This study focuses on educational attainment in New Zealand's undergraduate programmes in medicine and science (N = 750 and N = 4722, respectively), by following four student cohorts over the course of their degree. This research aimed to identify the extent to which studying in competitive academic programmes (Medicine and BSc) attenuate…

It is well understood that when students are experiencing hunger, their ability to learn suffers. What is less understood is why this is the case and the role of the learning environment. Using Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data, this brief examines how student hunger is correlated with how disorderly the…

While numerous studies have reported the effect of school socioeconomic status (SES) on achievement, the factors that can cause this relationship are not well established. This study is, therefore, an attempt to understand school SES and students' mathematics achievement relationship by assuming that this relationship occurs through a correlation…

There are substantial ethnic gaps in higher education in NZ, despite considerable policy effort aimed at this concern. This study uses newly linked administrative data to examine the underachievement of Maori and Pasifika relative to Europeans. We follow a population cohort born between 1990 and 1994 from school through to young adulthood to…

Implementation of the European Higher Education Area changed the assessment model in higher education towards a competence-based system, so that students are assessed by what they demonstrate they can do (competences). However, assessment of certain key competences, such as reading, ceases at higher education. The question remains whether reading…

The way that mothers talk about the past (reminisce) with young children is linked to key memory, language, and socioemotional outcomes. The present research explored the role of a range of child, maternal, socioeconomic, and cultural factors that predict maternal reminiscing style, with a particular focus on maternal personality and child…

This paper examines the associations between attendance at early childhood education (ECE) and longer-term academic attainment and socioeconomic wellbeing in a New Zealand birth cohort studied to age 30. Nearly 95% of the cohort had attended ECE by age 5. After adjustment for family background and child characteristics, results showed…

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) mission is to enhance knowledge about education systems worldwide and to provide high-quality data that will support education reform and lead to better teaching and learning in schools. In pursuit of this aim, it conducts and reports on major studies of student…

This article examines the extent to which parental socioeconomic status (SES) affects the likelihood of a child becoming a top-performing student, offering an international perspective by reporting this relationship in 31 developed countries. The impact of 3 important educational system characteristics (differentiation in terms of early tracking,…

The purpose of the study was to use model-based clustering to identify adolescent time attitude profiles in a sample of students from an urban high school using Adolescent Time Inventory-Time Attitude (ATI-TA) scores and to examine the association of ATI-TA profiles with demographic variables and grade point average (GPA). Three ATI-TA profiles…

Considerable academic attention has been placed on analysing whether, and to what extent, socioeconomic background affects higher education participation. However, the use of socioeconomic status (SES) is problematic as it may be constructed from various data sources. Similar issues can be inherent in study design-related operationalisation…

Unequal access to qualified teachers for children of different socioeconomic status--also known as inequitable teacher sorting--has been increasingly put forth as one potential factor contributing to the socioeconomic achievement gap. Despite this, few studies have investigated cross-national differences in teacher sorting, and none have examined…

This study compares rural educational disadvantage across Australia, Canada, and New Zealand using data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Across the three countries, student reading literacy and school learning environments are less positive in rural communities…

This paper uses ordinary least squares, logit and probit regressions, along with chi-square analysis applied to nationwide data from the New Zealand ratemyteacher website to establish if there is any correlation between student ratings of their teachers and the socioeconomic status of the school the students attend. The results show that students…

What causes the literacy gap and can schools compensate for it? The authors investigated 3 drivers of the gap: preliteracy knowledge, schooling, and the summer vacation. Longitudinal literacy data over 5 time points were collected on 126 five-year-olds attending higher or lower socioeconomic status (SES) schools during their first 15 months of…