TWO QUALITY FACTORS IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM: TEACHING STAFF AND SCHOOL AUTONOMY. THE CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH.

The assessment of the impact of different factors on the education production function has been on the Economics of Education agenda since the Coleman Report of 1966. Since then, the empirical evidence has sufficiently established the importance of the socioeconomic situation of pupils (and their classmates). But, independently of these factors, what is the margin for action in educational policy, through the (re)allocation of human and material resources and their organisation, to improve the quality of the educational process and its results?.This question defines a broad range of research that has produced contradictory answers. Many of these studies point towards there being a very small, even inexistent, impact for inputs based on material and human resources. The purpose of this article is to establish the current state of knowledge that emerges from the literature of this line of research in two specific areas. Firstly, with regard to the effect of teaching staff, we focus on research on aspects regarding their quality and characteristics (specifically levels of knowledge and training, experience, salaries and gender) and on their quantity (reflected in pupil/teacher ratios and class sizes). Secondly, within the area of the effect of the autonomy of the schools, we explore what, according to the most recent research, the effect is of different types of autonomy on educational results, paying special attention to the relation established between autonomy and accountability by means of external evaluation.