Teacher allocation and school performance in Italy

Abstract

Italy's secondary school system faced budget cuts, which limit availability of new permanent job slots for teachers. The allocation of these slots favours teachers with more seniority such that the age distribution of teachers across schools reflects older teachers' preferences for being close to urban centres. Using schools' distance from main urban centres and population size in the school's vicinity to instrument for non-random exposure of schools to older teachers, we show older teachers are detrimental to pupil attainment. The effect is large: a 6-year increase in the age of teachers leads to a one standard deviation reduction in the graduation mark.