Cross-national Variations in Educational Achievement and Child Well-being

Dominic Richardson

International Society for Child IndicatorsInaugural Conference

June 26-28 2007Allerton Hotel, Chicago, USA

Background

What drives educational achievement? Youth outcomes in EU statistics EU child index UNICEF reports

OECD CEE / CIS

Merits further investigation

Do children’s relationships matter?

Possibilities of PISA Greater range of explanatory factors

Coleman’s human and social capital interactions

Develops a child-centered approach Nine countries (CH, DE, IE, FI, FR, NZ, SE,

UK and the US) RLA Evidence to show that relationships matter

Child centred social capital

‘The pitfall of the notion of social capital as previously used in relation to children and young people…is that it plays down children’s agency, and overemphasises the influence of parents on children’s lives. It also plays down wider socio-structural influences on children, especially the middle and older age range, in terms of the possibilities for autonomy, participation and decision-making in the environments and institutions in which they are situated, particularly within the education system which is, after all, where children spend a large proportion of their time.’ (Morrow 1999: 760)

Parental human capital indicators (b) interact with an indicator of the strength of the parent and child bond (1) to account for the quality familial relationships on the child’s educational achievement

Human And Social Capital Interaction

Do children’s relationships matter?

Possibilities of PISA Greater range of explanatory factors Sample and dependent variable

Coleman’s human and social capital interactions Interaction terms and structural measures

Develops a child-centered approach Nine countries (CH, DE, IE, FI, FR, NZ, SE,

UK and the US) Evidence to show that relationships matter

YES! They do.

Interaction effects are shown (UK)…

Relationship (bond) main effects are retained for: Pupil teacher bond Parental institutional bond Teacher peer group bond

Significant interaction terms are Parental cultural possession Student teacher ratio Highest parental ISEI

Structural measures are insignificant

And these things don’t matter so much…

Parental highest education qualification* Number of home educational resources* Parental wealth items in the home*

Shortages of support/teaching staff Proportions of fully certified teachers Poor teaching facilities Quality of the learning environment

Achievement of the peer group*

However…

Models only explained between 36 to 46 percent of the variation

Unexplained country level variations impact on individual outcomes for children in terms of educational achievement (CH, DE, FR, NZ, SE, and the US).

What is it about living in these countries? Economic and social context Policies and delivery Other CWB factors (UNICEF / EU 25)

Parameter Estimates and significance levels for unobserved country variation

However…

Models only explained between 36 to 46 percent of the variation

Unexplained country level variations impact on individual outcomes for children in terms of educational achievement (CH, DE, FR, NZ, SE, and the US).

What is it about living in these countries? Economic and social context Policies and delivery Other CWB factors (UNICEF / EU 25)

Economic context (0.67**)

Social context (-0.66**)

Policy (Expenditure) (0.44**)

Private school enrolment

Risk behaviour (-0.69**)

Child Mortality

Child relationships

Deprivation (Educational items) (0.82**)

Subjective well-being

Regression results

Conclusions

Personal, home and family attributes impact more on EA than teacher and institutional factors

Using interaction terms can uncover hidden associations

For some countries secondary social networks matter (FR, NZ and the US)

Independently strengths of relationship bonds matter Child well-being indicators at the national level

inform what drives achievement Both micro and macro analysis is required to fully

understand variation in achievement Context vs. Effort?

Cross-national Variations in Educational Achievement and Child Well-being

Dominic.Richardson@OECD.org

International Society for Child IndicatorsInaugural Conference

June 26-28 2007Allerton Hotel, Chicago, USA

Deprivation

More deprivation is reported by children in low achieving countries