Class Discipline, Class Size and Scholastic Achievement Across Countries: A Theoretical and Empirical View of Educational Production

IMF Working Papers, May 29, 2026

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Formulates an education production function to identify relations between discipline, class size, teaching quality, and scholastic outcomes.
Uses estimates of student and class discipline levels to link inputs to outcomes.
Employs a structural simulation to evaluate whether observed correlations can be explained by how schools allocate students and teachers to classes.
Allows a break-down of the contribution of educational production factors to student achievements.

Both individual and class-level discipline are powerful predictors of the PISA math score.
Variance in discipline among classmates has a strongly negative effect on scholastic outcomes.
Class discipline is correlated with larger classes.
Structural simulation demonstrates that the correlations observed in the data can be well explained by school allocation mechanisms (how schools allocate students and teachers to classes).

Integrates discipline measures at individual and class levels into an education production framework.
Decomposes the contribution of educational production factors (discipline, class size, teaching quality) to student achievement using empirical estimates and structural simulation.

Subjects: COVID-19, Econometric analysis, Education, Factor models, Health, Population and demographics
Keywords: class discipline, Class Size, COVID-19, Discipline, discipline to student achievement, East Asia, Education Production, Factor models, Global, IMF working papers, International Tests, Northern Europe, PISA, Tardiness, teachers to class, Teaching Quality, Truancy