This paper examines and builds on an earlier contribution to this journal focusing on private supplementary tutoring -- widely known as shadow education -- in Francophone West and Central Africa. Drawing on wider literature about research methods in this domain, it examines the basis for the numerical estimates presented in the original article…

This study examines the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), one of the most influential tools of global education reform discourses in the 21st century. The study focuses on the governing role of statistical data in the discourse constructed by the international comparative assessment, referring to the global educational…

Reports of international large-scale assessments tend to evaluate and compare education system performance based on absolute scores. And policymakers refer to high-performing and economically prosperous education systems to enhance their own systemic features. But socioeconomic differences between systems compromise the plausibility of those…

Key Data on Education in Europe 2012 is a Eurydice flagship publication tracing the main developments of European education systems over the last decade. The report combines statistical data with qualitative information to describe the organisation, management and functioning of 37 European education systems from pre-primary to higher education.…

Education is an area that is highly devolved in the UK, and the fact that all four constituent countries have pursued very different policies in the recent past provides a good testing ground to undertake a comparative review of the merits or otherwise of the education reforms that have taken place. There is, of course, an important policy context…

This paper provides evidence on the sources of differences in inequality in educational scores and their evolution over time in four European countries. Using Programme for International Student Assessment data from the 2000 and the 2006 waves, the paper shows that inequality decreased in Germany and Spain (two "decentralised" schooling…

Mondrian is state-of-the-art statistical data visualization software featuring modern interactive visualization techniques for a wide range of data types. This article reviews the capabilities, functionality, and interactive properties of this software package. Key features of Mondrian are illustrated with data from the Programme for International…

Since its inception, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has been committed to the practice of documenting its statistical methods for its customers and of seeking to avoid misinterpretation of its published data. The reason for this policy is to assure customers that proper statistical standards and techniques have been observed,…

This study is a contribution from the Eurydice Network to the debate on school failure and early school leaving within the framework of the European Commission's policy on education and training. In all education systems, in one form or another, pupil progress is assessed throughout the school year and various measures are put in place to support…

The OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) constitute two of the largest ongoing international student and teacher surveys presently underway. Data generated from these surveys offer researchers and policy-makers opportunities to identify particular educational…

The 2012 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 48th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

The paper aims to contribute to the assessment of the contextual relevance of various educational policies through an analysis of three aspects of the performance profiles of European countries: participation, the quality of learning outcomes and the equity of learning outcomes. Comparative analysis of international student achievement assessment…

In Spain as in other European countries, policies on school choice have been implemented in tandem with the channelling of public resources into private education. Given the application of public money to private schooling, the primary objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which Spanish families enjoy equality in their ability to…

"Science and Engineering Indicators" (SEI) is first and foremost a volume of record comprising the major high-quality quantitative data on the U.S. and international science and engineering enterprise. SEI is factual and policy neutral. It does not offer policy options, and it does not make policy recommendations. SEI employs a variety…

This paper aims to analyze the effects of certain characteristics of the educational systems on the social composition of schools. After accounting for significant effects of schools' social composition on student outcomes (this is confirmed on the basis of a multilevel analysis), we explore the impacts of distinct components of what we name…