Summary

The Ministry of Education has commissioned Infometrics Consulting and BERL to review the "state-of-the-art"  literature on school resourcing to provide a basis for a review of current policies and future research priorities. Other teams are focussing on complementary areas of educational research.

This review explores, and critically assesses, the literature and provides an up-to-date understanding of developments relating t6o the effects of the level of resources, the types of resoucres and the delivery mechanisms on education outcomes.  The scope of the review is wide, and to provide the reader a comprehensive overview, avoiding full detail in all areas, our review is prefaced by this Outline Summary. Before summarising the main findings, the Outline Summary gives a perpective of the core of the debate and presents a brief description of the production function approach to measuring the effect of school resources on education outcomes. The findings are then grouped as follows:

1. The effects of different levels and types of school resources on students' learning and social outcomes (Sections 3 and 4).
2. Different approaches to delivering school resources (Section 5).

Another dimension of the effect of resources on education outcomes is school culture - in a broad sense - encompassing training, leadership style, school organisation, incentive mechanisms, pedagogical styles and so on.  These issues are beyond the scope of this review.  They are being investigated by a separate review team comprising appropriate specialists.