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A sizeable literature – spanning education, sociology and economics – has investigated the issue of parental school preferences and school choice. A notable gap in the existing evidence base is an exploration of how such preferences differ between mothers and fathers. We present new cross-national findings on this matter, drawing on survey data collected from more than 300,000 parents across 25 countries. Our findings suggest that mothers rate the school environment – whether the school is safe and has a pleasant atmosphere – to be more important than fathers. Differences are also observed with respect to the school's reputation and whether it has a high level of achievement. Clearer evidence of such differences emerges for industrialised Western nations than for countries that are not members of the OECD. In most countries, mothers' and fathers' preferences do not vary substantially between sons and daughters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International large-scale assessments have gained much attention since the beginning of the twenty-first century, influencing education legislation in many countries. This includes Spain, where they have been used by successive governments to justify education policy change. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the PISA 2018 reading scores for this country, meaning the OECD refused to initially release the results. Therefore, in this paper we attempt to estimate the likely PISA 2018 reading scores for Spain, and for each region within. The figure finally published by the OECD for Spain – in terms of reading scores – was 476.5 points, which is between the lower and upper bound of the interval we find (475 to 483 test points in 2018). Additionally, we report some robustness checks for the OCED countries participating in PISA 2018, which show that the difference between the actual scores and the ones we found with the imputation methods are quite close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International large-scale assessments have gained much attention since the beginning of the twenty-first century, influencing education legislation in many countries. This includes Spain, where they have been used by successive governments to justify education policy change. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the PISA 2018 reading scores for this country, meaning the OECD refused to initially release the results. Therefore, in this paper we attempt to estimate the likely PISA 2018 reading scores for Spain, and for each region within. The figure finally published by the OECD for Spain – in terms of reading scores – was 476.5 points, which is between the lower and upper bound of the interval we find (475 to 483 test points in 2018). Additionally, we report some robustness checks for the OCED countries participating in PISA 2018, which show that the difference between the actual scores and the ones we found with the imputation methods are quite close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large‐scale international achievement studies such as PISA have been widely used to study how educational inequality compares across countries. Yet the various different biases that may affect these estimates are often not considered or are poorly understood. In this paper we draw upon the total survey error framework to provide a case study of the potential biases affecting estimates of the socio‐economic achievement gaps using PISA data from Germany. The results illustrate how procedural and measurement errors have a substantial impact upon estimates of socio‐economic achievement gradients in Germany, including how it compares with other countries. This leads us to conclude that estimates of socio‐economic achievement gaps using the PISA data for Germany do not seem to be particularly robust. More generally, we argue that better articulation and reporting of such challenges with comparing socio‐economic achievement gaps using large‐scale international assessment data such as PISA are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the phenomena of overclaiming – the propensity for individuals to claim more knowledge about an issue or topic than they really (or could possibly) do. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from nine Anglophone countries and over 40,000 young people, we examine teenagers' propensity to claim knowledge of three mathematics constructs that do not really exist. We find substantial differences in young people's tendency to overclaim across countries, genders, and socio-economic groups. Those who are most likely to overclaim are also found to exhibit high levels of overconfidence and believe they work hard, persevere at tasks, and are popular amongst their peers. Together this provides important new insight into overclaiming, how this differs across groups, and how it relates to other psychological constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial literacy is a competence that extends to many aspects of everyday life. The Great Recession has recently highlighted its relevance and the importance of financial literacy training in the school curricula. The authors use PISA 2015 data to investigate the link between financial education and young people's financial literacy across 15 countries using a student fixed-effects approach. Their results illustrate how financial education is still in its infancy within many countries and does not seem to improve young people's ability to apply financial skills in real-world situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial body of research suggests that young people's emotions – both positive and negative – are linked to a wide range of future outcomes. This paper contributes to this literature by investigating the link between young people's positive and negative emotions and their performance in high-stakes examinations. