institutional contexts patterns and trends over time

Institutional Contexts and International Performancesin Schooling: comparing patterns and trends overtime in international surveysejed_1420 153..173

W.H. ADRIAAN HOFMAN, ROELANDE H. HOFMAN & JOHN M. GRAY

Introduction

Institutional contexts of schools play an important role in the explanation ofvariation in effectiveness between schools. In the 1990s, researchers like Chubband Moe (1990) made a case that the type of funding had a significant impact onthe governance and autonomy of schools and was therefore of importance for thequality of schooling. Based upon international comparative research into publicand private education, Bishop andWössmann (2001) argue that competition fromprivately-managed schools in a country’s education system is generally associatedwith positive effects on its quality. Their 2001 study showed that certain institu-tional factors could explain 75% of cross-country variation in mathematicsachievement.This confirmed their expectation that countries with a larger privateindependent school sector had higher achievement levels than those that includedmainly public sector schools. Especially, they concluded, competition betweentypes of schools within a country’s education system, specifically from types ofprivately-governed schools, seemed to be associated with higher achievement levels(Bishop & Wössmann, 2001, pp.28–29). Based on data from a later internationalstudy using the PISA data, Fuchs and Wössmann (2004) claim that their modelsaccount for over 85% of the between-country variation, with roughly 25% accru-ing to institutional variation. In the study by Fuchs andWössmann (2004) studentsperformed better in privately-operated schools, but private funding was not deci-sive. Bishop and Wössmann suggest that much of the cross-country variation inmathematics achievement may be explained by certain ‘incentive creating’ insti-tutional factors that private schools are more likely to possess.

The implication is that improving institutional policies may be effective inincreasing the quality of schooling within a country. This leads to the assumptionthat understanding the institutional context of an education system is fundamentalto understanding how education works in different countries. Institutions such asschools consist of cognitive, normative and regulative structures and activities thatprovide stability and meaning to social behaviour (Scott, 1995). Next to that, theinstitutional context of an education system shapes the (innovative) capacity of itsorganisations: schools, ministry of education and the Inspectorate. Institutionaltheory describes and analyses the most important forces within organisations andbroader education systems that predict the effectiveness of schooling.

Major differences occur between countries worldwide in the definition ofinstitutional context, more specifically concerning the balance between and

European Journal of Education, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2010, Part II

© 2010The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

features of public and private sectors in education systems. Fuchs & Wössmann(2004, p.1) suggest that ‘. . . one important set of determinants of educationalperformance are the institutions of the education system, because these set theincentives for the actors in the education process’. The authors make clear thatseveral institutional factors can influence the educational quality of educationsystems.These include: public versus private financing and provision, the centrali-sation of financing, external versus teacher-based standards and examinations,centralisation versus school autonomy in curricular, budgetary, personnel andprocess decisions and performance-based incentive contracts. Crucial aspects inthis respect for our study are: the financial base of public-private differences,differences in the governance structure, the distribution of power and authority inpublic and private education and the degree of freedom of school choice availablewithin an education system (Hofman et al., 2004). Creemers & Kyriakides (2006)and Sammons (2006) make clear that international studies on educational effec-tiveness are necessary to have a deeper understanding of the complex structures ofeducation. Especially, development of theories about factors that are at the core ofeffective teaching and schooling is needed. Furthermore, we think internationalresearch is necessary (a) to include a broader range of variables than research inone single country would provide (i.e. governance; funding) and (b) to obtainmore knowledge about the possible context-specificity of effective policies in theoriginal societies (no easy transplants). Reynolds (2000) argues that a valid and faircomparison of (sector) effects in education can take advantage of the naturalvariation between the countries worldwide because the within-country variance islikely to be much smaller than the between-country variance.

A comparative analysis of education systems requires clear concepts to describethe situation in each country. In an earlier study, Hofman et al. (2004) explored therelationship between the institutional context of schooling and the quality ofeducation.Their results showed that, based upon several key indicators of institu-tional contexts, a group of some 15 European countries could be classified intofour types of education systems. Furthermore, they established a relationshipbetween type of institutional context and quality of the education system (Hofman,Hofman, & Gray, 2008). Using the same original database and descriptors, thisarticle explores how these types of countries have fared between 1995 and 2006.A large part of this article contains the reflections of an expert panel on theoutcomes of the different countries.

Three research questions at the heart of this article are:

1. How did the quality of schooling of the four original types of educationsystems progress from 1995 onwards?

2. What explanations are of importance for the outcomes according to anexpert panel of educationalists and researchers?

3. What reflections are of importance to take into account regarding futureresearch into the effects of the institutional contexts of schooling?

