School expenditure leakage and efficiency : the case of Thai compulsory education

Abstract

The objectives of this study are to compute the leakage of public expenditure, to diagnose weak institutional capacity, and to measure the efficiency and factors that affect the performance of the schools in Thai compulsory education. The frame of reference of the study is the school-based management framework, and the models used to compute efficiency are Data Envelopment Analysis, Stochastic Frontier Analysis, and Bayesian Stochastic Frontier Analysis model. The samples were randomly drawn from small-sized, lower secondary schools from Nakhonratchasema and Amnatcharoen provinces in Thailand. Two-stage stratified cluster sampling was used as a sampling technique. The total number of samples included in the study is 109; however, only 70 schools were included in the econometric analysis. The results of the study indicate that there exist leakages of public expenditures, absence rate, and budget allocation delays in the sampled schools. The average efficiency of schools was relatively high. However, leakage and weak institutional capacity reduced the school efficiency, suggesting the role of government intervention. In addition, the Bayesian Stochastic Frontier Analysis proved to be superior for describing the characteristics of the best performing schools.