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Countries Strive Towards More Quality and Equity in Education: Do They Show Success or Failure? Evidence from TIMSS 2003 and 2011, for Grade 4

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Cognitive Abilities and Educational Outcomes

Part of the book series: Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment ((MEMA))

Abstract

Over the past decade, countries have been striving to increase the quality and equity of their educational systems. This study aimed to investigate to what extent countries have succeeded in both. Trends over time in educational quality and social and ethnic equity amongst 17 countries were investigated through hierarchical multilevel model analysis using data from TIMSS 2003 and 2011. Results indicated an overall increase of math achievement levels, a stable level of science achievement, an overall decrease in social equity, and an overall increase in ethnic equity. However, differences between countries were noticed, with opposite trends occurring in some countries. This study not only looked at trends in average achievement, but also investigated trends in achievement gaps by looking at trends in achievement of the highest and lowest 10 % performing students, which revealed nuances in the conclusions made. Finally, no systematic relationship was found between trends in quality and trends in equity.

Joint first authors. Kim Bellens was responsible for setting out the objectives of the project, performing the analyses and writing the text. Jan Van Damme supervised the research project, giving feedback during all phases.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Russian Federation sampled third graders from some regions and fourth graders from other regions in 2003 whereas in 2011 only fourth graders where sampled. This was due to structural changes in the age at which children entered schools which were ongoing in 2003. More or less the same was true for Slovenia. Additionally, data of Slovenia of 2011 on language spoken at home (cf. infra) were deleted from international databases due to students’ misunderstanding of the question asked. Furthermore, we excluded Morocco and Yemen from the analyses as the achievement scores of Yemen and Morocco could not been estimated reliably in TIMSS 2011, because the percentage of students with achievement scores too low for estimation was above 25 %.

  2. 2.

    In 2003, four categories were distinguished, i.e. (1) never, (2) sometimes, (3) almost always, and (4) always speak language of test at home. To enable comparison between 2003 and 2011, categories (3) and (4) have been merged.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Gudrun Vanlaar from our Centre and Sarah Gielen and Wim Van Den Noortgate from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences Kulak of the University of Leuven (Belgium) for their valuable comments on an earlier version.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Jan Van Damme & Kim Bellens

Authors
  1. Jan Van Damme
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  2. Kim Bellens
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jan Van Damme .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg Dept. of Education and Special Education, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Monica Rosén

  2. Dept. of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg , Gothenburg, Sweden

    Kajsa Yang Hansen

  3. Dept. of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg Dept. of Education and Special Education, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Ulrika Wolff

Appendix: The Mean of Some Variables Per Country

Appendix: The Mean of Some Variables Per Country

 

HDI

Books

Language at home

2000

2003

2011

2003

2011

M

M

M

M

Armenia

0.65

1.98

1.95

1.94

1.79

Australia

0.91

2.46

2.30

1.90

1.79

Belgium (Flanders)

0.88

2.00

1.94

1.82

1.71

Chinese Taipei

0.59

1.90

1.94

1.72

1.49

England

0.84

2.25

2.04

1.94

1.78

Hong Kong

0.82

1.45

1.80

1.71

1.63

Hungary

0.79

2.16

2.08

1.99

1.97

Iran

0.65

1.15

1.18

1.52

1.83

Italy

0.83

1.62

1.77

1.89

1.76

Japan

0.88

1.77

1.76

1.98

1.85

Lithuania

0.76

1.74

1.63

1.97

1.83

Netherlands

0.89

2.10

1.91

1.92

1.80

New Zealand

0.89

2.21

2.15

1.87

1.71

Norway

0.92

2.26

2.23

1.92

1.79

Singapore

0.83

1.91

2.05

1.38

1.26

Tunisia

0.64

1.08

1.20

1.39

0.79

United States

0.91

1.94

1.87

1.83

1.83

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Van Damme, J., Bellens, K. (2017). Countries Strive Towards More Quality and Equity in Education: Do They Show Success or Failure? Evidence from TIMSS 2003 and 2011, for Grade 4. In: Rosén, M., Yang Hansen, K., Wolff, U. (eds) Cognitive Abilities and Educational Outcomes. Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43473-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43473-5_7

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