The Efficiency of Public Spending in Basic Education in School Districts in Ecuador

This paper assesses the efficiency of spending in basic education among school districts in Ecuador using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The analysis presented here uses administrative data on educational inputs and per-pupil spending to quantify how much school districts in Ecuador can generate, with these inputs, education outputs; notably, student learning and progression rates. Results indicate that school districts in Ecuador are quite efficient at maintaining children in the education system, but not so much at ensuring their learning. Indeed, results indicate that school districts in Ecuador could improve their capacity to assure student learning (as proxied by results from their national learning assessment) by 10 to 15 percent without investing additional resources. These results are particularly relevant since fiscal savings in Ecuador started to deplete quickly since 2015, making it hard for the country to sustain its levels of social expenditure.