Theoretical Background: Institutional Context

Three key characteristics of the institutional context of education systems will bepresented in this section: (a) the funding policy of education in each country, (b)the type of governance of schools and the distribution of power of decision-making

154 European Journal of Education, Part II

© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

within education systems and (c) the degree to which freedom of school choice isavailable in these countries.

Funding of Schools

Public education is available in all European countries and citizens are free tofound, organise and run private schools (European Communities, 2000). Theestablishment of private schools is a way of putting freedom of education intopractice and can take different forms. Alongside the grant-maintained schools inmany countries that are partly financed by the government, there exists a group ofschools that can be described as ‘truly private’ (Hofman et al., 2004). The ‘trulyprivate’ concept indicates schools that are not funded by grant-aid (they do notreceive any funding from public (governmental) authorities), but are mostlyfunded by direct financial contributions from pupils’ parents and, possibly, dona-tions from industry and by inherited funds. Although the number of grant-aidedschools can be quite substantial, the number of ‘truly private’ schools is oftenlimited and they can often be typified as elitist schools. However, while small innumber, they can be quite influential within the education system of certaincountries. In some countries, one finds an education system in which the differenttypes of schools (public, ‘grant-aided’ and ‘truly private’) are in competition forstudents (market mechanism) (Hofman, Hofman & Gray, 2008).

Alongside differences in the balance between public, ‘grant-aided’ private and‘truly’ private education available in each of the European countries, the model offinancing that is available for ‘grant-aided’ private education can be quite influen-tial. Financing arrangements could be very different from those for the publicsector, or similar at least for expenditure on teaching staff. Indeed, grant-aidedprivate schools could even be financed in exactly the same way as public-sectorschools, as, for example, is the case in the Dutch education system (Dronkers &Robert, 2003; Dronkers, 1995; Dijkstra, Dronkers & Hofman, 1997).

Governance and Power

Another key factor of institutional contexts concerns the way schools are governedand authority and power are distributed. Two aspects are important for the wayschools operate and research makes clear that these could be related to outcomesof schooling in private and public education: (a) the availability of different typesof governance authorities in each country, and (b) the type of power of schoolbodies that include parents’ representatives (Coleman & Hoffer, 1987; Coleman &LaRocque, 1990; Hofman & Hofman, 2001; Hofman, Hofman & Guldemond,2001; 2003).The distinction between private and public school governance revealsan influential institutional context. School board members in private education aretypically lay persons, very often parents with children attending the school theygovern and in which they serve as representatives for all the parents. Public schoolsare governed by local authorities and their employees do not have children in theschools they govern and they are paid by and elected from the local districtauthorities. Chubb and Moe (1990) claimed that differences in the bureaucraticfeatures of public and private schools influence the nature of the contact betweenschool governance, school and school community. Dutch research also suggeststhat public schools may be subject to forms of administrative control and could be

W.H. Adriaan Hofman, Roelande H. Hofman & John M. Gray 155


more dependent on the bureaucratic functioning of the local government, whileprivate schools are able to operate more autonomously (Dijkstra et al., 1997;Hofman et al., 1996).

In almost all countries in Europe, there are consultative councils that includeparents at school level. However, only in a few are such bodies made up exclusivelyof parents. Generally speaking, the nature and the extent to which councilsincluding parent representatives exercise decision-making powers vary greatly.A comparison of countries gives insights into the considerable differences ininfluence given to councils and parents within them. The report ‘Key data oneducation in Europe’ (European Commission, 1999–2000, p. 37) shows the natureand scope of the councils in which parents are involved at school level in a numberof broad areas within the education system.These areas are: clarification of schoolrules, drafting of the schools’ development plans, setting the teaching syllabusand objectives, control of expenditure and allocation of the budget assigned to theschool (o.c. p.37). The power of these councils can vary from almost no power,through consultative power to decision-making power. Based on primary andsecondary school research, Sammons, Hillman and Mortimore (1995) concludedthat parental involvement in school affairs correlated positively with academicperformances. Goldring and Shapiro (1996) reveal that principal-parent interac-tions are the result of unique processes in each school and are negotiated andinstitutionalised over time and sometimes result in powerful community influ-ences. Parents’ choice patterns are becoming more and more important forresearch into institutional contexts (Goldring, 1991). Hofman (1995), as well asMortimore et al. (1988) argue that parents’ direct involvement has beneficialeffects, particularly on pupil achievement levels. However, they also found thatregular parents’ involvement in school life and their influence on school boarddecision-making were more important for their own child and for the runningof the school as a whole than their influence through more formal parentalassociations.

Freedom of School Choice

Freedom in education can be viewed from two perspectives: from the viewpoint ofthe freedom of parents to choose a school that is suitable for their child and fromthat of the freedom of anyone to initiate a form of education which offers analternative to public-sector education. Grant-aided private schools will be foundedfor different reasons. In most countries, private education essentially complementspublic-sector provision and offers either a denominational or ideological alterna-tive to it. In some cases, grant-aided private schools offer an alternative in terms ofteaching. Among such schools are those based on the teaching systems of Steiner,Montessori, Freinet or Decroly.

