Education Systems, Corruption and Bribe-Giving in Europe

Paper presents the main results from the analysis of corruption determinants in public schools in Europe. Corruption is often presented as the problem of the developing world, and many oversee that bribe-giving experiences and perceptions of corruption in education vary significantly between and within European countries. In my dissertation project, I examine the scale of corruption in education sector across Europe and also determine individual and country level characteristics that are associated with the likelihood of corruption in public schools. Moreover, I explore the differences and similarities in the patterns for Post-Soviet, Post-Socialist and Western European countries. This presentation offers the summery of the main results of my dissertation.

The key research questions raised in this presentation is whether there is the association between the characteristics of education systems, depicting its resources and management on the country level, with the likelihood of corruption incidences and perception of corruption prevalence in public schools. I concentrate on such characteristics of education systems as: government expenditure on education, education staff compensations, centralization of examination system and pupil-teacher ratio.

For the purpose of the analysis, the integrated dataset was created, which consists of the harmonized micro-level data based on the Life in Transition Survey, the Global Corruption Barometer and the Quality of Government survey - total 96 national surveys conducted in 30 European countries in 2010 among 31,578 respondents; and the integrated macro-level data of country level indicators and education system characteristics from the World Bank Education Statistics, the Varieties of Democracy, the Quality of Government Standard Dataset and UNESCO Institute of Statistics Education Indicators. The results of the analysis show substantive differences in corruption perceptions and personal bribe-giving experiences in education sector and their relation to education system characteristics.