Choice and Effectiveness of Private and Public Schools in Seven Countries. A Reanalysis of Three Pisa Dat Sets

Abstract

In international comparative studies on academic achievement, the distinction between private government-dependent schools and private-independent schools has proven to be particularly important for understanding the differences in the effectiveness of the private and public school sectors. Despite the fact that higher achievement scores in the private sector are mainly due to their intake selectivity, private-dependent schools still tend to outperform public school in most countries if these differences are taken into account. Using a more rigorous statistical technique to control for selectivity in the analysis of three PISA data sets, it is demonstrated that the substantive advantage in the efficacy of private-dependent schools compared to public schools remains for Germany and the Netherlands.