In addition to the availability of schools, the freedom to choose a school in thepublic or the private sector may be constrained in different ways. Patterns of pupilenrolment may be said to reflect two extremes. In the first, enrolment is deter-mined by the public authorities, which define school catchment areas. In thesecond, parents are free to choose the school to which they send their child. Inreality, most countries stand somewhere between these extremes with a balancebetween public intervention and parental choice (Hofman et al., 2004). However,to appreciate the degree of freedom each country offers pupils’ parents, it is not



enough to consider legislation relating to choice of a school in the public sector.This question is bound up with the degree to which there are financial barriers toattendance at a particular school. Schools that charge fees have a selection mecha-nism for controlling those admitted to them (Hofman, Hofman & Gray, 2008;Sugarman & Kemerer, 1999).

The relationships between the three concepts that are fundamental to theinstitutional context of public and private education and their relationship with thequality and equity of education are presented in Figure 1.

Method

Based upon the theoretical framework of the original research (Hofman et al.,2004), four groupings of countries were developed. A set of 13 European countriestook part in this study. They were selected because of their participation in theThird International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1995. In somecases, the TIMSS data set includes sub-samples of countries. The set includes:Spain, Scotland, Sweden, Portugal, The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, France,England, Denmark, Belgium (French), Belgium (Flemish) and Austria. In addi-tion to information and assessments, key data on the European education systemswere found in reports of the European Commission (1996, 1997, 2000 andfurther), European Communities (2000 and further), OECD data and reports(OECD, 1997, 2000 and further) and databases such as Eurydice (2000, etc) andEurybase (2001, etc).

Country ‘experts’ were helpful to alert us to the fundamentals of their edu-cation systems and gave us a greater purchase on the key structural dimensionswhich make up what we refer to as the ‘institutional context’. The use of suchexperts is not uncommon in international performance studies; however, thedegree of detail we achieved for each country is uncommon. Bringing all thesesources together, we painted a detailed picture of the systems in 13 European

Figure 1. Relationships between concepts of institutional contexts



countries. A description of each of the countries is available in Hofman, et al.,2004.

Types of Countries

We see configuration theory as a tool for constructing empirically-based typolo-gies of countries and we employed it in our original study to explore the inter-dependence of indicators of institutional context discussed earlier.We believe thatthrough such an approach additional knowledge will originate from these con-figurations (Mintzberg, 1979).To see whether such configurations are empiricallyvalid we used the ALSCAL programme, which performs classical non-metricmultidimensional scaling to uncover the dimensions on which European countriescan be compared, based on indicators of institutional contexts of their educationsystem.

Trend Analysis

In our original study, we used data from the Third International Mathematics andScience Study (TIMMS) of 1995. In this article, we will conduct a trend analysisof the maths performance of the individual countries over the years, using ouroriginal configurations as a starting point.The trend analysis includes TIMSS andPISA data. The countries that took part in 1995 are analysed in terms of theiraverage quality through to 2006. At the same time, our international expert panelreflected upon and discussed the outcomes of their own country in relation to theirmembership of a particular type, on the one hand, and the relationship with theperformance of schools within their educational system on the other. The articleconcludes with a discussion on important factors to take into account whenconducting international research, especially the importance of institutionalcontexts of education systems and their relationships to the quality of educationsystems.

Results

Our experts developed country profiles based upon six indicators (two for each ofthe key concepts funding, governance, choice) and this description (see Hofmanet al., 2004 for those country reports) was finalised with an overview of theinstitutional context of their education system. We confine ourselves to the broadfeatures of the various systems rather than attempt to disentangle the full com-plexities of each country’s approach. Appendix 1 gives an example of such anoverview for one of the countries and Appendix 2 makes clear how each of ourEuropean countries can be typified concerning those six key indicators of institu-tional context. Multi Dimensional Scaling (MDS) using these six indicatorsresulted in four types of education systems.

The first type of countries includes Ireland, both Belgian systems and TheNetherlands. These systems include the highest numbers of grant-aided privateschools. More than half their pupils attend such schools. No school fees arecharged. These education systems show the highest scores with respect to theextent of freedom of school choice and normally no action is taken by the stateauthorities to regulate pupil numbers in these schools. Schools in these education



systems are mostly privately-run by school boards, but these boards only allowparents to exercise consultative power. In short, this type of country incorporateshigh levels of grant-aided private education funding, high levels of privately-rungovernance and high levels of school choice (F++G++C++).

