Independent-School Competition and Sweden's Performance in TIMSS

Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren ()
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Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren: Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Postal: Stockholm, Sweden, and London School of Economics, UK, https://www.ifn.se/en/researchers/affiliated-researchers/gabriel-heller-sahlgren/

No 1472, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: This paper analyses the effects of independent-school competition on Sweden’s performance in TIMSS, an international low-stakes test in mathematics and science among students in year 8. Exploiting variation in independent-school enrolment shares across counties over time, it finds that increasing competition has improved TIMSS scores, an impact that appears only after 2003 and is driven by for-profit schools. The results suggest that competition both slowed down Sweden’s performance decline between 1995 and 2011 as well as contributed to its improving scores between 2011 and 2019. A simulation based on the estimates indicates that Sweden’s average score in TIMSS 2019 would have been 20 points, or 0.24 standard deviations, lower without the expansion of the independent-school sector.

Keywords: Independent-school competition; Student performance; TIMSS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 L33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2023-09-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eff and nep-ure
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