The Linkage between School Autonomy and Inequality in Achievement in 69 Countries: Does Development Level Matter?

Figures & data

Table 1. The relationship between school autonomy and the inequality in maths achievement

	Dependent variable: maths achievement inequality
	Model 1: academic autonomy	Model 2: budget autonomy	Model 3: personnel autonomy	Model 4: all autonomy
Academic autonomy	15.3			20.0
	(8.58)			(12.6)
Budget autonomy		3.07		−9.94
		(5.29)		(7.47)
Hiring autonomy			16.1	10.5
			(9.53)	(10.6)
Salary autonomy			−11.0	−13.0
			(9.94)	(10.5)
Initial development level (ref. lower-middle and low-income)
Upper-middle-income	18.2*	18.0*	18.0*	18.1*
	(7.72)	(7.67)	(7.73)	(7.79)
High-income	13.5	13.3	13.3	13.3
	(7.21)	(7.21)	(7.22)	(7.26)
Year fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Controls	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Constant	97.3***	99.5***	99.3***	97.8***
	(6.90)	(6.83)	(6.74)	(6.95)
Σu (country)	508.2***	504.4***	507.2***	510.8***
	(128.4)	(126.9)	(128.2)	(129.6)
Σe (country-year)	147.7***	150.9***	147.9***	145.1***
	(19.8)	(21.0)	(20.1)	(18.8)
N-country-year	322	322	322	322
N-country	69	69	69	69

Notes: (a) Control variables include the Gini coefficient, the proportion of students in private schools, pupil-to-teacher ratio, rural school ratio, and the dummy indicators for the sources of the latter three variables.

Source: Author’s calculations based on PISA data.

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. *p < .05; ***p < .001.

Table 2. Interaction effect of school autonomy and initial development level on the inequality in maths achievement

	Dependent variable: maths achievement inequality
	Model 5: academic autonomy	Model 6: budget autonomy	Model 7: personnel autonomy	Model 8: all autonomy
Academic autonomy	−32.9*			−40.3*
	(15.8)			(20.1)
Budget autonomy		−15.5		16.0
		(13.2)		(14.8)
Hiring autonomy			10.3	17.4
			(11.1)	(13.7)
Salary autonomy			−21.6**	−14.4
			(7.13)	(11.5)
Initial development level (ref. lower-middle and low-income)
Upper-middle-income	19.4*	18.0*	17.9*	19.4*
	(7.64)	(7.69)	(7.74)	(7.72)
High-income	14.1*	13.3†	13.3†	13.9†
	(7.19)	(7.21)	(7.25)	(7.27)
Autonomy × development level (ref. lower-middle and low-income)
Academic autonomy × upper-middle-income	90.1***			109.5***
	(23.2)			(26.5)
Academic autonomy × high-income	50.7**			70.6**
	(16.7)			(25.9)
Budget autonomy × upper-middle-income		20.8		−13.0
		(16.9)		(22.2)
Budget autonomy × high-income		21.0		−37.7†
		(13.6)		(20.3)
Hiring autonomy × upper-middle-income			−9.44	−22.0
			(31.0)	(27.0)
Hiring autonomy × high-income			6.25	−6.52
			(17.7)	(21.7)
Salary autonomy × upper-middle-income			21.6	−28.1
			(41.8)	(38.0)
Salary autonomy × High-income			21.8	7.18
			(19.3)	(23.8)
Year fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Controls	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Constant	96.0***	99.1***	99.1***	96.5***
	(6.81)	(6.75)	(6.68)	(6.93)
Σu (country)	507.8***	505.3***	510.0***	511.7***
	(127.9)	(126.9)	(128.6)	(130.1)
Σe (country-year)	137.3***	149.9***	146.3***	132.0***
	(16.9)	(20.9)	(20.1)	(15.0)
Variance explained				10%
N-country-year	322	322	322	322
N-country	69	69	69	69

Notes: (a) Control variables include the Gini coefficient, private school ratio, pupil-to-teacher ratio, rural school ratio, and the dummy indicators for the sources of the latter three variables. (b) Variance explained compared to model 4 in Table 1 containing all level-1 variables.

Source: Author’s calculations based on PISA data.

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. †p < .1; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

Figure 2. The interaction effect of academic autonomy and initial development level on the inequality in maths achievement.

Notes: (a) The interaction between academic autonomy and development level is estimated by Equation (2)(2) $${\widehat{\delta }}_{yc}=\text{ γ }+\mathrm{ }\mathbf{\lambda }\left({\mathbf{T}}_{yc}\right)+\mathrm{ }\mathrm{\theta }\left({\mathrm{D}}_c\right)+\mathrm{ }\mathbf{\psi }\left({\mathrm{D}}_c\times {\mathbf{T}}_{yc}\right)+\mathrm{ }\mathbf{\alpha }\left({\mathbf{L}}_{yc}\right)+\mathrm{ }{\mu }_{ }+\mathrm{ }{u}_c+\mathrm{ }{e}_{yc}$$(2) or based on model 8. (b) Academic autonomy and other time-varying variables are group mean-centred with a mean of 0. Hence, the vertical solid line on 0 is the mean, its left side refers to decreases and the right side indicates increases in academic autonomy in the proportion of schools. (c) Country N = 69 and country-wave N = 322.

Source: Author’s calculations based on PISA data.

Data availability statement

PISA data can be freely accessed from https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/. The do-files will be available upon request.