International evidence on school competition, autonomy, and accountability: A review

This article reviews evidence from four international student achievement tests on the effects on student performance of competition from privately managed schools, schools’ freedom to make autonomous decisions, and accountability introduced by external exit exams. The multivariate cross-country regressions are performed at the level of individual students and control for extensive family and school background information. The results reveal that students perform better in countries with more competition from privately managed schools, in countries where public funding ensures that all families can make choices, in schools that have freedom to make autonomous process and personnel decisions, where teachers have both freedom and incentives to select appropriate teaching methods, where parents take interest in teaching matters, and where school autonomy is combined with external exams that provide an information basis allowing for well-informed choices and holding schools accountable for their autonomous decisions. Copyright