In 1983, Heyneman and Loxley stated that in low income countries, school-level factors could account for a greater proportion of variance in student achievement as compared to student-level characteristics. The phenomenon has come to be known as the "HL effect" and signaled the important role of schools in developing countries. This…

It is well established that girls outperform boys in schools, but the available empirical evidence suggests that the determinants of the gender achievement gap are poorly understood. The present paper looks inside families for explanations. Rich data for families with children in the lower secondary school in Norway are used to investigate whether…