The Relative Efficiency of Swedish Secondary Schools : An estimation using Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Abstract: The question of public education is of importance for a society and its citizens as education is contributing to the stability of a democratic society and affects the expected future income levels for the individuals receiving it. A significant share of the Swedish GDP is devoted to the provision of educational services which raises the necessity of monitoring the use of these resources. This thesis endeavoured to estimate a production possibility frontier and the relative efficiency of Swedish upper secondary schools. To accomplish this then Stochastic Frontier Analysis was implemented. Data on student results, teacher ratio and students’ socioeconomic characteristics for individual schools during the scholastic years of 2006/2007 through 2015/2016 gathered from the Swedish National Agency for Education was used in this study. The effects of competition on school performance and the relative efficiency of public and independent schools were two factors of interest in the thesis. The results of the analysis point toward a possible positive relationship between local school competition and student results, that Swedish secondary schools could have high average levels of technical efficiency and that the type of the principal organiser might be of minor importance for school efficiency.