. The process involved many challenges, but due to targeted investments, many of these consolidated schools have thrived and are now attracting students even from urban areas.

In a time of fiscal constraints, consolidating schools is an appealing policy option for governments under pressure to reduce spending. Large schools are often seen as more efficient than small schools: they can use facilities to full capacity, buy large amounts of materials at lower cost and hire support staff to reduce the administrative burden on teachers. But such calculations often forget about hidden costs of consolidation such as increased transportation cost and time for staff and students. There is also evidence that the student body in large schools is often divided with some students taking full advantage of the broader learning options and others not participating at all. Younger students and those from less advantaged families are more vulnerable and may disengage when lacking personalised attention.

While, certainly, there is no “one size fits all approach”, there is much that can be learned from existing research and experience in different countries. This new literature review draws attention to the many factors to be considered when making decisions about school size. What are the transport and cost implications? How can interested parties become informed and engaged in the process? Will the effects of school size changes be different for differing school populations? What type of additional care would be necessary to support those affected by the change? Including such elements in the planning process will help make the full costs and benefits of school size changes transparent and support a constructive debate among stakeholders.

This paper is the first in a series of literature reviews looking at the use of resources in OECD school systems to be published in the coming months.

Links:
School Resources Review - Background papers and studies
Photo credit: Art Supply, An Illustration Different Size of Sharpened Detailed Pencils for Writing or Sketch and Draw A Picture /@Shutterstock