Asessing public policies. The case of education in Europe and the interaction between personal and institutional factors

Abstract

The paper deals with the comparative study of European citizens satisfaction with the state of education in their respective countries. Individual and contextual effects are tested applying multilevel analysis. The results show that educational public policies (level of decentralization, degree of comprehensiveness and public spending) as well as the students social environment (socioeconomic and cultural status) have a sound impact on the opinions about the state of education.