School-level policies and the efficiency and equity trade-off in education

Simona Ferraro () and Kaire Põder

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2018, vol. 40, issue 5, 1022-1037

Abstract: This paper identifies the relationship between pupils’ Family Background, their mathematics scores, and school-level policies, using the 2012 Programme of International Student Assessment for Italy and multilevel modelling. School-level policies have played a leading role in recent school reforms in many countries, but there is no straightforward empirical evidence for how they affect pupils’ outcomes and the equality of educational outcomes. Our findings show that that only some school policies intensify the Family Background Effect – (educational equity) and affect student outcomes (educational efficiency) simultaneously. We find that competitive schools are able to screen students by selecting higher socio-economic status parents, which mainly harms equity without having much effect on efficiency. There are some policies which allow some trade-off between aforementioned objectives, mainly policies related to management schools.

Keywords: School-level policies; Equity; Efficiency PISA2012; Multilevel modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C19 I21 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:40:y:2018:i:5:p:1022-1037

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2017.11.001

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