Teacher certification and student achievement - A quantitative study of Swedish compulsory schools

Abstract

This paper aims to study the impact of teacher certification on student achievement in Swedish compulsory schools by using panel data from the Swedish National Agency for Education for the period 2014/2015 – 2018/2019. In 2011, Sweden introduced new school reforms with stricter policies for teacher certification. To my knowledge, no studies have investigated the impact of teacher certification on student achievement after the reform. The fixed-effect model is applied, allowing to control for the non-random sorting of teachers and students across schools. The main results suggest that increasing the share of certified math teachers will have a small positive impact on student test scores in math. However, the impact of certified English teachers on student achievement in English test scores did not yield any statistically significant estimates. These results are mostly in line with previous research finding a positive impact of certified math teachers on student achievement, but inconclusive effects of certified English teachers.