Efficiency and Benchmarking Using DEA and Tessellation in the Education Sector

Efficient school operations are essential to provide quality education to a wider population of students. Evaluating a school’s efficiency involves assessing many metrics such as the number of students, students per teacher, students per classroom, passing rate, average BECE (standardized score). Current practices for evaluating school efficiency are simplistic, lack analytical depth and do not use a single performance index. This paper presents a novel framework that combines Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Tessellation methods to determine a composite index for comparing the efficiency of schools based on demographic and operational data. Leveraging DEA’s ability to compare performance with multiple inputs and outputs using a non-parametric linear programming method, this study utilized a Voronoi tessellation approach to define each school’s catchment area and derive its student target population (Serviceable Addressable Market). The case pertains to 25 schools in one region in Ghana, West Africa. The insights from this study offer valuable policy guidelines for governments and education councils, because not only the inefficient schools were identified, but it pointed out the factors that needed attention to improve the efficiency of the inefficient as well as the efficient schools.