Recent years have seen an increased focus on school accountability in Ireland and calls for greater use to be made of student achievement data for monitoring student outcomes. In this paper, it is argued that existing data-sets in Ireland offer limited potential for the value-added modelling approaches used for accountability purposes in many…

As expectations of the economic impact of educational attainment are soaring (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2009) and conjectures about successful national educational reforms (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010) are welcomed by educational policy-makers in many countries, a careful assessment of the empirical evidence for these kinds of claims is…

In its analysis of data it collected in 2006, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) used a variety of statistical methods to arrive at the 'key findings' that school autonomy, school competition and the public posting of student achievement data were…

Not much is known about the ways in which assessment data have actually been used in education policy to date. Understanding the role of assessments in informing system-level decision-making is a first step towards helping stakeholders improve the design and usefulness of assessments. Moreover, this understanding can help to further discussions…

This report reviews the conceptual debates and existing data sources that relate to three ambiguous and controversial targets included in the post-2015 education framework: Relevant Learning Outcomes; Knowledge, Skills, Values, and Attitudes (for education for global citizenship and sustainable development); and Teachers and Safe, Inclusive, and…