Language is a contextual factor of an education system as it determines the Language of Learning and Teaching (LOLT). In order to provide for diversity in South Africa, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, makes provision for 11 official languages and the Language in Education Policy (LiEP) promotes respect for not only these…

Academic resilience is difficult to define in an international setting, since economic levels and achievement standards vary across countries and over time. In studies of academic resilience, the concept is typically operationalized using pre-defined cut-offs of achievement and social background. The main objective of the current study is to apply…

Few developing countries participate in external educational evaluations. Information gaps on education quality make it imperative to expand such evaluations. Furthermore, international comparability across different evaluations should be improved. In addition, data from evaluations must be combined with data on access or coverage. Finally,…

Finnish students have been among the world's strongest performers on standardized assessments throughout the past decade. Consequently, educators and scholars are interested in how to explain such results. A common explanation, as seen on social media, is that Finnish educators do not regularly assess their students. This study explores educators'…

The effect of composition may be strong in systems where students are systematically sorted based on their socio-economic background. This paper aims to model the differential effect of class composition on pupils' achievement in Belgium (French-speaking Community), France, Spain and Portugal. Multilevel models are consequently tested on the…

The training of effective teachers has been one of the main aims of educational systems, in so far as it could be an important tool to improve the education performance of children and, consequently, contribute to their career progression and foster social mobility towards a more meritocratic society. The present study intends to identify these…

The development of international surveys on children's learning like PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS--delivering comparable achievement measures across educational systems--has revealed large cross-country variability in average performance and in the degree of inequality across social groups. A key question is whether and how institutional differences…

Prior research shows that establishing early literacy and numeracy skills may help children achieve better outcomes in later schooling. Data from the Regional Project on Child Development Indicators (PRIDI), which focused on Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru, provided insights into four domains of child development that build the…

Survey participation rates can have a direct impact on the validity of the data collected since nonresponse always holds the risk of bias. Therefore, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has set very high standards for minimum survey participation rates. Nonresponse in IEA studies varies between studies…

This study examines the impact of macro-context factors on the behavior of school principals. More specifically, the article illuminates how a nation's level of economic development, societal culture, and educational system influence the amount of time principals devote to their job role and shape their allocation of time to instructional…

Research to date on the effects of between-school tracking on inequalities in achievement and on performance has been inconclusive. A possible explanation is that different studies used different data, focused on different domains, and employed different measures of inequality. To address this issue, we used all accumulated data collected in the…

International tests of achievement narrowly measure specific academic subjects, but have larger educational policy implications. These tests come to summarize national education systems and are used in national and international discourse. However, students with disabilities are being entirely excluded from participation in the discourse of…

The paper draws on the work of Willms [2006. "Learning divides: Ten policy questions about the performance and equity of schools and schooling systems." Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics] to present an analytical approach to the study of academic achievement disparities related to family socioeconomic status. The approach is…

Are America's schools broken? "Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality" seeks to address misconceptions about America's schools by taking on the credo "what can be measured matters." To the contrary, Dr. Bracey makes a persuasive case that much of what matters cannot be assessed on a multiple choice test. The challenge for…