The Effect of Benchmarking on Public School Performance

Abstract

Theory on public policy processes together with a range of private sector evidence suggest that implementing benchmarking improves efficiency, and thereby may work to improve public policy outcomes. A similar prediction is further confirmed by basic economic theory on competition exposure. The present thesis provides an empirical analysis of this relation by studying the relationship between the implementation of benchmarking and educational performance in primary- and lower secondary education in Norwegian local governments. The Norwegian educational sector has been subject to increased stress on performance and results. The introduction of national tests adds to this in terms of providing educational authorities, principals and local councils with information on the average achievements in 5th and 8th grade of compulsory schooling. However, our main results suggest that using these achievement-based scores to benchmark one’s own school(s) does not work to improve educational performance.