Different Aspects of Education and Teaching Systems to Ensure High Achievement for 4th Grade Students and 15-Year-Olds

Abstract

Student high achievement in different countries are the main topic in every Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment’s (PISA), International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), IEA Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) testing cycles. Increasingly relevant for many countries becomes the high achievement for their students in order to be able to provide high quality education and to be able to prepare students for their future studies in high-level competence. The aim of the research is to analyse national education and learning systems, standards and curriculums, teachers’ recruitment, teachers’ induction and the autonomy over classroom activities, including teaching methods teachers use in the classroom, how they plan and prepare lessons, in order to identify possible factors that could affect Latvian learners achievement by comparing countries who have higher student achievement than Latvian students or have the same achievement level or situation in OECD PISA, IEA TIMSS and IEA PIRLS surveys. In the analysis it is taken into account that in Latvia the approach of the competencies in the content of studies is only gradually introduced since 2021, it will be possible to fully compare results of Latvia with high-achieving countries only at the next research cycles.