School competition, quality of management and social impact: a crossed country comparison

Abstract

This paper studies the association between the level of competition schools are subject to and their quality of management, using for that purpose a cross-sectional database that includes 1,800 schools in eight different countries and whose ownership ranges from public administrations, educational cooperatives, foundations or venture capital firms, among others. The interest of this research is evident since other studies have shown that the quality of school management directly affects student performance and, therefore, the social development. The obtained results confirm the main hypothesis as competition is positively related with the quality of the school management. Although this conclusion is relevant from the point of view of educational policy, it should be borne in mind that the literature has shown possible negative consequences derived from competition between schools, such as the trend toward school segmentation and the growing polarization of schools.