Does Management Matter in schools?

Abstract

We collect data on management practices in over 1,800 high schools in eight countries. We show that higher management quality is strongly associated with better educational outcomes. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the highest management scores, followed by Germany, with a gap before Italy, Brazil and India. We also show that autonomous government schools (government funded but with substantial independence like UK academies and US charters) have higher management scores than regular government or private schools. Almost half of the difference between the management scores of autonomous and regular government schools is accounted for principal leadership and governance.There are major disparities in the quality of education within and between countries (OECD, 2012). School managerial practices may be an important reason for such differences. Unfortunately, understanding the role of management in schools within and across countries has been held back by a lack of robust and comparable instruments to systematically measure management practices and, thus, a lack of good data.The key purpose of this article is to develop an international management index for schools and present descriptive evidence on management quality and education outcomes across schools of different types within and across countries. We used double-blind telephone interviews with school principals to collect information on management practices for over 1,800 schools across eight countries. To construct our management index, we average across 20 basic management practice measures in four areas of management: operations, monitoring, target setting and people. Each question is evaluated against a scoring grid that ranges from one ('worst practice') to five ('best practice'). Our management index for each school represents the average of these scores.We also constructed measures of school-level pupil outcomes for these schools (when data were available) from examination results across regions and countries, creating a matched management-pupil outcome international data set at the school level.These data allow us to document some stylised facts. First, we show that the adoption of basic managerial practices varies significantly across and within countries. The UK, Sweden, Canada and the US obtain the highest average scores, followed by Germany, Italy and Brazil, while India has the lowest scores. About half of the variance in school management is at the country-level. This share is larger in education than we have * Corresponding author: Nicholas Bloom,

Management practices and SME performance

“…Similar results have been obtained in single-country studies of manufacturing firms that focus on the same set of practices: see Bloom et al (2017) and Brynjolfsson and McElheran (2016a) for evidence from the USA, and Broszeit et al (2016) for evidence from Germany. There is also similar evidence for the service sector, with studies showing positive returns from the more extensive use of formal management practices in education (Bloom et al, 2015) and healthcare (Bloom et al, 2014: 24). Efforts to break down the management index in such studies have been somewhat limited, though Brynjolfsson and McElheran (2016a) find that there are specific returns from the intensive collection and use of performancerelated data, while Broszeit et al (2016) find returns from the more intensive use of monitoring and incentives, but not from the more intensive use of performance targets.…”

“…() for evidence from Germany. There is also similar evidence for the service sector, with studies showing positive returns from the more extensive use of formal management practices in education (Bloom et al ., ) and healthcare (Bloom et al ., : 24). Efforts to break down the management index in such studies have been somewhat limited, though Brynjolfsson and McElheran () find that there are specific returns from the intensive collection and use of performance‐related data, while Broszeit et al .…”

The political economy of university education in Canada

“…Changing what instructors do within the classroom requires something more. There is a growing body of K-12 evidence that this "something more" might be good management (Bloom et al 2015). Good principals lead to better student performance (and bad ones to worse) (Dhuey andSmith 2014, Coelli andGreen 2012).…”

Student Segregation Across and Within Schools - The Case of the Portuguese Public School System

“…Teachers are also likely pursuing a seat on specific schools and classes partly conditional on actual or expected student composition (Horng, 2009). On the other hand, knowledge on the distribution of students across and within schools is important to understand what kind of student sorting policies are being implemented by schools and by the relevant local or central governments (West & Wöβmann, 2006;Bloom, Lemos, Sadun &Van Reenen, 2015). Such policies must be checked to determine if they conform with societal values related to equity and social inclusion or not, or whether students' quality of education, in particular, and quality of life, in general, might be at risk or not under them.…”