Educational decentralization and student achievement : a comparative study utilizing data from PISA to investigate a potential relationship between school autonomy and student performance in Australia, Canada, Finland, Norway and Sweden

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to explore whether decentralization of education systems affects student performance. Many countries around the world have adopted similar educational policies since the 1980s, including the introduction of decentralization with a shift in decision- making power from central authority to local authority and in some cases to the schools themselves. There is a common view among many policymakers that one way of obtaining high quality education is through decentralization policies, a view encouraged by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

Five countries, Australia, Canada, Finland, Sweden and Norway, are studied and compared by looking at the influence of decentralization in their educational reforms, at which level the decision-making power is situated, and how this correlates with the achievement of their students. The approach preferred is a quantitative comparative method, and already existing data from the PISA 2006 survey is utilized. Family background is a factor proven to influence student performance, and this is controlled for by utilize data on both socio-economic status and immigrant background provided by PISA.

The findings implicate that the level of school autonomy has very little influence on student performance. In the countries expressing a significant correlation between school autonomy and student performance, mainly Australia and Canada, the effect disappears when controlling for socio-economic status. This result is not consistent with the suggestion of decentralizing education system as a way to increase student performance.