Determinants of Tunisian Schools’ Efficiency: A DEA-Tobit Approach

The purpose of this paper is to assess the technical efficiency of Tunisian secondary education and to identify the determinants of its performance by using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 survey. A two stage analysis is conducted; in the first stage we estimate efficiency score of each school by employing data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. In the second stage, factors affecting school’s efficiency are examined through a Tobit regression analysis. Results show that almost 96.5% of schools are inefficient and on average, Tunisian schools could have increased their results by 27% using the same resources. We conclude that the number of students in the class has a positive effect on the efficiency scores of secondary schools. Furthermore, school responsibility for resource allocation and the socioeconomic background of students’ family influence negatively the school efficiency.