A. Jakaitienė, A. S. Camanho, F. Barbosa, D. Stumbrienė
The 22nd Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS 2020), August 23-27, 2021, Seoul, Korea. Virtual
Abstract. The assessment of progress of education systems over time is at the top of the agenda of governments and educational authorities worldwide. The European Commission monitors the performance of education systems in Member States according to the strategic framework "Education and Training 2020" (ET2020). However, studies dedicated to the assessment of performance of education systems at country level based on panel data are very scarce. The framework used to evaluate European education systems is based on the construction of a composite indicator adopting a "benefit-of-the-doubt'' approach. The evaluation of performance change over time is done using a global Malmquist index. An innovative formulation using Mixed-Integer Linear Programming is proposed to estimate performance against a non-convex metafrontier. We assessed the performance of education systems in 29 European countries analysing the ET2020 indicators for the period 2006-2015. We observed the convergence of European countries for half of indicators. Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania have the largest scope for improvement. The results obtained can help monitoring convergence in terms of the educational achievements amongst European countries.