How Far is the East? Educational Performance in Eastern Europe

When the Soviet Union collapsed a transition process started in Eastern Europe. This included a number of reforms to adapt the educational system to the new requirements of the job market. To assess the educational systems in Eastern Europe, this paper takes a look at the gap in PISA test scores between Finland, the best performing country, and seven Eastern European countries, as well as, between Eastern European countries. The methodology applied in this paper is a semiparametric version of the threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, an approach which is not yet used in the research regarding the differences in school outcomes