The publication of the OECD report on the PISA 2000 study induced a public outcry in Germany. On average, German students participating in this standardized test performed considerably below the OECD average and substantially worse than those of other European countries, like Finland or Ireland....

The publication of the OECD report on the PISA 2000 study induced a public outcry in Germany.On average,German students participating in this standardized test performed considerably below the OECD average and substantially worse than those of other European countries,like Finland or...

Using unique survey data on rural secondary school children, this paper evaluates the relative quality of Islamic secondary schools (i.e. madrasahs) in Bangladesh. Students attending registered madrasahs fare worse in maths and English than students attending non-madrasah schools. However,...

This paper examines critically the presumption that, other things equal, private schooling offers higher quality education than public schooling. We apply multilevel regression on the 2009 PISA to estimate the differential effect of public and private schooling on student scores in Australia. We...

We study if the combined significant reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio and increase in parental education observed in Italy between the end of IIWW and the end of 1980s had a significant impact on the educational attainment and labor market returns of a representative sample of Italians born...

The majority of empirical papers in the literature on school quality finds no or only small effects of class size and other school quality measures on students' outcomes. This paper analyses the effect of achievement heterogeneity and therefore the effect of the composition rather than the pure...

This study develops an analytical framework for evaluating the respective contributions of pupils, peers, and school quality in affecting educational achievement. We implement this framework using rich data from England that matches pupils to their primary schools. The dataset records all...

The payoff to schooling among the foreign born in the US is only around one-half of the payoff for the native born. This paper examines whether this differential is related to the quality of the schooling immigrants acquired abroad. The paper uses the Over-education/ Required...

Raising the quality of education has been one of the main objectives of the current government in Britain. By devoting more resources to the education sector, it is expected that pupils will achieve higher educational attainment by the time their years of compulsory schooling ends. This study...

This study focuses on the determinants of regional heterogeneity in returns to schooling. School quality, labor market characteristics, and amenities are potential determinants of regional differences. In contrast to previous research, this study jointly evaluates the contribution of the...