Do Private Schools Really Provide a Better Education?
Students in private schools score higher on standardized tests than those in public school. But what is causing these differences? Is it better quality instruction or other factors?
Takeaway: Researchers examined whether test score advantages in private secondary schools stem from institutional quality or peer composition, finding that low-income students gain genuine academic benefits from private schooling while wealthy students mostly benefit from surrounded by affluent peers.
Key Points
Private school attendance boosts 9th-grade math and French test scores, but the underlying cause depends heavily on a student's socioeconomic background.
For students from high-income families, the private school advantage vanishes once the socioeconomic background of their classmates is taken into account.
Students from low-income backgrounds experience the largest academic gains from private schooling—gains that persist regardless of peer background—yet they remain the least likely to attend.
Parents everywhere face a familiar dilemma: Is paying for private education worth the investment, or are public schools just as effective?
When private school students consistently score higher on standardized tests, it is easy to assume the schools themselves offer superior instruction. But this observation leads to a crucial economic question: Are private schools actually teaching better, or do they simply enroll students who would succeed anywhere because of their privileged backgrounds and motivated peers?
Disentangling a school's actual teaching value from the background of its student body is notoriously difficult. If high-performing students cluster together in private classrooms, their individual success might stem from "peer effects"—learning in a calm, highly ambitious environment—rather than better curriculum or teaching methods.
Research
To answer this question, researchers Elke Claes and Léonard Moulin analyzed national data tracking 22,441 ninth-grade students in France. In France, most private lower-secondary schools receive public subsidies and follow the national curriculum, but they enjoy flexibility in selecting students and hiring teachers.
The authors asked two core questions:
How much of the private school performance advantage in math and French is explained by the socioeconomic composition of the student body?
Do the benefits of private schooling differ between high-income and low-income students?
To isolate the true effect of private schooling, the researchers used a statistical technique called propensity score matching. This approach allowed them to compare private school students directly with public school students who shared nearly identical early test scores (from 6th grade), family incomes, parental education levels, and household structures.
Findings
Overall, attending a private school provided a clear boost in 9th-grade math and French test scores. On average, school-wide socioeconomic composition explained only a modest portion—about 15% to 23%—of this overall performance gap. However, when the researchers split the data by family income, a striking pattern emerged.
For high-income students, the private school advantage was almost entirely driven by peer environment. Once researchers adjusted for the concentration of privileged classmates, the performance difference between high-income students in private schools and those in public schools shrank significantly and became statistically indistinguishable from zero. In other words, wealthy students in private schools did not perform better because of superior teaching, but because they were surrounded by other high-SES peers.
In contrast, low-income students experienced substantial academic gains in private schools—scoring significantly higher in both subjects—even after controlling for peer makeup. For these students, private schools provided genuine "value added." The researchers hypothesize that private schools may offer a more structured, cohesive learning environment and greater administrative autonomy over teaching staff, factors that particularly benefit students who may have fewer academic supports at home.
Limitations and Context
These findings come with important caveats. First, because the data relies on observational matching rather than a randomized lottery, unobserved factors—such as parental ambition or student motivation—could explain part of the low-income student advantage. Second, student attrition in the dataset disproportionately removed the most disadvantaged teenagers, meaning the remaining low-income sample represents a relatively motivated group.
Why This Research Matters
If these findings hold true, they offer significant lessons for education policy:
Targeting Access: Low-income students stand to gain the most from private school environments, yet they remain severely underrepresented due to tuition fees and selective admission policies. Financial aid or voucher programs targeted specifically at low-income families could yield high returns.
Improving Public Schools: Rather than attempting to replicate private school peer groups, public school systems might benefit from adopting the structural features of private schools—such as giving school leaders greater autonomy over teacher hiring and cultivating stronger institutional discipline.
Learn More
Paper Title: Private vs. Public Schooling: The role of school composition
Authors: Elke Claes and Léonard Moulin
Journal: International Journal of Educational Research
Publication Year: 2026 (Available online late 2025)
URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035525003362?utm_source=copilot.com
Econ Today Explains
Economic Concept: Peer Effects
Peer effects occur when an individual's choices, behavior, or academic performance are directly influenced by the group surrounding them. In an educational setting, positive peer effects can happen when high-achieving or motivated classmates foster a focused classroom culture, raise group expectations, or offer informal help to their peers.
For economists evaluating policy, separating "peer effects" from "institutional quality" is essential. If a school achieves high test scores simply because it enrolls high-performing students (a strong positive peer effect), expanding that school model will not necessarily make better teachers or improve overall educational output across society.
This article was written by AI but reviewed by a real human.
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