Exploring Differences in School Quality Assurance Measures at Public, Private, and Public-private Partnership Schools Using PISA Data

Abstract

Educational public private partnerships (PPP), referring to the shared delivery of education services by the government and private providers, have been increasing in recent decades, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Yet to date, there has been limited research on their role in the education landscape, in part due to the difficulty of classifying PPP schools in large-scale datasets, which typically classify schools as either public or private. In addition, few studies have assessed PPPs and school quality assurance indicators typically associated with them.  The study had two purposes. First, to explore the possibility of classifying PPP schools in a large-scale dataset using a statistical method. And second, to use these classifications to examine the differences between PPP, public, and private schools on school quality assurance measures, including but not limited to achievement. These analyses were performed using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), with schools from six of the global emerging economy countries: Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and Turkey.  Schools were classified using a two-step clustering method using funding and management variables. This revealed three good-quality clusters with a silhouette measure of cohesion and separation of 0.6 (IBM, 2015b; Wendler & Gröttrup, 2016). These were classified as public, private, and PPP based on the characteristics of each school type. With these classifications, the study assessed the relationship between school type and achievement in mathematics, science and reading, and 24 school quality assurance measures from PISA. The analyses controlled for school resources and socio-economic and cultural status. The study found that overall, PPP schools performed better than public schools on three indicators, and better than private schools on five indicators; public schools performed better than PPP schools on one outcome and better than private schools on three outcomes, although with mostly small effect sizes. Private schools did not outperform other school types on any outcome. A country wise analysis showed that these results differed by country. The study highlights the possibility of using two-step clustering to identify PPP schools, the effects of shared funding and management on school performance, and the importance of context in examining countries’ education policies.