Grade inflation in Sweden: Differences between public and independent schools
(2016) NEKH02 20161Department of Economics
- Abstract
- In a setting where both schools and students have incentives to demand higher grades than may be warranted, there is a risk of grade inflation. Shedding light on the observed grade inflation in Swedish schools, this study investigates possible grading differences between independent and public compulsory schools by comparing their grades to national test scores. Theory and previous studies suggest that factors such as a school’s socioeconomic composition influence grading. This study therefore controls for school characteristics when comparing independent and public schools. The results from cross-school regressions, using data on English, Mathematics and Swedish from 2015, indicate that there is no statistically significant difference... (More)
- In a setting where both schools and students have incentives to demand higher grades than may be warranted, there is a risk of grade inflation. Shedding light on the observed grade inflation in Swedish schools, this study investigates possible grading differences between independent and public compulsory schools by comparing their grades to national test scores. Theory and previous studies suggest that factors such as a school’s socioeconomic composition influence grading. This study therefore controls for school characteristics when comparing independent and public schools. The results from cross-school regressions, using data on English, Mathematics and Swedish from 2015, indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between the two education providers for any of the three subjects. The results are robust to various specifications, but the model explains little of the variation across schools. An insight is therefore that the reason deviations vary is possibly school-specific policies or individual teachers’ grading practices. These factors are probably determined independently of education provider and school characteristics. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8878662
- author
- Norström, Erik LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- NEKH02 20161
- year
- 2016
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- compulsory school, grade inflation, independent schools, public schools
- language
- English
- id
- 8878662
- date added to LUP
- 2016-06-22 12:29:33
- date last changed
- 2016-06-22 12:29:33
@misc{8878662, abstract = {{In a setting where both schools and students have incentives to demand higher grades than may be warranted, there is a risk of grade inflation. Shedding light on the observed grade inflation in Swedish schools, this study investigates possible grading differences between independent and public compulsory schools by comparing their grades to national test scores. Theory and previous studies suggest that factors such as a school’s socioeconomic composition influence grading. This study therefore controls for school characteristics when comparing independent and public schools. The results from cross-school regressions, using data on English, Mathematics and Swedish from 2015, indicate that there is no statistically significant difference between the two education providers for any of the three subjects. The results are robust to various specifications, but the model explains little of the variation across schools. An insight is therefore that the reason deviations vary is possibly school-specific policies or individual teachers’ grading practices. These factors are probably determined independently of education provider and school characteristics.}}, author = {{Norström, Erik}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Grade inflation in Sweden: Differences between public and independent schools}}, year = {{2016}}, }