By A. Mc
BRITAIN’s public services present a conundrum. Internationally, they score highly on efficiency measures. Yet some important outcomes in health and education often lag behind other developed countries. In other words, Britain’s Leviathan provides major services at scale and rather cheaply, but struggles to attain reliably high standards and to match the improvement rate of fast-growing economies in Asia and eastern Europe.
Now a new “Efficiency Index” of education, compublished by the GEMS Education Solutions http://www.edefficiencyindex.com, involving British and Spanish university researchers, attempts to merge data about efficiency and effectiveness and test which countries are best at combining the two. Overall, the winners and losers are not so different to the conclusions of other major studies, like the OECD’s PISA tests and the TIMMS and PIRLS numeracy and literacy check-ups.
