Academic institutions are seeking to attract the most capable and prospective students. Many research studies seek to identify factors determining a successful transition from secondary to tertiary ...education. One of the important issues is the predictive value of national testing/Matura examination results in relation to higher education institutions admission. The aim of our study is to quantify the odds to study at university and the results of centralised student assessments (the 10th grade and Matura) of mathematics and the Lithuanian language and literature for the period of five years (Matura examinations for the period 2014–2018), taking into account the student's gender, the location of the school attended, social support, and special needs indicators. We estimate that the Matura grade in mathematics is almost double more important when compared to the10th grade test results for odds of studying at higher education institutions. Grades of the Lithuanian language and literature obtained to be twice more import for males than females. From 2023 or 2024, we may observe the downward trend of people with tertiary educational attainment in Lithuania.
Inclusive and equitable quality education is at the top of the agenda of education authorities worldwide. However, frontier-based efficiency studies involving cross-country comparisons of education ...systems in terms of educational equity are still incipient. This paper elaborates on the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness from the perspective of inclusion and fairness to propose a conceptual framework for education systems. According to the proposed framework, the education system of a country could be optimal, selective, excessive, or deprived. We employed the framework for 26 European countries to illustrate its applicability. The Data Envelopment Analysis approach based on a directional distance function model with both desirable and undesirable outputs was used to measure effectiveness and efficiency. The comparison amongst education systems is based on all key-stages of education: early childhood, primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary education. The empirical results indicate that European countries do not follow the common policy framework for ensuring inclusion and fairness in their education systems as well as within the country between key-stages. Furthermore, we demonstrate that economic categories such as effectiveness and efficiency have different connotations when applied to education and should be interpreted taking into account the peculiarities of national education systems.
∙Optimal-Selective-Excessive-Deprived conceptual framework is proposed.∙EU countries do not follow the common policy framework for ensuring equity.∙Heterogeneity is observed within the countries for ensuring inclusion and fairness.∙Regarding efficiency estimates, the most homogeneous country is Lithuania.∙Finland is the most heterogeneous country when analysing efficiency estimates.
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