Choice and competition in education: Do they advance performance, voice and equality?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12308 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Author | Sjaak Braster,Peter Mascini |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Choice and competition in education: Do they
advance performance, voice and equality?
Peter Mascini|Sjaak Braster
Department of Public Administration and
Sociology, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
Correspondence
Peter Mascini, Department of Public
Administration and Sociology,
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
Email: pmascini@gmail.com
Based on a multilevel analysis of the OECD PISA 2012 data on
school test results for 60 countries, we have established that three
presuppositions underlying the policy recommendation to intro-
duce more choice and competition in education are untenable.
First, rather than choice and competition, we find that parental
voice and targets and performance measurement incentivize
schools to improve students’test results. Second, we do not find
that choice and competition increase parental voice’s impact on
students’test results. Third, we do not find that choice and com-
petition have more equal outcomes in terms of students’test
results than has parental voice. Students from high-SES families
not only benefit most from parental voice, but they also benefit
most from choice and competition. Overall, we do not find support
for the policy recommendation to shift the balance in education in
the direction of the choice-and-competition model.
1|INTRODUCTION
Since the 1990s –when the elevation of markets to social and economic icons diffused as a political ideology –
many countries have introduced policies that aim to increase choice and competition in education (Icholov 2012,
p. 282). A choice-and-competition model of public service delivery enables tax-funded users to choose between the
services offered by competing providers (Le Grand 2007a). When applied to education, the choice-and-competition
model implies that families have the freedom to choose a school for their children and that schools are allowed to
compete for families’preferences. Ideally, families are aware of the ‘quality’of the different options and use such
information when making their choices, in this way rewarding the best schools and forcing the worst ones to either
improve or leave the market (Bellei and Cabalin 2013, p. 110).
Even though many studies focus on the effects of choice and competition on the quality of education, Wilson
(2009, pp. 574–75) has rightly acknowledged that many countries have actually implemented a mix of educational
reforms, containing elements of three other models of public service delivery as well. The ideal types of these other
models have been concisely described by Le Grand (2007b). The professional trust model, where professionals and
managers are simply trusted to know what is best for their users and to deliver high-quality services without inter-
ference from government or any other source, is represented, for example, by the formation of training and
DOI 10.1111/padm.12308
482 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padmPublic Administration. 2017;95:482–497.
education facilities for teachers and by giving schools more decision freedom in resource allocation and recruiting
staff. The targets and performance management model, where central management sets targets for providers,
rewards them if they succeed in meeting those targets and penalizes them if they fail, is exemplified by annually
published school performance tables and in-depth reports on individual schools by educational inspectorates. The
voice model, where users express their dissatisfaction (or satisfaction) directly to providers through face-to-face
conversations, or through complaints to higher managers or elected representatives, encourages parents to make
their voices heard via parent councils, parent governorships, volunteer work, and complaint procedures.
The proponents of choice and competition in education who have acknowledged that many countries have
implemented a mix of educational reforms do not argue for the choice-and-competition model to deliver public ser-
vices to the complete exclusion of the three other models. Instead, what they do advocate is shifting the balance in
delivery systems in the direction of the choice-and-competition model, but without completely displacing the
remaining models (Le Grand 2007a, p. 1). Three arguments can be found in the literature for this policy recommen-
dation (Cabus and Cornelisz 2014, pp. 2–3). First, the choice-and-competition model offers something that is more
or less absent in all other models of service delivery: incentives to improve. ‘If providers face adverse consequences
from not being chosen –if, for instance, they will lose resources if they cannot attract users –then they will want
to improve the quality of the service they provide’(Le Grand 2007a, p. 43). Second, if households’preferences
towards school attributes vary, then competition between schools will lead to substantial product differentiation
that matches schools’appeal to the particular educational preferences of the households for which the school
wishes to compete. Therefore, competition between schools may induce an efficient school provision with
increased school choice, so that student sorting creates incentives to perform well. Third, choice gives users auton-
omy. Ostensibly, the entitlement to respect as deliberative and purposive agents capable of formulating their own
projects is not only morally right but also what users normally want (Le Grand 2007a).
However, the latter argument not only applies to the choice-and-competition model; the voice model also
offers agency to service users (Tummers et al. 2013, p. 12). Still, there are two reasons why proponents of the shift
towards the choice-and-competition model prefer the former model over the latter one. First, voice can easily be
ignored without choice. This implies that voice is more powerful when coupled with choice and competition
(Hirschman 1970; Le Grand 2007a, p. 36; Tummers et al. 2013; Cabus and Cornelisz 2014, p. 2). Second, choice
and competition offer more equality than does voice. Supposedly, on the one hand, the middle classes are much
better placed than those lower on the social scale to ensure that they get quality services, and they are more likely
to participate in the institutions of voice (Le Grand 2007a, p. 33). On the other hand, purchasing power in the
choice-and-competition model is equally distributed, and thus helps to promote equal opportunities (Le Grand
2007a, p. 68; see also Tooley 1995).
In short, the recommendation to introduce more choice and competition in education rests on three presuppo-
sitions: (1) the choice-and-competition model provides incentives for quality improvement which are absent in the
remaining three models; (2) the choice-and-competition model prevents providers from neglecting users’voice; and
(3) the choice-and-competition model results in more equal outcomes than does the voice model.
We have reasons to test the tenability of all three presuppositions. First, findings on the presumed positive
effect of choice and competition on the quality of education are mixed. Besides, as far as we know, it has not yet
been studied how this effect compares to that of the three other models of service delivery. Therefore, we will
establish what impact the four models of service delivery have on the quality of education. Second, the presupposi-
tion that choice and competition prevent providers from ignoring voice is contested both on theoretical and empiri-
cal grounds. Therefore we will test its tenability. Third, the presupposition that the middle classes profit more from
parental voice than do those lower on the social scale is broadly shared. However, contrary to the presumption of
the proponents of choice and competition, some scholars argue that this model of public service delivery also repro-
duces unequal opportunities. Therefore, we will test to what extent both choice and competition and parental voice
have stratifying effects. We will test these three presuppositions with the help of the OECD Programme for Interna-
tional Student Assessment (PISA) data collected in 2012.
MASCINI AND BRASTER483
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