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We conduct a randomised control trial at an Italian university to investigate the impact of test anxiety on high-stakes exams. Students are subjected to two different interventions – silence and music – designed to influence their pre-test anxiety levels. We monitored and compared individual biomarkers before and after each treatment to measure anxiety changes and their influence on exam scores. Our findings revealed that decreased mean arterial and systolic pressures enhanced performance in females, particularly under the silence treatment. However, no significant effect was observed in male students. This study suggests that test anxiety could contribute to gender-based performance disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the learning process, which was previously carried out conventionally with face-to-face interaction, into an online learning activity (e-learning). e-Learning has several benefits, but it also has some challenges that need to be addressed. A preliminary survey has been conducted by asking open-ended questions regarding students’ experience and obstacles during e-learning to determine their perceptions of e-learning, and the results showed that there were problems faced by students in implementing e-learning, especially pertaining to student loyalty. Previous research has stated that e-learning service quality exercises an influence on student satisfaction and student loyalty. This research focusses on the influence of e-learning service quality factors on student perceived value (SPV) and student satisfaction, and ultimately on its role in influencing student loyalty. This research was conducted using a quantitative approach, wherein data were gathered, using judgement sampling, from 309 undergraduate students enrolled across six universities in Tangerang. These data were analysed by partial least squares structural equation modelling (SEM-PLS), and the results of the analysis indicated the presence of a positive and significant relationship between these variables. Resultant to the analysis, there emerged some useful suggestions for educational institutions and lecturers that would enable them to improve the quality of e-learning. The findings of the present study imply that improving the factors of e-learning service quality will inculcate in students a favourable value perception towards the university, as well as create a feeling of satisfaction in them, arising from the fulfilling character of the experience to which they were exposed during the e-learning process; these phenomena are expected in turn to increase students’ loyalty towards the university.

Background: Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, in many countries, higher, secondary and even primary education experienced the unannounced shift from traditional classroom lessons to distance teaching using different technologies.

Subject and purpose of work: The aim of this paper is to identify the professional expectations of students of Economics at the State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska. The paper presents also respondents’ opinions on particularly desirable values of potential employers.

Grade retention has been the focus of the education debate in Spain for decades. On average, more than 30% of students have repeated at least one grade before they finish (or dropout from) their compulsory studies. The present research provides new evidence on this issue by investigating the influence of Spain's school entry age upon students' grade retention. Using data from 15-year-old students who participated in the PISA 2006, 2009, 2012 and 2015 assessments, we implement a regression discontinuity analysis. Our key finding is that students who were born late in the year (younger students) are more likely to repeat a grade. Yet, once they reach secondary education, the disadvantage they suffer due to their younger school starting age seems to disappear. Hence, the key reason why younger students have lower PISA scores than older students in Spain is due to their increased likelihood of repeating a grade, rather than being due to their relative age per se. To avoid these artificial disadvantages of younger students and unfair retention, we suggest that policymakers inform families about this school entry issue and also make the school entry law more flexible. This would facilitate parents of younger children to choose whether to delay their children's school enrolment or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the diffusion of peer effects on academic achievement of 4th grade students in the Brazilian public school system. Using data from Prova Brasil 2013, the identification strategy builds on the use of an IV approach, in which the instruments for peers’ performance are the proportions of classmates born in the second semester of the year (and alternatively, in each quarter). The idea behind the instruments is that compulsory school enrolment laws generate variation in the child’s age at school entry, which, in turn, make the date of birth within the year an important determinant of educational achievement and, at the same time, plausibly exogenous to the quality of the student’s peers. The results demonstrate that classrooms with higher proportions of peers born in the 2nd semester (started school at a relatively older age) tend to perform better, on average, than those that concentrate children born in the 1st semester, even after the inclusion of a wide range of control variables. For the math and Portuguese language evaluations, a one standard deviation increase in the classmates’ test scores improves individual achievement by 30% of a SD.

