Education systems benchmarking with frontier techniques

The use of frontier methods to compare the performance of public services across countries is still incipient, and the educational sector is no exception. The availability of large-scale international datasets (PISA/TIMMS) enables conducting econometric analysis (focusing on factors affecting student’s results) and frontier analysis for assessing performance and benchmarking units of assessment like schools or countries. In this project, we will evaluate the efficiency of different education systems in the EU using benchmarking techniques (grounded on frontier methods, such as Data Envelopment Analysis) aimed at identifying best practices ('the frontier') and the deviation from those best practices ('the inefficiency'). We intend to benchmark education systems across the EU, and take into account the inputs of the education production function, control for qualitative differences, accommodate and investigate differences in countries' regulatory settings, analyze the sources of inefficiency, and assess the impact of organizational choices and external variables on performance. In brief, we can identify best-practices that can then be adopted elsewhere.