Educational efficiency across Spanish regions: a comparative analysis over time

Abstract The present study aims to assess the performance of Spanish regional education systems using data from the last waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment dataset (2018 and 2022) to explore how productivity gaps across regions change over time. To do this, we apply a robust version of the base‐group base‐period Luenberger index, which allows us to estimate and compare the performance of schools from different groups (regions in our case), assuming they use different technology of production. Consequently, we can compare the technical and efficiency gaps between regions, to identify the best performers (benchmark) and explain the gaps in terms of efficiency change (catching‐up effect) and technological change. The results show that all Spanish regions have experienced a deterioration in their performance over time, thus confirming the expected negative effect of the school closures caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic. However, there are notable differences in the evolution experienced by the different regions, which allow us to draw several relevant conclusions for the design of educational policies.