School management and educational performance an analysis of 14 public schools in the Western Cape

Durnford, Alice Blaker

School management and educational performance an analysis of 14 public schools in the Western Cape

Master Thesis

2013

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Economics

Faculty

Faculty of Commerce

Abstract

Education has come to the fore in development policy and as such has sparked a great deal of research on the relative importance of educational inputs. While school resources and family attributes are often the focus of such work, there are a number of papers exploring the significance of the impact of school management on learner test results. However, much of the quantitative research is inconclusive. This is largely due to the non-standardized and subjective measurements of management that have been used. This dissertation proposes the use of the Institutional Analysis and Design framework of Ostrom and colleagues (1990; 1994; 2005; 2009) as a means of benchmarking school management. The core components of the IAD framework are used to create a series of management indices for a sample of schools in the Western Cape. The paper finds, through a series of statistical approaches, that management is a significant input into the school production function and may be more important than other, previously emphasized, inputs.

Description

Includes abstract.

Keywords

Applied Economics

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