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from England linked to the National Pupil Database (NPD), I investigate how 15-year-olds positive affect, negative affect and fear of failure is associated with the grades they achieve in high-stakes examinations. I find that low levels of positive affect – i.e. pupils rarely feeling happy, lively and cheerful – is associated with a 0.10–0.15 standard deviation reduction in young people's examination grades. On the other hand, little evidence is found of a substantive link between negative affect or fear of failure and examination performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the link between the language in which pupils take the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test and the scores they achieve in this assessment, focusing upon the case of Wales. Using five rounds of PISA data and an instrumental variable approach, we show how pupils who took the test in Welsh score around 0.3 standard deviations (30 PISA test points) lower in reading, mathematics and science than their peers who took the test in English. This finding is robust to different model specifications and statistical approaches. We argue that this may indicate that the academic performance of teenagers in Wales may be underestimated in PISA – particularly amongst those who take this test in Welsh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of large-scale international assessments is to compare educational achievement across countries. For such cross-national comparisons to be meaningful, the participating students must be representative of the target population. In this paper, we consider whether this is the case for Canada, a country widely recognised as high performing in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Our analysis illustrates how the PISA 2015 sample for Canada only covers around half of the 15-year-old population, compared to over 90% in countries like Finland, Estonia, Japan and South Korea. We discuss how this emerges from differences in how children with special educational needs are defined and rules for their inclusion in the study, variation in school participation rates and the comparatively high rates of pupils' absence in Canada during the PISA study. The paper concludes by investigating how Canada's PISA 2015 rank would change under different assumptions about how the non-participating students would have performed were they to have taken the PISA test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The segregation of secondary school students into different schools has important implications for educational inequality, social cohesion and intergenerational mobility. Previous research has demonstrated how between-school segregation varies significantly across countries, with high levels of segregation occurring in central European nations that 'track' children into different schools and much lower levels in Scandinavia. This paper contributes to this literature by examining whether industrialised countries have made any progress in reducing levels of between-school segregation over time. Using six waves of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this work shows how the segregation of rich and poor students has remained broadly unchanged across OECD countries. This is despite major economic and political events occurring during this period, along with the introduction of numerous policy initiatives designed to reduce socioeconomic gaps. Therefore, the conclusions indicate that structural factors are likely to be the main drivers of between-school segregation (e.g. neighbourhood segregation or long-standing school admission policies) and that education policymakers may need to be much more radical if they are to foster greater levels of integration between the rich and the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important international study of 15‐olds' knowledge and skills. New results are released every 3 years, and have a substantial impact upon education policy. Yet, despite its influence, the methodology underpinning PISA has received significant criticism. Much of this criticism has focused upon the psychometric scaling model used to create the proficiency scores. The aim of this article is to therefore investigate the robustness of cross‐country comparisons of PISA scores to subtle changes to the underlying scaling model used. This includes the specification of the item‐response model, whether the difficulty and discrimination of items are allowed to vary across countries (item‐by‐country interactions) and how test questions not reached by pupils are treated. Our key finding is that these technical choices make little substantive difference to the overall country‐level results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The paper investigates whether students' ability relative to their school peers is linked to overclaiming. • Being higher achieving than one's school peers is found to be linked to overclaiming. • Effect sizes are relatively modest at around 0.1 standard deviations. Using the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, we investigate whether students' relative ability in mathematics (in comparison to their school peers) is linked to their tendency to overclaim. Although the estimated effect size is modest (around 0.1 standard deviations) we find empirical support that being a big fish in a small pond is linked to overclaiming, with this robust to different analytic approaches and model specifications. Thus, being one of the highest academic achievers within a school may push young people's beliefs in their own abilities too far, straying into overconfidence and making claims about their knowledge and skills that they cannot justify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year-olds’ academic knowledge and skills. Educationalists and public policymakers eagerly await the tri-annual results, with particular interest in whether their country has moved up or slid down the international rankings, as compared to earlier rounds. In 2015 a major change was implemented in PISA, with the introduction of computer-based assessment. This has the potential to reduce comparability of PISA test scores across countries and over time. We investigate this issue using PISA 2015 field trial data for three countries: Germany, Sweden, and Ireland. We show how, if left unaccounted for, the change to computer-based testing could limit the comparability of PISA test scores. We then describe the methodology the study organisers have used to account for such mode effects. Our key conclusion is that although the adjustment made is unlikely to overcome all the potential challenges of switching to computer-based tests, it represents an improvement over the alternative of making no adjustment at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research suggests that a country does not need inequity to have high performance. However, such research has potentially suffered from confounders present in between-country comparative research (e.g., latent cultural differences). Likewise, relatively little consideration has been given to whether the situation may be different for high- or low-performing students. Using five cycles of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) database, the current research explores within-country trajectories in achievement and inequality measures to test the hypothesis of an excellence/equity tradeoff in academic performance. We found negative relations between performance and inequality that are robust and of statistical and practical significance. Follow-up analysis suggests a focus on low and average performers may be critical to