Volume measures for non-market education output

Measuring the volume of public services output is a fundamental challenge for national accounts, due to the absence of market prices. In France, the volume of non-market education is measured using an output approach based on student enrollment. As this indicator mainly reflects demographic trends, the recent decline in the number of students mechanically reduces the estimated volume of education, even though quality could have improved through smaller class sizes. Conversely, the decline in PISA scores could reflect a decrease in teaching quality. This study compares alternative volume measurements, and examines different quality adjustments to capture other features of the service provided. It introduces a theoretical framework that incorporates quality adjustments into output volume measures based on the contribution of quality to human capital, drawing on estimates from the literature. Between 2013 and 2022, the adjustment based on PISA scores lowers annual growth rates (-0.056 percentage points on average with a maximum of -0.1 points) while the class-size adjustment slightly raises annual growth (+0.015 percentage points on average, peaking at +0.035 points). Adjusting for the share of novice teachers has a negligible effect (below 0.01 points). Overall, quality adjustments have a modest effect on the estimated volume of education output, reflecting the low sensitivity of future earnings to the quality indicators considered. However, those moderate effects could accumulate over time and result in visible change in trend. Indeed, a stratification of the education service to account for the rising enrollment of pupils with disability increases output volume growth rates by 0.15 points at most, but leads to a cumulative change of about one percentage point over the period 2006–2023.