The second type of education system includes Denmark, France, Portugaland Spain. The percentage of students attending grant-aided private education isbetween 10% and 30%. Parents in these countries, with the exception of Spain,have to pay quite high fees. They seem to be influential actors in developing thepolicy of their schools. The schools allow parents on school councils decision-making power in a number of areas, such as the schools’ development plan, schoolrules, teaching objectives and the budget.We call this type of country the moderategrant-aided private sector, with mixed governance and fees (F+GoC-).

The last two configurations include Austria, Germany, Sweden, England andScotland. Both types of schools are largely publicly funded and organised, usuallyby local authorities or other organisations which include parents. However,parents’ influence is limited to the right to be consulted. The main distinctionbetween these two types of countries concerns the size of the grant-aided sectorand the funding received by the government. The third type of education systems(F-G-Co) includes only a very limited number of grant-aided private schools. Ingeneral, less than 10% of pupils attend these schools. The fourth country type(F--G--C-) differs from the third by virtue of having a group of ‘truly private’schools which charge relatively high fees.

Trends in Maths Performance

In the original research (Hofman et al., 2004), the outcomes of the multidimen-sional scaling were related to the quality of the education systems using theTIMSS1995 data from population 2, which is composed of 13-year-olds who are either atthe end of their basic education or in the first year of secondary education.Multi-level analyses with mathematics achievement as the dependent variable wereconducted and these resulted in ‘quality’ estimates (average mathematics scores ofthe 13-year-olds) of the countries. Next, we used ANOVA to test whether signifi-cant differences were found between the four types of countries in their mathsachievement levels.

Based on the available data regarding the four configurations of countries, weconcluded that they differed significantly (see Table 1); the post hoc tests showedthat type 1 countries [F++G++C++] obtained higher maths achievement levelsthan type 2 [F+GoC-] and type 4 [F--G--C-] countries. The type 1 configu-ration included countries such as Belgium (Flemish and French), The Nether-lands and Ireland, with the highest percentages of students in grant-aidededucation institutions; they had been performing better in terms of quality thancountries that were dominated by public sector schools (type 2) or those wherethe proportion of students attending grant-aided education was less than 10%(type 4). Type 1 education systems had the highest numbers of grant-aidedprivate schools and the highest scores on school choice; they represent countrieswhere no school fees are charged and where schools are mostly privately-run byschool boards.

These data were drawn from TIMSS 1995. How did these four types ofcountries fare after 1995? Only a few countries from our sample were included



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in later TIMSS studies. Only 3 countries of the original 13 TIMMS95 countriesparticipated in TIMSS99. Therefore, we have linked the performance levels ofthe original 13 TIMSS95 sample of countries (described here by the acronymH-TIMSS95) to the outcomes of the PISA study. PISA covers students who are 15years old. Furthermore, it has a strong focus on reading literacy, real-life ratherthan curriculum-based questions (in assessments), age rather than grade as targetpopulation and detailed data on family backgrounds and institutional factors.Theoverlap of PISA countries with our sample resulted in a total group of 11 countriesin 2000 and 12 in 2003 and in 2006.

Comparability of TIMSS and PISA

In the PISA study, students were awarded a score based on the difficulty ofquestions that they could reliably answer. Scores were reported for each of thethree science competences and for overall performance in science. The scienceperformance scales were constructed so that the average student score in OECDcountries was 500 points. In PISA 2006, about two-thirds of students scoredbetween 400 and 600 points (i.e. a standard deviation equals 100 points) (seePISA 2006: Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World Executive Summary;OECD 2007). The TIMSS mathematics achievement scale was designed toprovide a reliable measure of student achievement spanning 1995, 1999, and 2003(see Table II). The metric of the scale was established originally with the 1995assessment.When all countries participating in 1995 at the eighth grade are treatedequally, the TIMSS scale averaged over those countries is also 500 and thestandard deviation is 100 (see: TIMSS 2003 International Mathematics Report —Findings From IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study atthe Fourth and Eighth Grades).

However, we are not so much interested in the maths differences in individualcountries, but whether these differences between the four types also hold in theyears after 1995. Figure 2 shows the average maths levels within the four types ofcountries for 1995, 1999, 2000, 2003 and 2006. These show that the first typeof countries [F++G++C++] still scored highly across the years, with averagescores well above the 500. The second type [FoGoC] was still showing the lowestmaths performance: their mean score was still below 500. However, the fourthtype [F--G-C-], England and Scotland, was improving across the years.

Table II. Average maths levels for types of countries (1995–2006)

Type ofeducationsystem

Number ofcountries

H-TIMSS95 TIMSS99 TIMSS03 PISA00 PISA03 PISA06

1 4 527,75 549,00 536,50 512,33 523,00 517,332 4 463,75 490.25 494,00 488,753 3 502,67 499,00 505,00 506,00 503,674 2 479,00 496,00 498,00 529,00 524,00 496,50



Unfortunately, no maths scores were available for that group in PISA03.The thirdtype [F-G-Co] was still scoring somewhere around 500.

