Abstract
Italy’s secondary school system has faced funding constraints for many years which limits availability of new permanent job slots for teachers. When permanent posts do arise they are allocated mostly on seniority while merit only plays a small role. Thus, the age distribution of teachers in schools reflects older teachers’ preferences which include the amenity of being close to urban centres. Using schools’ distance from main urban centres and population size in the school’s vicinity to instrument for non-random exposure of schools to older teachers, we show older teachers are detrimental to pupil attainment in secondary schools. The effect is large: a six-year increase in the average age of teachers (roughly similar to the increase that has occurred in the last 20 years) leads to a one standard deviation reduction in the mean graduation mark. The findings suggest there may be value in altering the way teachers are allocated to secondary schools in Italy.
Highlights
Italy’s education system has faced funding constraints for many years4 which limit the availability of new permanent job slots for teachers
Budget constraints mean schools tend to fill teacher vacancies using one-year fixed-term contracts. These are usually offered to new teachers, but these teachers cannot graduate from fixed-term contracts into a permanent position: the only way to obtain a permanent position is to be successful in national examinations
The issue is motivated by the concern that older teachers may be less productive than those from younger cohorts, either because their skills deplete with time due to a lack of onthe-job training; they lack the skills-set of their younger counterparts who benefit from recent innovations in teacher training; or because they lack the motivation to strive for teaching excellence
Summary
Italy’s education system has faced funding constraints for many years which limit the availability of new permanent job slots for teachers. In this paper we consider whether the system of filling permanent teacher vacancies based on older workers’ preferences affects the quality of education pupils receive, as indicated by school-level pupil attainment. We use the amenity value of schools based on their geographical distance from urban centres and population size in the vicinity of the school to identify the causal impact of non-random exposure to older teachers. The instrument accounts for this non-random sorting, revealing the underlying negative association between teacher age and school level pupil attainment. This age effect can be separated from seniority in the school, which is itself positively and statistically associated with school performance, as one might expect when there are positive pupil returns to teachers’ school specific human capital.
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