The effects of school competition on academic achievement and grading standards

Arbeitspapier

Nationwide school choice and fixed per-student governmental funding provide incentives for Dutch schools to perform well. Roughly one third of Dutch pre-university schools are of catholic denomination. Acknowledging this widely available outside option to public and other schools, this paper considers the effect of catholic competition on non-catholic school performance in pre-university education. Employing data from central exit exams, a positive link between competition intensity and academic achievement is found. In addition to raising achievement, higher levels of competition are not associated with a deterioration of grading standards. Finally, (inverse) quantile regression estimates show no evidence of schools at the bottom of the achievement distribution being hurt by competition.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 2676

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Analysis of Education
• Subject: education ; competition ; Netherlands ; IVQR ; Allgemeinbildende Schule ; Privatschule ; Katholizismus ; Wettbewerb ; Bildungsniveau ; Bildungsabschluss ; Niederlande

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Himmler , Oliver
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2009

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30481
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET