Correlates of Science Achievement in Singapore: A Multilevel Exploration

Abstract

Singapore has been participating in large-scale international student assessments for the last two decades, and the performance of students in Singapore on the various cycles of international student assessments was outstanding. However, there is sparse research on the factors contributing to Singapore students’ sterling performance. The authors, therefore, drawing on data from the fourth cycle of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and employing two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), examined the student and school correlates of science achievement among 15-year-olds in Singapore. At the student level, student background characteristics and student perceptions of school climate were generally associated with science achievement. At the school level, school size and school socioeconomic status were solely linked to science achievement. The final HLM model indicated that the school-level factors accounted for 78 % of the variance in science achievement. However, the student-level factors accounted for only 12 % of the variance in science achievement. Implications of the findings are discussed for educational policy and practice.