School Size Effects: Review and Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

In this chapter, a review of international review studies on school size effects is presented. Next, ingredients of a more contextualized and tentative causal mediation model of school size effects are discussed. The chapter is completed by a short overview of school size effects as found in international comparative assessment studies and by a synthesis of Dutch empirical studies that have addressed school size effects, in terms of achievement and attainment outcomes, costs, social outcomes, and good teaching practice.