Research Blog

In the past decades, an increasing number of school voucher programmes have been implemented in the US. Geared toward low-income households, these programmes allow participants to use vouchers toward tuition fees in private schools. Since the schemes generally have more applicants than places, lotteries have often been used as a tiebreak device.

The merits, or otherwise, of school voucher programmes have been the subject of (often heated) debate for many years. The issues are complex, and comprehensive, balanced and fair appraisals of the evidence of their effectiveness, potential adverse effects, and trade-offs, are rare.

Over the past decade, international comparisons of education have assumed an increasingly important role in domestic policymaking. The big international surveys – principally PISA and TIMSS – have come to dominate thinking, not least through league tables that rank countries based on their pupils’ performances.

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are a growing phenomenon in education research. And the debate now appears to have moved beyond the question of whether or not such trials are desirable to one about whether or not it is possible to run robust trials in practice.

Differences in the quality of education are large, both within and between countries. A recently published study by Nicholas Bloom, Renata Lemos, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen (free working paper version here) suggests that those differences can partly be explained by management quality.