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Independent-School Competition and Sweden's Performance in TIMSS

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This paper analyses the effects of independent-school competition on Sweden’s performance in TIMSS, an international low-stakes test in mathematics and science among students in year 8. Exploiting variation in independent-school enrolment shares across counties over time, it finds that increasing competition has improved TIMSS scores, an impact that appears only after 2003 and is driven by for-profit schools. The results suggest that competition both slowed down Sweden’s performance decline between 1995 and 2011 as well as contributed to its improving scores between 2011 and 2019. A simulation based on the estimates indicates that Sweden’s average score in TIMSS 2019 would have been 20 points, or 0.24 standard deviations, lower without the expansion of the independent-school sector.

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  • Heller-Sahlgren, Gabriel, 2023. "Independent-School Competition and Sweden's Performance in TIMSS," Working Paper Series 1472, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1472
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Independent-school competition; Student performance; TIMSS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out

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