This book provides a thorough review of the research literature on the effect of school size in primary and secondary education on three types of outcomes: student achievement, non-cognitive outcomes and costs per student. Based on 84 scientific publications and several prior reviews, the book discusses four main areas: the impact of school size on cognitive learning outcomes and non-cognitive outcomes; the "state of the art" of empirical research on economies of size; the direct and indirect impact of school size, conditioned by other school context variables on student performance and the specific position of the Netherlands in an international perspective. The book presents summaries of the results and main conclusions found and discusses these with respect to their relevance for educational policy in general and for the Netherlands in particular. The book concludes with suggestions for future research on school size.

The quality of education is a term that is frequently used in public debates. Understood in the sense of education being generally okay, or rather, most frequently, as not okay . Perhaps there is an overruling nostalgic view that formerly education was better than today. In scholarly discourse there are those who maintain that the quality of education is an illusive term, with varying interpretations in different settings and by different stakeholders.

In this book the complexity of the concept of education quality is recognized, but a conceptual framework is presented that makes quality, despite its complexity, amenable to rational and empirical analysis. Productivity, equity, effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of education systems are seen as key facets of quality. A concrete set of indicators is presented that makes for the measurement of these quality facets. In the second part of the book the quality framework is applied to an analysis of the quality of education in the Netherlands. Common sense in the Netherlands is dominated by the view that the quality of education is a course for serious concern. Some recent quality reviews take the same pessimistic outlook. However, the current overview of indicators on the Dutch system, seen from an international perspective, presents a picture that is much more positive. Still there is always room for improvement, in the case of the Netherlands this should probably be sought in diminishing the selectivity of the system as a way to improve participation in higher education.