La escuela importa: Incidencia de los factores asociados a la Escuela Pública sobre las competencias de los estudiantes de PISA 2006

This paper analyzes the factors affecting the acquisition of skills of the teenagers who took the PISA 2006 test and completed their primary education at a public school. The analysis is based on the estimation of an educational production function, taking into account the data emerging from the combination of two sources of information: the PISA 2006 database and the educational monitoring applied to the primary education. Among the main conclusions are that the yields of the students can be explained by the interaction of the variables associated with the individual and his/her family environment (student dimension), with their secondary education centre (high school dimension) and with the public school they attended (primary school dimension). The socio-cultural context of the primary schools affects the path of the individuals throughout the system, being determinant of their performance and of the perpetuation of the inequalities. Their path through the public school is affected by factors such as the experience of their teachers, the average performance of each school and the relationship between their families and the school.