Private School Diversity in Denmark's National Voucher System |
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| Authors: | Beatrice Schindler Rangvid |
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| Institution: | 1. Danish Institute of Governmental Research , Copenhagen, Denmark bs@akf.dk |
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| Abstract: | The voucher system in Denmark combines unrestricted generous subsidies with substantial autonomy of private schools as to schedule and teaching methods. This has produced a private school sector with a wide variety of school types. This paper uses data on eight cohorts of students (over 510,000 individuals) to compare educational attainment in public and private voucher schools, including religious schools (Catholic and Protestant) and various types of non‐religious schools. The findings suggest that, after controlling for individual and peer characteristics, the average public student would attain moderately higher levels of education if he/she attended grammar or Catholic school, relative to the public alternative. Attainment of students at Protestant, international and German minority schools is not different from public schools. However, attending free, boarding and, particularly, little and Waldorf schools is associated with substantially lower completion rates at the upper secondary level, which is probably at least partly due to the clustering of special education students in these school types, which cannot be controlled for. At the tertiary level, differences between private and public schools generally vanish. |
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| Keywords: | Private schools Educational outcomes School choice |
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