How do natural disasters affect academic performance? Despite numerous studies having been conducted after the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the academic impacts of this tragic event have rarely been explored. Applying the OLS estimation on the microdata collected through a questionnaire survey among 189 secondary school students of two secondary schools…

The 2017 NAPLAN results were followed by political and media attention focusing on a decline in achievement in writing. This article analyses NAPLAN data to identify the locus of the decline. Contrary to media reports in which it was suggested Year 3 was problematic, the article systematically compares NAPLAN results between 2011 and 2017 to…

Declines in the scores of Australian 15-year-old students from the Programme for International Student Assessment are a matter of policy interest. Some of the declines may have resulted from shifts in the age-grade distributions of students in the Programme for International Student Assessment samples. We use multiple regression methods to model…

In this Forum article, Komatsu and Rappleye report that the results of PISA 2015 released December 2016 revealed a major oddity: reading scores in several of the "leading" East Asian countries had apparently plummeted. An interesting point is that Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong are among the most advanced technological societies in…

The study aimed at identifying the reasons behind the Jordanian students' drop of performance in the TIMSS 2015 from the point of view of their teachers. Survey method was used because teachers are the most able to decide upon the reasons of this fall and so a questionnaire was designed to recognize their point of view concerning the reasons of…

University class structure is changing. To accommodate working students, programmes are increasing their offerings of long night classes--some lasting as long as six hours. While these long classes may be more convenient for students, they have unintended consequences as a result of cognitive load. Using a panel of 124 students (372 observations)…

In Brazil, the mean of math test scores for students of the fourth grade declined by approximately 0.2 standard deviation in the late 1990s. However, the potential changes in the distribution of scores have never been addressed. It is unclear if the decline was caused by deterioration in student performance levels at the upper and/or lower tails…

If you can believe the daily flood of mass media stories, journal articles, and white papers, the United States is facing a STEM worker crisis. Business leaders and politicians warn that the nation is falling hopelessly behind in the global economic race because our students are unprepared for and uninterested in science, technology, engineering,…

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors perceived to contribute to the decline of students' performance in the Botswana's General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) agriculture results. Ninety-one agriculture examiners were randomly sampled out of 100 teachers who were invited to mark the 2012 end of year examination scripts. A…

The PISA 2009 results for Ireland indicated a large decline in reading literacy scores since PISA 2000 (the largest of 38 countries). The decline in mathematics scores since PISA 2003 was the second largest of 39 countries. In contrast, there was no change in science achievement since PISA 2006. These results prompted detailed investigations into…

This study examined the science self-efficacy beliefs of students at the transition from elementary school (Grade 6) to middle school (Grade 7) and the transition from middle school (Grade 8) to high school (Grade 9). The purpose was to determine whether students' perceived competence is impacted at these important school transitions and if the…

The aim is to describe the development of achievement in compulsory school in the Nordic countries from the 1960s. The study relies on published results concerning literacy and numeracy from the international large-scale assessments between 1964 and 2012. Among others, the following conclusions are drawn: (1) for most countries, a small but…

The major purpose of the study was to investigate factors which contribute to the decline in students' academic performance in junior secondary schools in Botswana since 2010. The study was mainly quantitative and used the positivist inquiry paradigm. The study employed critical theory for its theoretical framework. Questionnaires were used to…

This paper studies a natural experiment due to an unusual change in the college admission policy at a Chinese university, which brought a large number of low-score students into several academic departments in the university. Exploiting large variations in peer characteristics and strong interactions among peer groups, the analysis finds that…

Evidence of deficiencies in basic mathematical skills of beginning undergraduates has been documented worldwide. Many different theories have been set out as to why these declines in mathematical competency levels have occurred over time. One such theory is the widening access to higher education which has resulted in a less mathematically…