Achievement In Primary School Research Articles

Academic Achievement in Primary School in Offspring Born to Mothers With Type 1 Diabetes (the EPICOM Study): A Register-Based Prospective Cohort Study.

This study examined the effect of maternal pregestational type 1 diabetes on offspring primary school performance. We performed a prospective combined clinical and register-based cohort study comparing primary school performance in offspring (n = 707) of women with pregestational type 1 diabetes with matched control offspring (n = 60,341). We also examined the association between HbA1c levels during pregnancy and later school performance among offspring born to women with pregestational type 1 diabetes. Offspring of mothers with pregestational type 1 diabetes obtained similar school grades as control offspring when finishing primary school (regression coefficient [β] = -0.13; 95% CI = -0.30 to 0.03; P = 0.12). Adjusting for parental education also resulted in an insignificant difference between the two groups (β = -0.07; 95% CI = -0.23 to 0.09; P = 0.37). Among offspring of women with type 1 diabetes, increasing maternal HbA1c pregestationally and throughout the pregnancy was associated with lower average school grades. Offspring born to mothers with good glycemic control in the third trimester obtained higher average school grades compared with control offspring. The opposite applied to offspring born to mothers with inadequate glycemic control, who obtained significantly lower average school grades compared with control offspring. Offspring of mothers with pregestational type 1 diabetes obtained similar average grades when finishing primary school compared with matched control offspring. Among offspring of women with type 1 diabetes, we found a consistent negative association between maternal HbA1c in pregnancy and primary school grades. However, whether this association reflects a direct causal influence of intrauterine hyperglycemia is uncertain.

School Sector Differences in Student Achievement in Australian Primary and Secondary Schools: A Longitudinal Analysis

This article examines school sector differences in student performance Years 3, 5, and 7 in numeracy, reading, writing, spelling and grammar using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and the national testing program (NAPLAN). At each of the 3 Year levels, there are sizable school sector differences with students from independent schools exhibiting the substantially higher mean scores than Catholic and government school students. However, school sector differences in Years 3 and 5 largely disappear when taking into account students’ socioeconomic position and especially prior ability. In Year 7, there is evidence of value added effects for attending an independent school in numeracy, reading and writing but the effect sizes are quite small (around 0.10). Fixed effects analyses confirm small significant value-added effects for attending independent schools for numeracy and reading.1

The Effect of Teacher Gender on Student Achievement in Primary School

Using data from a randomized experiment, we find that having a female teacher lowers the math test scores of female primary school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Moreover, we do not find any effect of having a female teacher on male students’ test scores (math or reading) or female students’ reading test scores, which seems to rule out explanations pertaining to the unobserved quality differences between male and female teachers. Finally, this negative effect seems to persist only for female students who were assigned to a female teacher with a limited math background.

PROTOCOL: Small Class Sizes for Improving Student Achievement in Primary and Secondary Schools: A Systematic Review

PROTOCOL: Small Class Sizes for Improving Student Achievement in Primary and Secondary Schools: A Systematic Review

Attendance in Primary School: Factors and Consequences

This report aims to understand attendance patterns in primary school, and examines the effects of students’ low attendance on their academic achievement (numeracy and reading) in primary school by addressing the following research questions: 1. To what extent is school attendance in the primary years influenced by child, family and school characteristics? 2. Do the factors associated with school attendance vary as children get older and become more independent? 3. Do the factors associated with non-attendance differ for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds (i.e. those whose parents do and do not receive income support)? 4. Is a child’s academic achievement influenced by prior attendance in primary school — and if so, to what extent? 5. Are there any characteristics of family and/or school that offset the effects of non-attendance on academic achievement? 6. Do the effects of absence on academic achievement differ for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds (i.e. those whose parents do and do not receive income support)? The analyses make use of data from the first four waves of Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to examine the differences in attendance rate at different ages. In addition, they use data from the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) to examine the academic achievement of children with different attendance patterns. The study includes children aged from 4-5 to 10-11 years old.

Gender gaps in primary school achievement: A decomposition into endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors

In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender differences in endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors. This descriptive analysis is a thought experiment in which we show the consequences for school performance if girls and boys had similar resources and took similar advantage of these resources. Our findings indicate that gender differences in resources with respect to social and instrumental skills and need for achievement can explain part of the differences in performance. Boys seem to be better equipped with these resources. Additionally, boys and girls employ their skills differently. Girls take more advantage of their IQ than boys. Yet, the largest part of this parameter effect is left unexplained by IQ and non-cognitive factors.

