Abstract
Several studies have shown that market-based reforms of education, on average, do not improve the pupil performance across or within national school systems. The PISA 2012 survey found, however, that in the Czech Republic the schools that compete with other neighbouring schools for pupils tend to perform better in mathematics even after accounting for the socio-economic and demographic background of pupils and for relevant school characteristics (OECD, 2013).
In our study, we re-evaluate this result. The impact of school variables on student achievement was studied using the PISA datasets and two-level models with pupils at the first level and schools at the second level.
After accounting for different types of secondary schools in the Czech school sample, the apparent positive effect of school competition disappeared.