School Facilities and Student Achievement in Industrial Countries: Evidence from the TIMSS

Arnt O Hopland

doi:10.5539/ies.v6n3p162

Abstract

This paper studies the link between school facilities (buildings and grounds) and student achievement in eight countries using data from the TIMSS 2003 database. The results indicate a negative relationship, but the estimated coefficients are mainly insignificant. Interestingly, the coefficients differ heavily across countries. Whereas there seem to be adverse consequences from poor facilities in Australia, The Netherlands and Japan, there is no significant effect in the remaining five countries. It remains an open question for future research why facilities seem to play such a different role across countries. The main lesson to be learnt from the present investigation is that school facilities seem to have different impact across countries.

Highlights

How to create a good learning environment in schools is, for obvious reasons, an important topic in the public debate in all advanced societies
Whereas there seem to be adverse consequences from poor facilities in Australia, The Netherlands and Japan, there is no significant effect in the remaining five countries. It remains an open question for future research why facilities seem to play such a different role across countries
The main lesson to be learnt from the present investigation is that school facilities seem to have different impact across countries

Summary

Introduction

How to create a good learning environment in schools is, for obvious reasons, an important topic in the public debate in all advanced societies. The present paper is similar to the study based on Norwegian data, since both study the link between a measure of facility conditions and student achievement. Regressive policies could occur if politicians observe that voters in school districts with poor student achievement are less likely to vote and will tend to bias the estimates in the opposite direction This problem can, be addressed to some extent by looking at how robust the results of interest are to the inclusion of observable control variables. Improving school facilities is similar to reducing class size in two important ways Both will involve considerable costs, so thorough investigations regarding their impact on student achievement are necessary.

A First Look at the Data

Results

Summary