An evaluation of the efficiency of Québec's school boards using the Data Envelopment Analysis method

Abstract

In this paper the efficiency of Québec's school boards during a period of severe cutbacks in their finance is examined. Using Data Envelopment Analysis, the average efficiency is found to be relatively high. In spite of this, potential savings could be achieved if school boards were fully efficient. Results were found to depend heavily on school boards’ socio- economic conditions, thus they were subjected to Tobit analysis and the boards’ corrected efficiencies recalculated. It is concluded that inefficiencies cost 800 million dollars of which 200 million dollars come from unfavourable socio-economic conditions.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Mario Fortin, Pierre Fortin and Pierre Lasserre for their comments, and the Ministère de l’éducation du Québec for its help in providing the data.

Notes

For alternative methods, see Muňiz et al. (2004).