The Effect of School Type on Academic Achievement

Abstract

Using Indonesian data, this paper evaluates the impact of school type on the academic achievement of junior secondary school students (grades 7–9). Public school graduates, after controlling for a wide variety of characteristics, score 0.17 to 0.3 standard deviations higher on the national exit exam than their privately schooled peers. This finding is robust to OLS, fixedeffects, and instrumental variable estimation strategies. Students attending Muslim private schools, including Madrassahs, fare no worse on average than students attending secular private schools. Our results provide indirect evidence that higher-quality inputs at public junior secondary schools promote higher test scores.