What are the effective public schools? Insights from New South Wales' secondary schools using a Stochastic Frontier Analysis with a panel dataset

Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis, this article examines the efficiency and effectiveness of financial inputs and demographic data for educational outputs as measured by the Year 12 results for New South Wales secondary schools using a panel dataset from 2005 to 2010. Effective schools, in these analyses, are those that have higher Year 12 results than expected given their students' prior performance and socio-economic status as well as financial inputs. Results indicate that prior learning achievement in Year 10 has a large, significant and positive impact on the current Year 12 results. Using a quadrant method, for each school, the efficiency score and the median Year 12 result are plotted separately for each of the three regions across New South Wales and a further quadrant plot is presented for the four Metropolitan districts in Sydney. Overall 37.5 per cent of schools are efficient and effective schools and 30 per cent are neither efficient nor effective.