An International Comparison on Efficiency in Use of Educational Resources

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was conducted first in 2003 and has been repeated in each following three-year period. The result of the programme is one of the most extensive indicators that is used in international comparison of students in terms of skills and knowledge, determination of direction of educational policy and in detection of weak and adequate aspects of educational systems. The program does not only aim to evaluate the performance of students in various fields but also gather data about factors affecting educational systems like human resources or background variables across countries. In this research, the authors aim to investigate the position of Turkey in relation to the OECD countries in terms of effective use of resources in the last three cycles of The Programme for International Student Assessment and the change of the efficiency rate in those cycles. The data of this study consist of student performance results in mathematics tests and four school questionnaire variables in the last three study cycles. It is detected that Turkey could not benefit from its resources efficiently in any cycle and the average efficiency rate is significantly below the OECD average. Another prominent finding of this research according to all three cycles is that Turkey should decrease the student/teacher ratio to be an efficient country member