Cost and educational policies in Spain. The Relevance of Assignment to Academic Performance

Abstract

 The academic literature has indicated that educational spending is a necessary condition to improve the quality of academic performance, although not sufficient, since after a certain threshold, how much money is spent seems more important than how much money is spent. This makes their allocation - what kind of spending and in what contexts - play a central role in the political and social debate on how to improve learning outcomes. In Spain, since the Ley General de Educación (LGE) of 1970, there can be up to eight basic organic laws dedicated to education at levels prior to university. This research will try to delve into this debate in the case of Spain, analyzing how two relevant assignments, the extension of schooling in childhood and the repetition of the grade, have influenced academic performance. To do this, it will first analyze the effects of school education spending on the academic performance (in science) of students (aged 15 years) almost at the end of their compulsory stage, and from there, it will study the marginal effects of the increase in spending for reasons grade repetition and early childhood education, especially taking into consideration the ownership factor - public or private - of teaching. Using the Spanish sample from the PISA 2015 database and the Education Accounts, a group of hierarchical linear models are defined following the approach of the educational production function, where educational spending is constructed and represented as a school resource. The results achieved suggest that, although money matters, an adequate allocation could raise students' academic results. The key is to assess educational investment decisions on empirical grounds.