Managing Size of Public Schools and School Boards: A Multi-Level Cost Approach Applied to Dutch Primary Education

In many countries, the provision of primary education is among the core responsibilities of local governments. One of the main questions local governments face concerns the optimal configuration of school boards and size of schools. In this paper we analyse the relation between cost and scale in sch...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2019-12, Vol.11 (23), p.6662
Main Authors: Blank, Jos L. T., Niaounakis, Thomas K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boards
Cost control
Cost function
Economies of scale
Education
Local government
Municipalities
School boards
School districts
Schools
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Summary:In many countries, the provision of primary education is among the core responsibilities of local governments. One of the main questions local governments face concerns the optimal configuration of school boards and size of schools. In this paper we analyse the relation between cost and scale in school boards and in schools. The influence of both the governing layer (board) and the operational layer (school) on average cost are jointly modelled. Board cost is modelled as an aggregation of individual school cost functions so that individual school cost data are not required in order to estimate the model. The results indicate that small schools (
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su11236662