Different Years

Another point of interest is the possible relationships between the scores across thedifferent years. Therefore, a correlation analysis was conducted. Table III makesclear that relatively high and significant correlations were found, especially betweenthe original Hofman-TIMSS sample of 1995 (the selection of 13 European coun-tries in our research) and TIMSS 1999 (r = .99, n = 3, p = .076) and withTIMSS03 (r = .93, n = 5, p = .021). The correlation with the PISA 2000 samplewas not significant; however, this was not the case for the PISA countries in 2003and 2006. Strong and significant relationships were found (2003: r = .74, n = 12,p = . 013 and 2006: r = .82, n = 12, p = .001)). This leads to the conclusion thatcountries are quite stable in terms of their maths performance and that the averageperformance of low scoring countries is not easily improved.

The Hofman-TIMSS95 sample uses the corrected/adjusted means of the coun-tries with the following covariates: education level of both parents, country of birth

440

460

480

500

520

540

560

HTIMMS95 TIMMS99 TIMMS03 PISA00 PISA03 PISA06

group1 group2 group3 group4

Figure 2. Trends in maths levels for the 4 types of countries

Table III. Correlations between years

TIMSS95 TIMSS99 TIMSS03 PISA00 PISA03 PISA06

Hofman-TIMSS95

Pearson pmCorrelation

.774** .993 .933* .563 .735** .816**

Sig. (2-tailed) .002 .076 .021 .071 .006 .001N 13 3 5 11 12 12

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).



of both parents, home language and pupil’s age. The correlation betweenthe Hofman-TIMSS95 sample and the original TIMSS95 sample was .774. Thisimplies that these corrections have a substantial impact on the TIMSS95 score.

Different Subjects

Another comparison of the performance level of countries is possible when resultsin science and literacy are included alongside maths. Table IV shows the math-ematics outcomes for our sample of 13 European countries (1995) and relatesthese to the science and reading achievement assessments in the PISA study of20002 (OECD/PISA, 2001). Ranking positions can be computed for 9 of theoriginal 13 countries based upon the deviance from the (weighted) mean (Hofmanet al., 2004, p.138).

The pattern of ranking of each of the countries for the three different subjectsis made clearer in Figure 3. The comparison shows that the results of PISA oftenseem to confirm the findings of ourTIMMS subset. However, some PISA findingsdiffer from those of TIMMS. Such variations are not unexpected, given thediffering nature of the assessments and age groups in the two studies. The assess-ment materials in TIMMS were constructed on the basis of an analysis of theintended curriculum in each participating country so as to cover the core materialthat is common to the curriculum in the majority of participating countries. Theassessment materials in PISA 2000 covered the skills and competences that were,in the respective assessment domains, considered to be crucial to an individual’scapacity to fully participate in and contribute to a successful modern society. Also,it needs to be borne in mind that the age-based PISA target population of15-year-olds differs from the grade-based population used in TIMMS whichconcerns, in our case, mostly 13-year-old students. Comparing the countries’performance in terms of its significant deviance from the overall mean it is possibleto assess the ranking position of each of these countries.

Table IV. Ranking positions of countries for different subjects

H-TIMSSMathematics

1995

PISAScience2000

PISAReading

2000

Austria 1 2 4Netherlands 2 1 2Ireland 3 3 1

France 4 5 5Germany 5 6 8Sweden 6 4 3

Denmark 7 8 6Spain 8 7 7Portugal 9 9 9

Note that these outcomes are presented in OECD/PISA, 2001: science, p. 88, reading p. 53).



Although comparisons are somewhat difficult because of differences in assess-ment and age group, some observations can be made. The ranking pattern ofmathematics performance in our TIMSS sample is confirmed within PISA math-ematics in general. PISA countries that show only mean scores significantly abovethe overall mean include Austria, The Netherlands and Sweden. PISA countriesthat score significantly below the overall mean include Germany, Spain and Por-tugal. Summarising these findings, we may conclude that comparison of the PISAresults to the findings of our sample shows a trend in the same direction, especiallyconcerning the significant deviance of the top and bottom countries — Austria andThe Netherlands on the one hand and Spain and Portugal on the other.

However, we also observe some striking differences when comparing oursample and the PISA findings relating to Germany and Sweden. Sweden seems tohave performed somewhat better in the PISA study than in ourTIMSS mathemat-ics sample, whilst Germany fared somewhat worse. This has been the subject ofextensive discussions in the international forum. One explanation points to thetraditional teaching methods that the Germans seem to practise more than othercountries. Why Sweden performs so much better in the PISA study than in theTIMSS study could be explained by the same reasoning as for Germany, but theother way around. It could be less traditional in terms of scope and content ofthe lessons and therefore perform much better in the PISA study (OECD/PISA,2001).

