‘School performance in Australia – is there a role for quasi-markets?’
Australian Economic Review 37, no. 3, pp. 271-286
Compares recent Australian education reforms with similar (though wider-ranging) British reforms.
Uses panel data from Queensland to investigate whether raw (‘unadjusted’) league tables perform well as signals of school performance, and whether market forces are already at work in the Australian education system.
Key results:
The authors find evidence that raw league tables take no account of the influence of socio-economic factors and prior ability on school performance, and therefore provide perverse incentives for schools to e.g. accepting fewer disadvantaged students to boost their rankings.
Regression analysis shows that school efficiency is affected by inter-school competition, but rather weakly.
The authors conclude that, if a system of signals more effective than raw league tables could be created, competition and a ‘quasi-market’ could produce efficiency gains in the Australian education system.
