The market-oriented education reforms of the 1980s entailed the decentralisation of public school management responsibilities to municipalities and the introduction of a nationwide voucher programme. The former involved the transfer of the administration and infrastructure of all the country’s public primary and secondary schools to municipalities. The latter is characterised by a per student public subsidy for schools which are part of the voucher system (municipal and the majority of private schools) and parents’ free choice of schools. The introduction of the voucher programme has led a great number of private schools to enter the school system with a growing share of the student population (59.1% in 2011, with 51.8% of students enrolled in private schools which are part of the voucher programme). Attendance of different school types greatly depends on family income levels. Students from the most disadvantaged families attend municipal schools in largest numbers even if from 1990 they have increasingly attended subsidised private schools. Student learning outcomes in Chile are considerably below the OECD average but there has been considerable progress in the last decade. In 2009, achievement levels of Chilean students in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) were at the far end within the OECD area in the assessed areas of reading literacy, mathematics and science. However, Chile performed above any other Latin American country which took part in PISA (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay) in all assessed areas except mathematics (where its performance is similar to that of Mexico and Uruguay). Trend analyses of PISA results have also shown some encouraging improvement in student learning outcomes. In addition, research shows that student results differ considerably across the socioeconomic background of students and the type of school attended.