How does economic analysis address the issue of school performance? And what factors may have a positive influence on school performance? These are the two central questions of this article. An analytical methodology is adopted, which consists of redrawing economical approaches for the different performance factors studied, such as the teacher and his characteristics, his working environment, or the regulation mode in use. It shows the difficulty for the economic analysis to reliably establish what connects the various factors identified with achieved scholar results. It also shows that both issues of internal efficiency of scholar systems and of pertinent regulation modes tend to take precedence over the recurring debates on traditionally considered dimensions such as student-teacher ratio, class size and composition, or teacher effect.
JEL Codes: A111, I200, I210