Innovative learning and developments in motivation and achievement in upper primary school

Although previous research has shown the potential of innovative learning for enhancing motivation and learning outcomes, further understanding is needed on which aspects of IL are most effective and whether these are equally motivating for different types of students. The present study investigated how developments in students’ motivation and achievement related to different aspects of innovative learning (i.e. authentic learning, collaborative learning and focusing on self-regulation), and whether these relations varied by students’ background characteristics. A sample of 722 grade five students from the Netherlands (average age 11 years old) and their teachers completed questionnaires during four measurements from grade five to grade six. Autoregression analyses were performed. Results showed both positive and negative relations between IL and developments in students’ motivation and achievement, indicating that IL is not a unidimensional construct. Furthermore, the effectiveness of different aspects of IL depended on students’ gender, and social and ethnic background characteristics.

IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING MOTIVATION, SCHOOL ANXIETY, AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE, FOR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF THE FIRST GRADE PUPILS

While intelligence is often posited to be the primary factor contributing to academic achievement, previous studies have identified a wider range of contributing factors, including learning motivation, social competence and school anxiety. However, studies of links between these factors and academic achievement in primary school remain few and far between, even though academic achievement in primary school represents a strong predictor of academic success in later years. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to assess the importance of learning motivation, school anxiety, and social competence for academic achievement of the first grade pupils. Subjects in the present study were 395 first-graders (172 boys and 223 girls) attending 14 large schools in the second largest city of Lithuania. Academic achievement in native language and mathematics was measured by means of a 5-point Likert scale completed by teachers. Learning motivation was assessed using the 14-item Elementary School Motivation Scale developed by Guay et al. (2010). School Anxiety Scale developed by Lyneham et al. (2008) was used to measure school anxiety. Social competence was assessed by the 29-item Primary School Social Competence Questionnaire developed for the present study. Results revealed that of the three variables studied, social competence was the strongest predictor of academic achievement for both boys and girls. There was also a significant negative link between academic achievement and school anxiety. Surprisingly, learning motivation was only weakly linked to academic achievement for boys, while for girls this link had no significance. KEYWORDS: primary school, academic achievement, learning motivation, school anxiety, social competence. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/atee.v1i0.677

Does classroom composition make a difference: effects on developments in motivation, sense of classroom belonging, and achievement in upper primary school

The present study investigated the effects of socioeconomic and ethnic classroom composition on developments in students’ motivation, sense of classroom belonging, and achievement. A sample of 722 primary school students completed questionnaires from 3rd to 6th grade. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that the reading comprehension scores of students with a low socioeconomic status (SES) were lower for each measurement in more socioeconomically disadvantaged classes, whereas these scores were higher in classes with more ethnic minority students. In practice, these effects may often cancel each other out. Furthermore, in classes with a high share of low-SES or ethnic minority students, students of all backgrounds showed more positive developments in motivation. These findings contradict commonly held fears that disadvantaged students “bring down” other students in the classroom. The results furthermore highlight the importance of studying longitudinal developments.

Relations between executive functions and academic achievements in primary school children

Although the relations between executive functions and academic achievement are considered widely proven, due to the methodological limitations of most studies little can be said about the relational importance of various executive functions for achievements in math, reading, and writing. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the role of different executive functions postulated by Miyake et al. (2000) (response inhibition, working memory updating, and mental set shifting) on academic achievements in math, reading, and writing as well as the possible mediation effects of cognitive (verbal and performance intelligence) and behavioral variables (learning-related behavior and hyperactivity). In total, 101 children were tested in the second grade of a primary school on nine simple computer tasks intended to predominantly tap one of the three executive abilities: response inhibition, mental set shifting, and working memory updating. In addition, all participants completed the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). The construct validity of the executive function tasks was established by a confirmatory factor analysis: consistent with other latent variable studies of executive function, the three target executive abilities proved to be separable and moderately correlated with each other (Miyake et al., 2000; Rose et al., 2011). Academic achievement was evaluated by a teacher’s report. The research variables of hyperactivity and learning-related behavior were composed using teachers’ answers to the questions from the Hyperactivity Scale of Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and the parents’ and teachers’ answers to additional questions concerning children’s learning-related behavior. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the structural relations of predictors (latent factors of response inhibition, memory updating, and mental set-shifting), mediators (verbal intelligence, performance intelligence, hyperactivity, and learning-related behavior) and dependent variables (math, reading and writing achievement scores). Executive functions proved to be important predictors of academic achievement in primary school. Working memory updating was directly related to achievements in reading (β = 0.69, p = 0.04) and writing (β = 0.71, p = 0,01). Response inhibition and mental set-shifting were related to math achievement through behavioral mediators: children with a better ability to regulate inappropriate responses showed fewer symptoms of hyperactivity (β = –0.42, p = 0.05), which in turn led to higher achievements in math (β = –0.40, p = 0.001); children with better mental set-shifting demonstrated more appropriate learning-related behaviors (β = 0.49, p = 0.05), while learning-related behaviors also predicted math achievements (β = 0.26, p = 0,04). In contrast, verbal and performance intelligence did not have any significant relation to academic achievements in primary school.

