It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

Numeracy and literacy skills have become increasingly important in modern labour markets. The large gender differences that several studies have identified have therefore sparked considerable attention among researchers and policy makers. Little is known about the moment in which such gaps emerge, how they evolve and if their evolution differs…

Problems associated with the environment loom large over the future well-being of young generations. A previous issue of PISA in Focus (PISA in Focus 87) shows that in 2015 many 15-year-old students believed that the future -- their future -- was going to be worse, environmentally, than the present. In particular, only a minority of students…

Recent results of international assessment programs (e.g., PISA) have shown a large difference in high school students' performance between northern and southern Italy. On this basis, it has been argued that the discrepancy reflects differences in average intelligence of the inhabitants of regions and is associated with genetic factors ( and ).…

In this paper, we estimate the effect of pupil's relative age within the first grade of primary school on mathematics and reading test scores at age 15. The main objective is to evaluate the long-term causal effect of relative age in the first grades of primary school on pupil's test in 16 different countries. We use the national rule for…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…