Comparing school performance in Ireland and Spain: an analysis of factors emerging from PISA 2018

Resumen

International organisations such as the OECD have developed large-scale assessment tests in order to assess the attainment of pupils at a given level of education in different OECD member countries and to facilitate comparisons between education systems. One of these large-scale tests is PISA, which targets students aged 15-16 and has been conducted every three years since its first edition in 2000. This paper presents a comparison of the factors associated with school performance in the three basic skills tested by PISA (science, maths and reading literacy) in Ireland and Spain. These factors have been analised by constructing a multilevel model for each of them, differentiating between school variables and student variables. Our sample consisted of the schools of both countries with more than 20 students. In the case of Ireland 155 schools and 5551 students and in the case of Spain 976 schools and 34411 students. The variables associated with the performance of Irish students were: - In maths: socio-economic status of the students in the school, socio-economic status of each student, gender, duration in ECEC, repetition, age, language spoken at home and the number of school changes of the students. - In reading literacy: socio-economic status of students at school level, socio-economic status of each student, gender, repetition, age, being a second-generation immigrant and students' number of school changes. - In science: socio-economic status of students at school level, socio-economic status of each student, repetition, age and second-generation immigrant status. The variables associated with the performance of Spanish students were: - In maths: school size, shortness of teachers in the school, teachers with PhD studies, socio-economic status of each student, gender, repetition, grade and number of school changes. - In Reading literacy: OTT2, school size, shortness of teachers, location of the school, socio-economic status of each student, gender, repetition, grade, age, language spoken at home and number of school changes. - In science: OTT1, school size, shortness of teachers in the school, teachers with PhD studies, socio-economic status of each student, gender, repetition, grade, age, language spoken at home and number of school changes. As we can see, these factors are diverse and we observe a number of similarities between the three competences in each country, but also between them. Each of the variables is related in a different way to achievement, influencing it positively or negatively.