Reflections

These outcomes have been discussed with our international panel of countryexperts. They have interpreted the outcomes and possible relationships for theirown country and looked into the broader picture from a European perspective.Meetings were held with most of these experts, with an (additional) exchange ofideas through the Internet and email.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

HTIMSS95 PISA science PISA reading

A

NL

IRL

F

D

S

DK

E

P

Figure 3. Ranking of each of the countries for the three different subjects



Distribution of Public and (‘truly’) Private Schools

Although private schools may be found in all the European countries underconsideration, some countries offer parents more freedom to choose a preferredkind of private education alongside the public system. An important point has beenmade by some experts with respect to the type of private education that isconsidered. Scotland, for example, does have a ‘truly private’ sector, although it isnot large — about 5% of the school population. Furthermore, most of theseschools are non-denominational. Very often they are referred to as elitist and thisrelates in some of the researched countries (e.g. England) to the fact that they canbe quite influential within the whole education system. In England, these ‘trulyprivate’ schools make up 7% of all schools.They partly serve as a selective kind ofeducation. InThe Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Portugal, there are only a verylimited number of ‘truly private’ schools and they are not (yet) very influential onthe whole education system. The Portuguese education system allows publicstudents to attend private schools and pays for this when no public school isavailable in the region. Interestingly, in the countries’ ranking list of secondaryschools in Portugal, both the best and the worst were private Catholic schools.

Our experts elaborated on these relationships in the country reports and triedto value the impact of the ‘truly private sector’ on the functioning of the publicsector in their country. The results seem to confirm the research of Bishop andWössmann (2001) and Fuchs and Wössmann (2004) that countries with a greaternumber of private-independent schools perform better. Certain ‘incentive creat-ing’ institutional factors could explain substantial cross-country variation in cog-nitive performance and they suggest that private schools are more likely to possessthese institutional characteristics. From this point of view, the Dutch and Belgiancases are interesting on account of the equal subsidising of schools. The Nether-lands do not have prestigious elite schools outside the state subsidised sector.Consequently, the Dutch experts do not expect differences in the effectiveness ofprivate or public schools to be biased by the creaming-off of the most ablestudents, or by the financial possibilities of parents. Hence, a possible explanationfor the relatively high-ranking of The Netherlands and countries with a similareducation system like Belgium and Ireland could well be related to these institu-tional characteristics. Countries with a balanced distribution of public and grant-aided private schools also seem to do well.

The financial resources of schools may also relate to the quality of schooling.The salary of teachers could very well contribute to differences in school quality ingeneral, as well as the specific quality of public and private schools. For example,perhaps surprisingly, in the Spanish education system, teachers in public schoolsearn more than those in private schools and many of the private school teacherstherefore try to find work in public schools.

Types and Features of School Governance

The type of governance under which schools operate was mentioned by ourexperts as a possible explanation for the high ranking of the schools of TheNetherlands and Belgium. They note similarities between the two systems ofgovernance and emphasise the ability of private schools in the two countries tofunction more autonomously.



Experts from The Netherlands and Belgium believe that the bureaucraticfeatures of publicly- and privately-managed schools influence the nature of con-tacts between school governance, the school and school community. Public schoolsmay be subject to more administrative controls and be more dependent on thebureaucratic functioning of local government, whilst private schools are able tooperate more autonomously. Experts from both the Belgian education systemsmaintain that the situation in Belgium in many ways resembles that of TheNetherlands. The power in governance of public schools in Belgium is situated ingroups of schools of one region.The regions are fairly autonomous and parents areincluded in the school councils. Although public schools in many countries aregoverned by local authorities, not all follow this pattern. In Spain and Portugal,public schools are governed by school councils in which parents have an importantrole in the decision-making process. Depending on the region, parents take 50% ofthe members on most of these school councils. The Spanish and Portugueseeducation systems are quite similar in this respect and the experts expect theinfluence of parents in the governance of public schools to be stronger than that ofthose in the private schools. The expert from Spain stated that the Spanish Statehad no influence on governance within the ‘autonomous regions or districts’;however, within these 17 districts the principal is often very influential. Likewise,the expert from England sees or expects only weak effects of governance on qualityand of parents within the system. Parents serving on school governing bodies (theymake up at most 20–25% of the members) are not as influential as the head teacherand other persons serving on the board.