Gender Gaps in Primary School Achievement: A Decomposition into Endowments and Returns to IQ and Non-Cognitive Factors

In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender differences in endowments and returns to IQ and non-cognitive factors. This descriptive analysis is a thought experiment in which we show the consequences for school performance if girls and boys would have similar resources and take similar advantage of these resources. Our findings indicate that gender differences in resources with respect to social and instrumental skills and need for achievement can explain part of the differences in performance. Boys seem to be better equipped with these resources. Additionally, boys and girls employ their skills differently. Girls take more advantage of their IQ than boys. Yet, the largest part of this parameter effect is left unexplained by IQ and non-cognitive factors.

Identifying Students at Risk of School Failure in Luxembourgish Secondary School

If teachers knew in advance whether their students are at risk of school failure, they would have the opportunity to supply these students with additional or special instruction. In Luxembourg, the likelihood of failure in school is particularly high. Taking this result into account, this paper deals with the identification of variables of primary school students that might help predict school failure in Luxembourgish secondary school. Failure was defined as (a) descending from a higher track to a lower track, (b) repeating a class, or (c) showing insufficient achievements in two main subjects. First, we chose variables from a sample of N = 2787 students in Luxembourg for further analyses which were shown to be effective in predicting school failure in past investigations. These variables entailed both information about students’ achievements and their social background. We then examined similarities and differences in these variables between students who failed and those who succeeded. Additionally, logistic regression analyses showed that primary school achievements in mathematics and languages were the strongest predictors of failure in secondary school, followed by students’ age and students’ school-related behaviors. Finally, we could show that the same accuracy of prediction of school failure was obtained when a fast and frugal algorithm, containing only three predictors or less, instead of a linear regression model was used. The findings support the hypothesis that poor academic achievement is one of the strongest predictor of school failure, and that accurate predictions can be made without using complex regression models.

The effect of Teach for America on the distribution of student achievement in primary school: Evidence from a randomized experiment

Using data from a randomized experiment and fixed effect quantile regression (FEQR), we examine the effects of having a TFA teacher on test scores across the entire achievement distribution of primary school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods. While we generally find that TFA teachers neither help nor hurt students in terms of reading test scores, we find positive and statistically significant effects of TFA across the math achievement distribution for the full sample and the effects are fairly uniform. We find a similar distributional effect of TFA within student gender, although the FEQR estimates for female students are two to three times larger than for male students. We also find that there is evidence of heterogeneity in the effects of TFA for Hispanic and black students and for students taught by novice teachers. Finally, we find that the effect of TFA is homogeneous across the math achievement distribution irrespective of certification type.

School mathematics registers in a context of low academic expectations

We investigate the different school mathematical discourses that are made available for students who all share an unfavourable social and economical position and experiences of low achievement in primary school, and who have been streamed into three different ability groups at the very beginning of secondary school. Our investigation is built on the premise that schools distribute different forms of knowledge to different social groups and thus provide different opportunities to develop consciousness. We look at teacher–student interactions as expressions of social structure at the micro-level and as constituents of social structure on the macrolevel. Employing analytic tools from social semiotics, we carried out a register analysis of the school mathematical discourse in each stream. We found systematic differences and linked them to the work of Dowling (1998) on the construction of ability and its implications for social hierarchies. As a result, the upper of the three streams was freed from a discourse of low expectations, while such a discourse was reinforced for the lower stream. Finally, we will discuss our findings in relation to the contemporary debate about the role of mathematics education in social stratification.

