Resource Allocation of Elementary Schools in Kaohsiung City of Taiwan：An Application of Centralized Data Envelopment Analysis
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Chuang, Ya-Chi
Abstract
Owing to the changing social structure over the last 20 years, the total fertility rate continues to drop, and the trend of fewer children is getting worse. This has an indirect effect on economic development and has caused many social problems in Taiwan. Therefore, the problem has been given a great deal of attention with all government departments implementing various reforms.
If, however, the educational system does not properly adjust to suit the trend of fewer children, it will bring many problems to the educational system. For example, there is an imbalance between supply and demand of teacher and education resource waste, etc. Our country’s development is affected by these problems to a certain degree. Thus, education authorities have been implementing various strategies to solve this issue. Specialists and scholars have also made some suggestions. Furthermore, there has been a lot of research on this topic in recent years. No matter what analysis method is used, their goal is to pursue improvement of compulsory education.
Although specialists, scholars, and education authorities have proposed a series of positive improvement measures, many education problems still exist in Taiwan. Because the total fertility rate and the total number of students continue to decrease, the allocation of resources for compulsory education becomes an important subject. It is difficult to reach the equity and efficiency in education, or promote education quality without allocating education resources appropriately. There is already a great deal of domestic research with regard to the allocation of education resources but the analysis perspectives and methods are not the same.
This study adopts the Centralized Data Envelopment Analysis (CDEA) method and aims at determining the optimum allocation of education resources for the elementary schools in Kaohsiung City based on short-term and long-term planning. In our research model, the input items include teachers, staff, school areas and other expenditures; output items include classes and students.
Different from past research, this study is according to the identity of the compulsory education system, analyzing from the angle of the educational authority, and regards each elementary school as a dependent Decision-Making Unit whose allocation of resources is decided by a Local Education Authority. According to the plan, after determining the proper allocation of educational resources for each elementary school in Kaohsiung City, we then reach the optimal operation results of education for Kaohsiung City as a whole. The following are our empirical results:
(1) Results of the strategy 1 and strategy 2: as the total manpower is constant, most of the schools should adjust manpower.
(2) Results of the strategy 3, strategy 4 and strategy 5: when facing the long-term reduction of students and classes, and total manpower is variable, total manpower will be reduced quite substantially. Moreover, some schools should greatly adjust manpower inputs.
(3) Comparison between different strategies: when the total manpower could be adjusted and the number of students is reduced in comparison to when the total manpower is constant and the number of students is invariable, the former should reduce the other expenditure by a larger margin. The margin of reduction of the former is 1.5 times larger than the latter.
(4) Comparison between different strategies: when facing the shock from the trend of low fertility, some of schools should be reducing manpower allocation; some of schools should increasing manpower allocation. However, as a whole, total manpower must be reduced.
Subjects
Elementary Schools
Centralized Data Envelopment Analysis
Allocation of Educational Resources
performance evaluation
Type
thesis
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