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- DEA measures efficiency relative to the best practice observed within each year. Some researchers have conducted dymanic DEA exercises (Lynde and Richmond, 1998). This involves pooling data across years and assessing the extent to which technical efficiency varies both across decision-making units and over time. We report the results of a similar exercise later in the paper. Schools at the bottom of the league tables may receive, via the formula funding mechanism, extra resources to pay for staff, due to special educational needs of pupils. It is largely for this reason that we instrument for the pupil-teacher ratio.
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- Excellent introductions to DEA may be found in the books by Silkman (1986) and by Norman and Stoker (1991). Somewhat more advanced treatments are offered by Ganley and Cubbin (1992) and by FÃre et al. (1994). The Warwick DEA package is used to solve the suite of linear programmes.
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- More recent advances in DEA have involved adaptations of the basic method which allow the analysis of situations in which returns to scale are variable (Banker, 1984), and in which the analysis may specify priorities thus in some way constraining the input or output weights vectors (Thanassoulis and Dyson, 1992).
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- Of the schools deemed technically efficient in 1993, two have a 100 per cent attendance rate. This raises an issue concerning bias due to measurement errorin the attendance variable. The jackknife results reported later provide us with some reassurance that such bias should not be a cause for concern. 1997 was chosen as the endpoint because we do not have School Census data for 1998.
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- Some studies have identified a negative relationship between class size and studentsâ subsequent labour market outcomes (Card and Krueger, 1992). In any event it begs the question of OLS estimated production (or cost) functions as to how positive (or negative) residuals should be interpreted. The recent use of the appropriate frontier models in the context of cost functions has not hitherto been mirrored in the context of educational production functions, though this is something that we attempt in the present paper.
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- Thanassoulis, E. and Dunstan, P. (1994) Guiding schools to improved performance using data envelopment analysis, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 45, 1247-1262.
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Thanassoulis, E. and Dyson, R.G. (1992) Estimating preferred input and output levels using data envelopment analysis, European Journal of Operational Research, 56, 8097.
- The proportion of pupils ineligible for free school meals reflects the socio-economic composition of the student body. Many studies have shown that a pupils socio-economic background affects their attainment at primary and secondary school (Feinstein, 1998; Feinstein and Symons, 1997), and so in the absence of a measure of prior attainment, the proportion of pupils ineligible for free school meals will act as a proxy (Thomas and Mortimore, 1994). Note that we also included the proportion of pupils with special educational needs in an earlier specification but this had little effect on the calculated efficiencies. We computed eastings and northings for each school based on postcode, using the Postzon package. Hence different values for the radii were assumed and a count made of the number of schools falling in the relevant area.
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- This proportion is unusually low. To check the accuracy of the data for this school we obtained an OFSTED Inspection Report (1995) which suggests that âRecruitment difficulties in the past have resulted in some posts being filled by non-qualified staff and a small number of lessons are taught by non-specialists.â Newly qualified staff have subsequently been recruited (see Table 2). This implies that the proportion of qualified teaching staff for school 4 is accurate.
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- Thomas, S. and Mortimore, P. (1994) A multi-level analysis of the 1993 GCSE Examination results in Lancashire, Institute of Education, University of London.
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- We instrument the pupil-teacher ratio variable since it is endogenous. Good schools attract more pupils and so the pupil-teacher ratio will rise in the short-term if schools are reluctant to hire new teachers (Bradley et al, 1999). The instruments for the pupil-teacher ratio include the lagged exam performance of the school, school type and other school level variables. To check the plausibility of the technical efficiencies obtained from DEA we consulted the OFSTED inspectors reports for the top 8 schools. In each case a high proportion of lessons are deemed to be satisfactory or better, the management of the school is good and the ethos of these schools is one of support and care for the pupils. The implication is that the educational process is efficient in these schools.
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