successful policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Programme for International Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year olds academic achievement. Although it has traditionally been conducted using paper-and-pencil tests, the vast majority of countries will use computer-based assessment from 2015. In this paper, we consider how cross-country comparisons of children’s skills differ between paper and computer versions of the PISA mathematics test. Using data from PISA 2012, where more than 200,000 children from 32 economies completed both paper and computer versions of the mathematics assessment, we find important and interesting differences between the two sets of results. This includes a substantial drop of more than 50 PISA test points (half a standard deviation) in the average performance of children from Shanghai-China. Moreover, by considering children’s responses to particular test items, we show how differences are unlikely to be solely due to the interactive nature of certain computer test questions. The paper concludes with a discussion of what the findings imply for interpretation of PISA results in 2015 and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important international study of 15-year-olds' academic achievement. Although PISA has traditionally been used to draw comparisons across countries, there is growing interest in the production of regional (i.e. city, state, or provincial level) results. In this paper we present the first attempt to benchmark London in the PISA rankings. Pooling data across the 2009 and 2012 survey waves, we estimated a 95 per cent confidence interval for London's mathematics, reading, and science PISA scores. These are compared not only to country-level averages, but also to the scores of other major world cities and states. The paper concludes by discussing how these results should be interpreted, and possible directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. Although there are many possible explanations for this, East Asian teaching methods and curriculum design are two factors to have particularly caught policymakers’ attention. Yet there is currently little evidence as to whether any particular East Asian teaching method actually represents an improvement over the status quo in England, and whether such methods can be successfully introduced into Western education systems. This paper provides new evidence on this issue by presenting results from two clustered Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT's), where a Singaporean inspired ‘mastery’ approach to teaching mathematics was introduced into a selection of England's primary and secondary schools. We find evidence of a modest, positive treatment effect that comes at a relatively low per-pupil cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inquiry-based science teaching involves supporting pupils to acquire scientific knowledge indirectly by conducting their own scientific experiments, rather than receiving scientific knowledge directly from teachers. This approach to instruction is widely used among science educators in many countries. However, researchers and policymakers have recently called the effectiveness of inquiry approaches into doubt. Using nationally-representative linked survey and administrative data we find little evidence that the frequency of inquiry-based instruction is positively associated with teenagers' performance in science examinations. This finding is robust to the use of different measures of inquiry, different measures of attainment, across classrooms with varying levels of disciplinary standards and across gender and prior attainment subgroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors and journal regret that the printed version of the above article contained a number of errors, in which statements which had been blinded for review were not revealed for the publication. These were references to the authors' own prior work. The correct and final version, with complete references, follows. The authors and journal would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A small group of high-performing East Asian economies dominate the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings. This has caught the attention of Western policymakers, who want to know why East Asian children obtain such high PISA scores, and what can be done to replicate their success. In this paper I investigate whether children of East Asian descent, who were born and raised in a Western country (Australia), also score highly on the PISA test. I then explore whether their superior performance (relative to children of Australian heritage) can be explained by reasons often given for East Asian students’ extraordinary educational achievements. My results suggest that second-generation East Asian immigrants outperform their native Australian peers by approximately 100 test points. Moreover, the magnitude of this achievement gap has increased substantially over the last ten years. Yet there is no ‘silver bullet’ that can explain why East Asian children obtain such high levels of academic achievement. Rather a combination of factors, each making their own independent contribution, seem to be at play. Consequently, I warn Western policymakers that it may only be possible to catch the leading East Asian economies in the PISA rankings with widespread cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The international surveys of pupil achievement--Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)--have been widely used to compare socio-economic gradients in children's cognitive abilities across countries. Socio-economic status is typically measured drawing on children's reports of family or home characteristics rather than information provided by their parents. There is a well-established literature based on other survey sources on the measurement error that may result from child reports. But there has been little work on the implications for the estimation of socioeconomic gradients in test scores in the international surveys, and especially their variation across countries. In this article, we use the PISA and PIRLS data sets to investigate the consistency of parent and child reports of three common socio-economic indicators (father's occupation, parental education, and the number of books in the family home) across a selection of OECD countries. Our results suggest that children's reports of their father's occupation provide a reliable basis on which to base comparisons across countries in socio-economic gradients in reading test scores. The same is not true, however, for children's reports of the number of books in the home--a measure commonly used--while results for parental education are rather mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]