Teacher’s Characteristics and Performance in Education Service Delivery: Case of the Technical Efficiency of Primary Schools in Tanzania

Abstract

One of the basic questions on the educational system performance is how to improve school outcomes using a minimum of resources. Education production function theory highlights a relationship between education system performance and its main determinants. The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence of teacher characteristics on the technical efficiency of primary schools in Tanzania. To achieve this, micro data from the Service Delivery Indicator survey, collected in primary education system, are analyzed using two complementary methodological approaches: a non-parametric technique called Data Envelopment Analysis to estimate efficiency scores of primary school in a first-stage; then Tobit regression to identify the determinants of technical efficiency in a second-stage. The study findings show that there is a significant relationship between teachers’ characteristics and efficiency of primary school. These results permitted to formulate some recommendations to policy makers in terms of education planning in Tanzania.