‘Perceived’ competition and performance in Italian secondary schools: new evidence from OECD–PISA 2006

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effects of competition on the performance of Italian secondary schools as measured by maths achievement scores (PISA 2006 dataset). Competition is measured by an indicator of ‘perceived’ competition (generated from an answer provided by the schools’ principals). The methodology employed is a propensity score matching that is corrected to take into account heteroskedasticity and finite sample bias. The results show a positive effect of competition on school performance. Nevertheless, this effect is quite low (between 3.62% and 4.05% computed at the average score level) and is consistent with previous findings about educational systems in Italy and worldwide. This is relevant for policy-making because competition appears to impact school performance even in a country like Italy where specific pro-competitive policies are quite absent.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous referees who provided valuable comments. All eventual errors are solely our responsibility. We are also grateful to the Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema Educativo di Istruzione e di Formazione (INVALSI), which provided us with the Italian OECD–PISA2006 complete dataset.

Notes

1. ‘The choice of using one PV instead of the five PVs is due to technical reasons. Indeed, the use of five PVs is very complicated; thus; a statistical procedure can be used to simplify the use of cognitive achievement scores. However, it is necessary to strictly follow the technical suggestions provided by OECD (2005). More specifically, “A common fatal error when analysing with plausible values involves computing the mean of the five plausible values; before further analysis”' (p. 180). By contrast ‘On average, analysing one PV instead of five PVs provides unbiased population estimates as well as unbiased sampling variances on these estimates' (p. 109).

2. For more details, see the Appendix.

3. Results from both logit and probit estimations are available upon request from the authors.

4. In all three matching procedures, with one, two, or three untreated schools for each treated school; the matching procedure uses replacement. Thus, each untreated school may serve as a matched untreated school for more than one treated school (also due to the larger number of treated schools than untreated ones).