Exploring variations in the relative technical efficiency in providing school education: a case study of Sindh, Pakistan

Abstract

The education sector in Sindh is characterised by very low enrolments; high levels of rural and gender disparity and poor quality of education. This study explicitly considers that education is a multi-input multi-output production process. The efficiency of public education has been examined using the most commonly used approaches to parametric (stochastic frontier) analysis of efficiency in panel data that is the fixed effects model. Empirical estimation uses 6 years (2005-06 to 2010-11) panel data from 23 school districts in Sindh. An efficiency index is constructed for district ranking. Evidence from this study finds weak impact of education expenditure on the primary level enrolment. The impact of education expenditures on the middle level and the secondary level is more pronounced. There is a lot of variation in the efficiency of the districts at the three levels of education with the mean efficiency of 0.39 at primary level; a mean efficiency of 0.64 at the middle level and a mean efficiency of 0.75 at the secondary level of education. This study will contribute to the educational research on selecting Stochastic Frontier Analysis as a primary estimation method for analyzing the district efficiency of school education.