ERIC Number: EJ1095674
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0964-5292
EISSN: N/A
Class Size, School Size and the Size of the School Network
Coupé, Tom; Olefir, Anna; Alonso, Juan Diego
Education Economics, v24 n3 p329-351 2016
In many transition countries, including Ukraine, decreases in population and fertility have led to substantial falls in the number of school-aged children. As a consequence, these countries now have school networks that consist of many small schools, leading many countries to consider reorganizing their networks by closing smaller schools and reallocating students. Using a rich data-set of almost the entire population of Ukrainian secondary schools, we estimate the effect of school size and class size on the performance of secondary schools on Ukraine's External Independent Test. We find that larger schools tend to have somewhat better performance, both in terms of test scores and in terms of test participation. The size of this effect is relatively small, however, especially in rural areas for which the estimates are likely to be less biased. Class size is found to be insignificant in most specifications and, if significant, of negligible size. The importance of this finding for the "rationalization" of the large school networks in Eastern Europe is discussed.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Class Size, School Size, Secondary Schools, Secondary School Students, Rural Schools, Urban Schools, School Effectiveness, Scores, College Entrance Examinations, Student Participation, Teacher Student Ratio, Statistical Analysis, Regression (Statistics), Least Squares Statistics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education; Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Ukraine
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A