Independent Schools and Academic Achievement: A Synthetic Control Approach on Swedish Municipalities

Abstract: During the early 1990's, the Swedish school system underwent a period of groundbreaking reforms, including the contentious independent school reform. The reforms coincided with a decline of Swedish results in international educational assessments, leading to a debate on whether independent schools positively or negatively contribute to students learning. This paper studies the effect of lower secondary independent schools on aggregate academic achievement and equality of schooling in multiple Swedish municipalities, in which an independent school has recently opened. Using the synthetic control method, this paper finds no evidence of an effect on aggregate academic achievement in any of the municipalities studied. However, using an educational value-added measure in a between municipality fixed effects framework, this paper finds an association between independent schools and rising inequality in schooling. The results indicate that the independent schools are not to blame for Sweden's declining results in international assessments and calls for policy makers to focus on other aspects of the school system to improve academic achievement.