An assessment of efficiency of public schools in Kuwait using data envelopment approach (dea)‎ and tobit regression

Abstract EN

This paper examines the efficiency of public schools in Kuwait over each school level (kindergarten, primary, intermediate, and secondary) and six academic years (1979/80, 1984/85, 1989/90, 1994/95, 1999/2000 and 2004/05).

The analysis is based on the entire public school population in the country and relies on a two-stage approach.

In the first stage, estimates of technical, scale, allocative, and economic efficiencies are obtained on the basis of data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique.

The second stage relates estimates of technical efficiency to school characteristics using the Tobit regression model.

The explanatory variables included in the regression model are the schools’ regional location, teachers’ salary, proportion of teaching staff that are Kuwaitis, and whether a school is all-boys’ or all-girls’.

The estimates show that the public schools in Kuwait use more resources for the level of school output, operate below the optimum size (returns to scale are generally increasing), and use non-optimal input proportions.

Teachers’ salary is found to have positive effect on technical efficiency while the proportion of Kuwaiti teaching staff has a negative impact.

All-girls schools are found to have higher efficiency than all-boys schools.