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Decomposition of differences in PISA results in middle income countries
UNESCO
2013
Principal investigator
Raul Ramos
Investigative team
Raul Ramos / Sandra Nieto
Objective
The objective was to analyse the role of teacher and school quality to explain differences in students’ educational outcomes in 10 middle income countries. In particular, we wanted to know to which extent differences in educational outcomes could be improved through a reform of teacher training and better motivation but taking also into account other individual, school and institutional characteristics of the educational systems under analysis.
Methodology
With this aim, we analysed data from the PISA surveys to analyse educational outcomes in Science and Reading. The reason to focus on Science in 2006 and Reading in 2009 is that for these subjects and years, additional information from the standard PISA questionnaire is available on teaching practices and students’ attitudes and perception of teachers. In order to analyse the factors behind differences between students in terms of educational outcomes, we separated students in two different groups according to their PISA economic, social and cultural status index (ESCS) and next, we analysed the gap in scores between the top and bottom quartile of students according to their ESCS and the gap in the probability of these two groups of students to score above the PISA proficiency level 2. Last, we applied decomposition methods based on the estimation of educational production functions to analyse the role of teacher and school quality in the analysed countries.
Reference:
Theme:
Public Policy evaluation, Labor market , University Performance Ambit:
International