Academic achievement of children with and without migration backgrounds in an immersion primary school: A pilot study

This paper had two aims: a) to provide a review of studies investigating how children with migration backgrounds perform in tests examining their skills in the majority language of a country as well as their skills in a 3rd language learnt either in regular language-as-subjects lessons or in bilingual programmes such as those following the immersion approach, and b) to present the results of a pilot study investigating how primary school children with and without migration backgrounds enrolled in a partial immersion programme in Germany performed in tests examining their skills in the ambient language German and in the immersion language English. The review of previous research suggested that compared to children without a migration back-ground, children with a migration background living in Germany often achieve relatively poor results in studies examining their skills in the ambient language German. In studies examining migrant children’s skills in a new language such as English learnt in foreign language classrooms or in a bilingual secondary school setting, students with migrant backgrounds have, on the other hand, sometimes been found to perform equally well as or even better than students without a migration back-ground. However, there is a paucity of studies examining migrant children’s academic achievement in primary schools with bilingual programmes. The pilot study pre-sented here examined children in primary grades 1 to 4 who were enrolled in a partial immersion programme in Germany and who participated in tests examining their cognitive abilities, their literacy skills in the ambient language German and the immersion language English as well as their comprehension of English vocabulary and grammar. The results obtained in the different tests suggest that primary school immersion programmes may not only be suitable for children without, but also for children with migration backgrounds, including children with migration back-grounds whose parents are less inclined to education.

A longitudinal analysis of UK second-generation disadvantaged immigrants

We consider the relative academic achievement in primary school of second-generation immigrant children in the UK. The education progress of these groups of children is of historical interest and is also relevant to the policy debate today, since ethnic minority students in England continue to have lower levels of achievement in primary school, though they go on to catch up with their white counterparts in secondary school. We use rich data for a cohort born in 1970 and find that children born to South Asian or Afro-Caribbean parents have significantly lower levels of cognitive achievement in both mathematics and language in primary school. Our analysis also reveals that the negative impact from being born to South Asian parents decreases during primary school, while the negative effect from being born to Afro-Caribbean parents remains approximately stable. Hence, our evidence shows that even as long ago as the late 1970s, while most ethnic minority groups had lower academic achievement in primary school, some groups of ethnic minority pupils, namely those from South Asia, were showing signs of ‘catch-up’.

When do textbooks matter for achievement? Evidence from African primary schools

Using a within-student analysis, we find no average impact of textbook access (ownership or sharing) on primary school achievement. Instead, it is only for students with high socioeconomic status that one form of textbook access–sharing–has a positive impact.

The Effect of Teach for America on the Distribution of Student Achievement in Primary School: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Using data from a randomized experiment and fixed effect quantile regression (FEQR), we look at the effects of having a TFA teacher on test scores across the entire achievement distribution of primary school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods. While we find that TFA teachers neither help nor hurt students in terms of reading test scores, we find positive and statistically significant effects of TFA over the entire math achievement distribution for the full sample and the effects are fairly uniform. We find a similar effect of TFA across the math test score distribution irrespective of student gender, although the FEQR estimates for female students are two to three times larger than for male students.In addition, we find that there is significant heterogeneity in the effects of TFA for Hispanic and black students and for students taught by novice teachers. Finally, we find that the effect of TFA is homogeneous across the math achievement distribution irrespective of certification type. Taken together, these patterns suggest that allowing highly qualified recent college graduates and mid-career professionals, who in the absence of TFA would not have taught in these disadvantaged neighborhoods, should have a positive influence not just on students at the top of the math achievement distribution but across the entire math achievement distribution.

Peer Effects in Disadvantaged Primary Schools: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

We examine the effect of peer achievement on students' own achievement and teacher performance in primary schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods using data from a well-executed randomized experiment in seven states. Contrary to the existing literature, we find that the average classroom peer achievement adversely influences own student achievement in math and reading in linear-in-means models. Extending our analysis to take into account the potential non-linearity in the peer effects leads to non-negligible differences along the achievement distribution. We test several models of peer effects to further understand their underlying mechanisms. While we find no evidence to support the monotonicity model and little evidence in favor of the ability grouping model, we find stronger evidence to support the frame of reference and the invidious comparison models. Moreover, we also find that higher achieving classes improve teaching performance in math. Finally, using a simple policy experiment we find suggestive evidence that tracking students by ability potentially benefits students who end up in a low achievement class while hurting students in a high achievement class.

Teachers and tests: assessing pupils' reading achievement in primary schools

The purpose of the present study was to examine validity aspects of teachers’ judgements of pupils’ reading skills. Data come from Sweden's participation in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001, for Grades 3 and 4. For pupils at the same achievement levels, as measured by PIRLS 2001 test, teachers’ judgements of pupils’ achievement levels varied from one teacher to another. Moreover, there were significant differences between teachers’ judgements in Grades 3 and 4. Teachers in Grade 3 who had taught their pupils for almost 3 years showed higher correspondence between their judgements and pupil achievement within classrooms than 4th-grade teachers who, typically, had only taught their pupils for approximately 1 semester at the time of the data collection. The results indicate that teachers’ judgements and tests can be useful within classrooms, but that teachers may need external assessments to calibrate judgements over classrooms.