The Nexus Between Negative Incidents and Resource Allocations in Schools: An Exploratory Analysis of Australian Schools

Abstract

The 'inclusive school reforms' in Australia aim to making schools a safe place without any negative incidents that guarantee a friendly learning environment. Sustaining such safe environments requires optimal allocation of resources by governments. The allocations need not be the same for all schools due to the prevailing heteroscedastic characteristics across schools, on which researchers may not have full information. Excluding the impact of school-specific characteristics from the analysis of negative incidents will underestimate the optimal resource allocation. Drawing on the 'error decomposition' analysis, this paper proposes a novel approach for modelling and measuring the total impact of school-specific characteristics on negative incidents when the researcher does not have full information on the school-specific characteristics. The empirical demonstration of the suggested methodology is done in this study using 2021 ACT data from schools in Australia. The empirical results reveal that school-specific characteristics are important determinants of negative incidents of schools.

Keywords: Inclusive schools, school discipline, negative incidents, resource allocation, suspensions

JEL Classification: C18, C24, H52, I28