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School Staff Autonomy and Educational Performance: Within‐School‐Type Evidence

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  • Marijn Verschelde
  • Jean Hindriks
  • Glenn Rayp
  • Koen Schoors

Abstract

This paper shows the effect of school staff autonomy on educational performance. The distinctive feature with existing literature is that we employ variation in autonomy within the same country and within the same school type to reduce the omitted variables problems. To fully capture the informational advantage of local actors, we define autonomy as the operational empowerment of the school's direction and teachers. The Flemish secondary school system in Belgium is analyzed as it displays unique within school type variation in school staff autonomy. This variation originates from autonomously operating school governing bodies that can group multiple schools and are free to delegate responsibilities to the school staff. Combining detailed school level and pupil level data from the PISA 2006 study with a semiparametric hierarchical model, we find strong positive effect of school staff autonomy on educational performance. The result is shown to be robust to problems of reverse causality and simultaneity. Quantile regression shows that both low and high-performers benefit from school staff autonomy.
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Suggested Citation

  • Marijn Verschelde & Jean Hindriks & Glenn Rayp & Koen Schoors, 2015. "School Staff Autonomy and Educational Performance: Within‐School‐Type Evidence," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 36, pages 127-155, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:36:y:2015:i::p:127-155
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/
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    Cited by:

    1. Mattéo Godin & Jean Hindriks, 2018. "An international comparison of school systems based on social mobility," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 499, pages 61-78.
    2. Tommaso Agasisti & Ekaterina Shibanova, 2020. "Autonomy, Performance And Efficiency: An Empirical Analysis Of Russian Universities 2014-2018," HSE Working papers WP BRP 224/EC/2020, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    3. Lisa Grazzini, 2016. "The Importance of the Quality of Education: Some Determinants and its Effects on Earning Returns and Economic Growth," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 43-82.
    4. Eyles, Andrew & Hupkau, Claudia & Machin, Stephen, 2016. "School reforms and pupil performance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 9-19.
    5. Youngran Kim, 2017. "Does autonomy over teacher hiring affect student math and science achievement?," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(6), pages 562-574, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education

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