Using novel variation in special education and English language learner classification from admissions lotteries, I find that students can achieve large academic gains without specialized services. Enrolling in a Boston charter doubles the likelihood that students lose their special education or English language learner status, but exposes students to a high-performing general education program. Effects extend to college—charters nearly double the likelihood that English language learners enroll in four-year colleges and quadruple two-year college graduation rates for special education students. Results suggest that high-quality general education practices drive the gains and find no detrimental effect from reduced classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-stakes exams carry important consequences for the prospects of reaching university. This study examines whether the incentives associated with exam grades affect educational investments. Exploiting a reform-induced recoding of high school students' grade point averages, we identify the effect of highstakes grades on student behavior. The results show that students who were downgraded by the recoding performed better on subsequent assessments. The increase in academic performance in high school translated into an increased likelihood of university enrollment. As the recoding did not convey information about actual performance, these results emphasize that incentives are important in understanding students' educational investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores Bruno Amable’s Diversity of Capitalism approach to analyze educational systems in the European Union (EU28). The main goal is to identify the main clusters of educational systems with regard to their institutional characteristics. Second goal of the analysis is to evaluate the impact of several EU policies and initiatives on the institutional structure of European educational systems. This article identified six clusters in terms of general education and five clusters in terms of higher education systems. The clustering shows, that – with some exceptions (notably the United Kingdom and Ireland) – European education systems have similar structure to other institutional areas, in particular, it confirms the existence of post-communist (in terms of Farkas) or patchwork (in terms of Rapacki et al.) capitalism. The article shows, as well, that subsystem of higher education is much less diverse, what may have a significance for future discussions on the capitalisms in the EU. Results suggests also that there exist significant differences in performance between the clusters, something that may have a crucial importance for an educational policy.

We partnered a low-cost communication technology with school information systems to automate the gathering and provision of information on students' academic progress to parents of middle and high school students. We sent weekly automated alerts to parents about their child's missed assignments, grades, and class absences. The alerts reduced course failures by 27 percent, increased class attendance by 12 percent, and increased student retention, though there was no impact on state test scores. There were larger effects for below-median GPA students and high school students. More than 32,000 text messages were sent at a variable cost of $63. [End Page 125] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causal effects of the proportion of low-ability students in the classroom on the academic performance of regular students, exploiting random assignment of students to classes within middle schools in China. We show that the share of students in a class who are low achievers has a significant negative impact on the academic achievement of regular students in the seventh grade. The peer effects are heterogeneous along their achievement distribution, with the strongest adverse impact at the bottom end but no discernable impact at the top end. In contrast, there is no evidence that low-ability students influence any part of the achievement distribution of regular students in the ninth grade. Therefore, peer effects in academic outcomes can vary with the length of regular students' exposure to the same group of low-ability classmates. We further show that the differences in peer effects of low-ability students in seventh and ninth grades are driven by the adjustments of students' friendship formation and learning environment when approaching the completion of middle school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nexus between governance and education quality in a panel of 49 sub‐Saharan African countries over the 2000–2012 period. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression (QR) are employed as estimation strategies. The following findings are established. First, from the OLS, governance variables are negatively correlated with poor education quality. Second, with regards to QR, about half of the governance dynamics are not significantly correlated with poor education quality in the lowest quantile of poor education quality. With the exception of corruption control, the other governance dynamics are negatively correlated with poor education quality in a non‐monotonic pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonrandom assignment of students to teachers can bias value-added estimates of teachers' causal effects. Rothstein (2008, 2010) shows that typical value-added models indicate large counterfactual effects of fifth-grade teachers on students' fourth-grade learning, indicating that classroom assignments are far from random. This article quantifies the resulting biases in estimates of fifth-grade teachers' causal effects from several value-added models, under varying assumptions about the assignment process. If assignments are assumed to depend only on observables, the most commonly used specifications are subject to important bias, but other feasible specifications are nearly free of bias. I also consider the case in which assignments depend on unobserved variables. I use the across-classroom variance of observables to calibrate several models of the sorting process. Results indicate that even the best feasible value-added models may be substantially biased, with the magnitude of the bias depending on the amount of information available for use in classroom assignments.

One instrument regularly seen as a basic resource in assessing pedagogical knowledge and vivid learning in different circumstances is through the method of conducting student assessment appraisal of their instructors. Nevertheless, deciding the nature of instructional abilities requires as rationale and unbiased judgments. The concern is that there are no formal techniques or formulas that would prompt accurate responses from the students. In spite of the contention surrounding students' rating on instructors, this study aims to investigate how university students in Malaysia would evaluate instructors based on non-instructional factors, such as physical attractiveness and psychological factors, which in turn may affect students' perceptions towards instructors' performance. PLS-SEM was appropriated to perform the path modeling analysis. Practical implication is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]