Parents, Choice and Community

In most countries, parents are free to choose schools for their children and schoolsmust meet this request. However, in some countries, these schools are subject toadditional admission criteria issued by the government to ensure that the brightand deserving working class students are admitted first and others are admitted ifsufficient places are available. Parents have a legal right of appeal if a place is notprovided by the school of their choice. The experts from Spain, Portugal, Swedenand Belgium made clear that the catchment areas could differ considerably interms of:

� their admission criteria;� the influences (and amount of funding) of the local authorities;� regional broadness; and� the possibilities to choose beyond these catchment areas.

Parents choose a school for various reasons. However, most research in the US, theUK and The Netherlands shows that they identify educational quality as the mostimportant factor (Hofman & Hofman, 2001; Sugarman & Kemerer, 1999). Loca-tion, as well as discipline and size also play a role. Moreover, Sugarman andKemerer (1999) argue that school choice is not independent of parents’ socio-economic background. Social networks of friends and relatives providing informa-tion about public and (grant-aided) private schools are often segregated by raceand education levels. Parents from higher socio-economic backgrounds seem tohave easier access to information on school quality.



Other influences of school choice relate to the commitment of parents to schooland schooling. Irish schools that are Gaelic-speaking but not situated in the Gaelicareas are doing very well, partly due to parents’ commitment. Parents’ commit-ment to school is also perceived as a possible explanation for the better perfor-mances of private schools in some of the observed countries. This issue has alsobeen spoken of earlier in terms of the way (‘truly’ and grant-aided) private andpublic education are distributed in a country.

Several researchers explain context effects on schooling by the social resourcesavailable in functional or value communities. Coleman & Hoffer (1987) charac-terise such a community as a social network which includes relationships betweenparents who know each other and each other’s children. According to Coleman &Hoffer (1987), such a functional or value community influences the outcomesof schooling through parent-school ties and facilitates the scholastic achievementof disadvantaged groups. The degree of freedom of school choice is highest insystems where public and private education are equally paid for. Parental schoolchoice could also shape the way the school functions. As stated before, the Englishsystem permits parents in the ‘truly private’ schools to have substantial influencebecause they pay high school fees.

Summary and Discussion

The outcomes of the PISA study in 2000 set off a heated public discussion aboutthe educational quality of various systems. In most participating countries, thePISA findings resulted in newspaper headlines. We follow Fuchs & Wössmann(2004, p.1) in some of the examples: The Times (Dec. 6, 2001) in England led on,‘Are we not such dunces after all?’, and Le Monde (Dec. 5, 2001) in Francedeclared, ‘France, the mediocre student of the OECD class’. In Germany, thePISA results made headlines in all the leading newspapers for several weeks (e.g.‘Abysmal marks for German students’ in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Dec. 4,2001), putting education policy at the forefront of attention — a situation whichhas continued since.

So how did these results compare with those of our initial typology of coun-tries? Our analyses of maths performance from 1995 to 2006 show that the firsttype of countries still scored highest across the years of our various comparisons.The second type still showed the lowest maths performance and the third type stillscored somewhere around the mean. However, the fourth type, England andScotland, seemed to improve through the years. Furthermore, comparisonsbetween the different years show relatively high and significant correlations, espe-cially between the original sample of countries in 1995 and performances inTIMSS99 and TIMSS03.The correlations with the 2000 sample were not signifi-cant; however, this situation was reversed for the 2003 survey. A significant rela-tionship was found here as well. The comparison of the performance level ofcountries when science and literacy are included alongside maths (PISA data of2000) suggests that the PISA results often seem to confirm the findings of ourTIMMS subset. The three types of analyses led us to conclude that our typologyof countries was quite stable in terms of maths performance (and other subjects)and that the average math performance of low scoring countries will not easily beimproved. However, as can also be seen, public interest in the TIMSS/PISAoutcomes seems to have influenced policy makers and other groups working in the



participating countries; in particular, the position of Germany was higher in the2003 and 2006 rankings than in 2000.

Our first type of our education system included Ireland, both Belgian systemsand The Netherlands. These systems had the highest numbers of grant-aidedprivate schools; more than half their pupils attended such schools. Furthermore,this type scored highest with respect to freedom of school choice; parents canchoose freely between schools and normally no action is taken by the stateauthorities to regulate pupil numbers in these schools which are mostly privately-run by school boards composed of the parents whose children attend them.However, parents involved in school councils are allowed only consultative power.In sum, schools in this group performed very well in international terms.

