ABSTRACT
This paper aims to introduce the decomposition of students' socioeconomic background into students' abilities and household characteristics, and, therefore, separately examine the contribution of each attribute to overall students' efficiency across public and private schools. Using Order-alpha and Metafrontier approaches to a sample of 25,060 students from the 2016/17 Young Lives School Survey, results indicate that student ability, family characteristics, school surrounding environment, and overall performance were significantly higher in private schools. However, there was no significant difference in school resources based on school type. Performance gaps across schools might, to a large extent, be explained by the quality of students admitted to such schools who might also be attracted by school environments. More emphasis on improving the environments surrounding schools is recommended.
