Operational Research in education

Jill Johnes

European Journal of Operational Research, 2015, vol. 243, issue 3, 683-696

Abstract: Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions.

Keywords: Markov processes; Optimal control theory; Data envelopment analysis; Stochastic frontier analysis; Scheduling and timetabling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:243:y:2015:i:3:p:683-696

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2014.10.043

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European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

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