These results are in line with previous work reported in the InternationalHandbook of School Effectiveness Research. Teddlie and Reynolds (2000) claimthat school effects tend to be more substantial in systems that use governancestructures that allow individual schools more autonomy. Organisational theorysuggests that governance exerts its influence on the effectiveness of schoolsthrough organisational structures and the climate that develops within the schools(Leithwood, Tomlinson & Genge, 1996). Public schools may be bogged down bycomplex administrative structures at higher levels, less goal coherence and lessautonomy for school staff in decision-taking; these sectors of education also differstrongly in the locus of control and the delegation of decision-making to the school(Bryk, Lee & Holland, 1993; Hofman, Hofman & Guldemond, 1996; 2001).Moreover, several authors point to differences in the administrative climate ofpublic and private schools resulting from differences in the influence of variousgroups around the school on goals, curriculum, budget, personnel, and organisa-tional arrangements (Hannaway, 1991; Hofman et al., 1996; 2001). Another studyby Bryk, Lee and Holland (1993) concludes that effective Catholic high schoolsfunction better, amongst other reasons, because of decentralised governance struc-tures. Research shows that school boards vary greatly and consequently researchinto governance as an institutional effect should perhaps be given more weightthan at present.

International studies are useful in providing information on national perfor-mance standards, especially when they allow comparison between countries withsimilar social, economic and educational circumstances (Bishop and Wössmann2001; Reynolds et al., 2002; Willms & Somers, 2001). However, internationalcomparisons should be combined with ‘. . . detailed analyses within each countrywhich characterize its strengths and weaknesses, determine the extent of inequali-ties among advantaged and disadvantaged groups, and discern the effects associ-ated with particular policies and practices that can be manipulated through socialpolicy’ (Willms, & Somers, 2001, p.437). Countries participating in such com-parisons should be able to place their schooling results in a broader internationalcontext because this could yield important long-term benefits for their educationsystems. Although trend analyses to see what progress countries make over aperiod of 10 years are scarce, our results show that we can learn from that type ofresearch. Hanushek andWössmann (2007) make clear that international compari-sons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skilldeficits in developing countries than are generally derived from just school enrol-ment and attainment. The magnitude of change needed makes clear that closingthe economic gap with developed countries will require major structural changes



in schools. Furthermore, the findings of the research of Fuchs &Wössmann (2004)that show the impact of institutional factors, as for example type of financing,school autonomy and central examinations on student performance make clearthat these are aspects that should be central to the improvement of studentperformance in many countries. They showed that their empirical modelsaccounted for over 85% of the total between-country variation of student achieve-ment in maths, science and reading. Student characteristics, family backgrounds,home inputs, resources and teachers, and institutional characteristics all contributesignificantly to differences in students’ educational achievement. Institutionalfactors alone account for up to one quarter of the international variation in studentperformance and are found to be important determinants of students’ educationalperformance (Fuchs & Wössmann, 2004).

NOTE

1. See Table I under type 4: concerns only Scotland. No data available for nativelow/ses English students.

2. Country level performance: ranking positions for the 9 comparable countrieswithin the TIMSS and PISA study.

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APPENDIX 1

Overview of indicators of institutional context in The Netherlands

Education Funding Policy

Size of grant-aided private education Financing grand-aided private education

Type I = public sector only Type II = less than 10% private Type III = 10% - 30% private Type IV = over 30% private

Model I = financing different from public sector Model II = financing similar to public sector Model III = financing identical to public sector

Netherlands

Governance of schools Type of governance authorities Power of school

Type I = largely publicly-run schools by local or higher level authorities

Type II = largely publicy-run schools by local authorities and local community

Type III = mix public/privately-run schools Type IV = privately-run by school boards

Model I = almost no power Model II = consultative power Model III = decision making power

Freedom of school choice

Pupil allocation School fees in grant-aided private education

Type I = central pupil allocation Type II = central pupil allocation; parents may choose alternative Type III = parents free choice; intervention public authorities

possible Type IV = free choice by parents

Model I = no fees Model II = low fees Model III = fees cover school budget at least partially

Type I Type II

Type III Type IV

Model I Model III

Model II

Type I Type II

Type III Type IV

Model I Model III

Model II

Type I Type II

Type III Type IV

Model I Model III

Model II



APPENDIX 2

Type ofcountries

Size of funding Type offunding

Governance Parent power Schoolchoice

Schoolfees

–Type 1NetherlandsBelgium (FL)

+ (FR)

High>30 %

grant-aidedprivate

Identical topubliceducation

Largelyprivately-run

Consultative tono power

FreeParental choice

NoFees

–Type 2SpainDenmarkFrancePortugal

Moderate10–30%

grant-aidedprivate

Similar topubliceducation

Mixed Decision-makingpower

Mixed SchoolFees

–Type 3SwedenGermanyAustria

Low<10%

grant-aidedprivate

Similar topubliceducation

Largelypublicly-run

Consultative tono power

Central pupilallocation orfree choice

Mixed

–Type 4EnglandScotland

Nonepublic sector

mostly

Different frompublic

Largelypublicly-run

Consultativepower

Central pupilallo-cation orfree choice

Low Fees



institutional contexts patterns and trends over time

Documents