Reading Literacy in EU Countries: Evidences from PIRLS

Abstract

In this report we used data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 in order to identify the school, class and individual student background factors that explain reading literacy achievement. We aim to identify the factors associated with achievement at different levels of analysis, both at the EU level and at the individual country level using a multilevel model. Additionally, we intend to establish trends in students reading achievement by comparing PIRLS 2006 and PIRLS 2011 cycles. For the data from 2011 we found that our aggregated model explains 37% of the variance in students’ achievement and that the variables with the highest impact on students overall reading score relate to home resources and practices, students attitudes toward reading and pre-reading knowledge. Moreover, the results of the country-level analysis indicate that the variables with the strongest influence on students’ reading performance are the same, despite of the wide variation across countries in terms of their magnitude due to the characteristics of each country. Furthermore, these findings are in line with the previous analysis performed for PIRLS 2006 (Araujo & Costa, 2012). Our results have important policy implications as they show which factors can be addressed by policy measures to improve students achievement. As the Commission’s in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre’s mission is to provide EU policies with independent, evidence-based scientific and technical support throughout the whole policy cycle. Working in close cooperation with policy Directorates-General, the JRC addresses key societal challenges while stimulating innovation through developing new standards, methods and tools, and sharing and transferring its know-how to the Member States and international community. Key policy areas include: environment and climate change; energy and transport; agriculture and food security; health and consumer protection; information society and digital agenda; safety and security including nuclear; all supported through a cross-cutting and multi- disciplinary approach. L B -N A -2 6 3 3 7 -E N -N