The effects of private schooling on pupil achievement: a global systemic analysis

ABSTRACT

Globally, the private school share of enrollment increased from about 14 percent in 2000 to about 18 percent in 2019. We estimate the systemic effect of private enrollment share on learning outcomes. Estimates of the systemic effect of private school enrollment capture any competitive effects as well as any differences between public and private schools in raising student outcomes. We use new data from the World Bank on harmonised learning outcomes for mathematics, reading, and science to produce an unbalanced sample of 120 countries from 2000 to 2017. We find that, all else equal, on average, a one percentage point increase in private enrollment is associated with null to at most weakly positive effects on country-level learning outcomes. Countries that increased private school enrollment experience as much or slightly more learning than countries with no change in private school enrollment.

摘要

在全球范围内，私立学校的入学份额从2000年的14%左右增至2019年的18%左右。我们估算了私立学校入学份额对学习成绩的系统性影响。这一估算反映公立学校和私立学校在提高学生成绩方面的竞争效应及差异。我们使用世界银行关于数学、阅读和科学三个科目学习成绩经过统一后的新数据，得出 2000年至2017年间120个国家的非平衡样本。我们发现，在其他条件相同的情况下，平均而言，私立学校入学份额提高一个百分点，对国家层面学习成绩有零到至多微弱的积极影响。与私立学校入学份额没有变化的国家相比，私立学校入学份额增加的国家的学习成绩与之相当或略有提高。

KEYWORDS:

• Private school
• harmonised learning outcomes
• test scores
• country

关键词:

• 私立学校
• 统一学习成果
• 考试分数
• 国家

Acknowledgments

Prior versions of this study were presented at the 2022 Southern Economic Association Conference and the 2023 International School Choice & Reform Conference. We thank Albert Cheng, Aniruddha Bagchi, Benjamin Scafidi, and Patrick Wolf for their comments. We thank Harry Patrinos for answering questions about the HLO dataset and providing feedback. We own any remaining errors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Australia, Austria, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Flemish Belgium, France,

French Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Scotland, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and the US.

2 https://www.oecd.org/

3 Those countries are Canada, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, and Sweden.

4 IV is a statistical method to address bias in OLS estimates. To produce consistent estimates of the coefficient of interest, the researcher needs a variable (the instrument, here it is historical percent Catholic) that is correlated with the variable of interest (here, it is percent private school enrollment) but does not directly affect the outcome (here, student test scores). The IV estimates rely on the variation in the variable of interest coming from the instrument to estimate its effect. That is, here the researchers estimate the effect of percent private school enrollment on test scores using only the variation in percent private correlated with historical percent Catholic.

5 Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the USA.

6 Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.

7 See the documentation for the WDI at the World Bank data catalog: https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/World-Development-Indicators

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. Danish Shakeel

M. Danish Shakeel is a professor and director of the E. G. West Centre for Education Policy at the University of Buckingham, UK.

Angela K. Dills

Angela K. Dills is Professor of Economics and the Gimelstob-Landry Distinguished Professor of Regional Economic Development at Western Carolina University.