The Main Determinants of Moroccan Students' Outcomes

Abstract

The main purpose of the present article is to highlight the major factors affecting Moroccan students’ outcomes in the second year of college (8th grade) and the sixth year of primary school (6th grade) using the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) (2011) databases compiled by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The use of a multilevel approach is appropriate in our case study because it enables us to deal with the hierarchical structure of the data at two levels. The two levels in our case study are the student level and the school level. The method of Multiple imputation by chained equations (MICE) was applied to impute missing values contained in the student background, home, and school data files, and the endogeneity problem that results from the use of multilevel modeling was solved using the Hausman–Taylor instrumental variables estimator. The results show that Moroccan students’ outcomes are impacted by individual as well as contextual characteristics. More precisely, the index “school emphasis on academic success,” which is related to information about the student, parents, teachers, curricula, and educational goals, seems to play a key role in explaining Moroccan students’ academic performance.