The New Zealand schooling system is well-known for its progressive and innovative approach to education (Couch, 2012; Mutch, 2013; Wells, 2016). Their national curriculum is inclusive and flexible, allowing schools and teachers to select the content they deem necessary to meet the competencies in the designated learning areas (Ministry of…

Many countries are struggling to reconcile greater flexibility in school choice with the need to ensure quality, equity and coherence in their school systems. This report provides an international perspective on issues related to school choice, especially how certain aspects of school-choice policies may be associated with sorting students into…

The paper approaches the issue of school choice in an indirect manner by investigating the effectiveness of public, private government-dependent and private independent schools in 19 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries selected from the PISA 2000 survey for this purpose. In a multilevel approach we estimate these…

We consider the question whether pupils from the lower social strata perform better in private government-dependent schools than in public or private-independent schools, using the PISA 2000 data on European high schools. In the eighty's, Coleman and Hoffer (1987) found in the USA that the performance of these pupils was better at religious…

This paper is for policymakers, advocates, and analysts who understand that the issues surrounding the introduction of more market-based mechanisms into education are complex and who accept the view that evidence is useful in sorting out the issues. It uses the market framework of demand, supply, and market pricing to organize the extensive but…