Education Expenditures, Psychosocial Factors and School Performance: Evidence form Evidence from 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between education expenditures and psychosocial factors on school performance using dataset from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 tests. PISA is the most comprehensive and rigorous international programme assessing students' performance and collects data on the student, family and institutional factors. PISA tests are conducted every three years in all OECD countries, as well as dozens of partner countries, assessing the performance of 15-year-olds students. In our paper, the relationship between education expenditures, class size and students’ well-being and school stress level as well as gender gap are discussed. Effect sizes for students from selected participating country as well as for boys and girls separately, are estimated. Gender gaps for each domain are assessed and further discussed. Likewise, in earlier studies, gap differences were the most considerable in case of mathematics with boys scoring higher, slightly less in case of reading comprehension with girls scoring higher and the smallest in case of science. Similarity to previous findings. Class sizes prove to be the less significant factor explaining performance differences whereas extracurricular activities are significant but the size of the effect differs among countries.