For the 8th consecutive year, the school rankings for 2023, elaborated by the Nova SBE Economics of Education Knowledge Center, were published in Jornal Observador.
As in the last three years, we have compiled two different rankings: the final exams rankings and the equity ranking.
The final exams ranking orders public and private schools by their students’ average grades in the 10 9th and 12th degree exams with the highest number of exam takers. The data is from the 2022-23 academic year.
The equity ranking compares the performance of students with the same socioeconomic status from different public schools, i.e., among students who receive School Social Support (ASE) – a state aid for those with a lower socioeconomic status. The comparison is made based on the percentage of ASE students who completed their studies in the expected time in each school versus the percentage of ASE students who completed their studies in the expected time at the national level. The data is from the 2021-22 academic year.
In an episode of “Contra-Corrente” from Rádio Observador about this topic, Catarina Angelo, a researcher at the Nova SBE Economics of Education Knowledge Center who is part of the team that prepares these school rankings, emphasizes that small decimal differences in results that slightly change the schools’ positions compared to previous years should not be given particular importance.
What matters most, she says, is understanding if there has been school mobility between distribution quartiles. In this regard, she shares that in 2023 there were instances of positive mobility in several public schools, which moved from the group comprising the 25% of schools with the lowest grades (1st quartile) to the group comprising the 25% of schools with the highest grades (4th quartile).
Not all national schools are included in these rankings, as we have a set of selection criteria meant to ensure the comparability of results between schools, such as each school having a minimum of 20 exams taken. Additionally, not all schools provided the necessary contextual dadta.
You can read the 2023 School Rankings here.