Dutch secondary education is a multi-tiered system, and many students are placed in a single track in the first year (seventh grade) of secondary education. As part of the placement procedure, all sixth-grade students take an end of primary school test. Although these standardised attainment tests (SATs) are considered high-stakes tests, the…

This study examines how Vietnamese high school leaders interpreted and implemented policy changes of the Vietnamese National High School Examination--a nationally standardized exam that determines whether students may graduate from high school and attend post-secondary education. The research found that at the national level, the policy is highly…

This report is focused on the uptake of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) subjects in England in 2023. Uptake in a GCSE subject is defined as the number or percentage of students at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4) taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE). The…

Dialogue, listening, and compromise are essential elements of living in a democracy. In a highly partisan time, is it possible to reestablish common ground when it comes to how best to educate our children in and for democracy? Authors Brendan Sheran, Ashley Carey, Jack Schneider, Rebecca Woodland, and Kathryn McDermott, who are affiliated with…

This research investigates the impact of class size on student performance in Azerbaijani public secondary schools, utilizing State Examination Center (SEC) final exam scores as a key indicator. Data from the Ministry of Science and Education is analyzed, covering approximately 80,000 9th and 11th-grade students in 4,400 schools. The primary…

Assessment is often described as the tail that wags the curriculum dog. Curriculum has featured more prominently than assessment in Irish scholarship. Drawing on relevant policy documents and interviews with senior National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) and State Examinations Commission (SEC) officers, and relevant documentation,…

Secondary Checkpoint assessments are taken by students at the end of the Cambridge Lower Secondary programme (aged 14) in countries around the world. Many students continue with Cambridge after this and take IGCSE exams two years later. Given that there is a high level of coherence between the curricula in the two stages, performance in Secondary…

This study examines the relationship between two secondary End of Course (EOC) exams, the Biology EOC and the English I EOC exams, and their impact on Emergent Bilingual (EB) students in a small district in South Texas. This study is a mixed methods study which uses both quantitative and qualitative data to answer three research questions: (a)…

The Black Lives Matter movement has increased attention paid to whiteness and education. This paper contributes to this attention by investigating epistemologies of Geography and their enactment in two 'multicultural' schools. Through textual analysis, lesson observations and interviews with GCSE Geography students and teachers, I inquire into the…

In England, GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) qualifications offered to students aged 14-16 were recently reformed. For mathematics specifically, the new GCSE aimed to be more demanding, provide greater challenge for the most able students, and support progression to post-16 mathematics. However, there have been concerns that the…

This paper describes the Berlin "Abitur" examination in the twentieth century and its written documentation in files. By the late nineteenth century, the "Abitur" examination was fully established in Prussia and with it a graduation certificate that was obligatory for university entrance. Thus, the "Abitur"…

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) has been for the last 35 years the most common qualification by which students' attainment at age 16 has been measured. The range and balance of processes by which the GCSEs' programmes of study have been assessed have varied over the decades, to include…

This paper addresses the question of how classroom-based peer assessment practices can be improved in relation to student interpretations of subjective assessment criteria. To achieve this, this research study considers the possible pedagogic benefits and implications of using a comparative judgement (CJ) approach to the peer assessment of GCSE…

The practice-based research focus of this dissertation was the under preparedness of Liberian secondary school students for the newly introduced school leavers' external examinations and tertiary education. The problem addressed by this qualitative exploratory case study was that the successive decimation of the Liberian educational system…

The prevalence of private supplementary tutoring (i.e. shadow education) is growing, particularly in nations with selective school exams. The hypothesis that tutoring attendance rises as pressure to perform increases has not yet been tested. Therefore, our research question is: does the likelihood of attending shadow education increase with an…