Global university rankings influence students' choices and higher education policies throughout the world. When rankers not only evaluate universities but also provide them with consulting, analytics, or advertising services rankers are vulnerable to conflicts of interest that may potentially distort their rankings. The paper assesses the impact…

Within the framework of the revised taxonomy of educational objectives created by Anderson and Krathwohl, this study attempted to describe the design and examine the learning outcomes of an intervention focused on the development of higher order thinking at an elementary education setting. A class of 21 sixth graders participated in the project,…

Within the global higher education structure, many nations have followed various strategies to become one of popular destinations for international students. Similarly, employing national strategy focusing on internationalisation, Turkey achieved to become an emerging regional hub as the tenth most popular destination for international students.…

This article examines whether the way that PISA models item outcomes in mathematics affects the validity of its country rankings. As an alternative to PISA methodology, a two-parameter logistic model is applied to PISA mathematics item data from Italy and Spain for the year 2009. In the estimation procedure, item difficulty and dispersion…

This paper explores the development of the "hensachi" system in Japanese education from the 1960s when it first appeared as a "de facto" measure for scholastic achievement. Unlike absolute scoring systems (such as A-level grades) "hensachi" gave an indication of the probability of getting a place on a particular…

There are quite a few challenges in the development of an automated writing placement model for non-native English learners, among them the fact that exams that encompass the full range of language proficiency exhibited at different stages of learning are hard to design. However, acquisition of appropriate training data that are relevant to the…

With increasing competition for postgraduate research scholarships, awarding processes demand attention and scrutiny. We examine inter-rater reliability for two prestigious New Zealand scholarships, the Shirtcliffe Fellowship and the Gordon Watson Scholarship. For each scholarship, five assessors (three academic; two non-academic) independently…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the application of quality management systems (QMS) based on international standards of quality in education (ISO 9001:2008) and ascertain the influence of this quality model on primary and secondary schools in Spain. Design/methodology/approach: The study was conducted in 26 publicly funded,…

The results of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement from 2010 to 2013 have shown a downward trend in ninth graders' science average achievement scores from 2011 to 2013. The percentage of students in the Advanced level decreased dramatically from 19.95% in 2010 to 11.48% in 2013, while the percentage of students in the Basic level…

Since 1992, the UK Government has published so-called "school league tables" summarising the average General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) "attainment" and "progress" made by pupils in each state-funded secondary school in England. While the headline measure of school attainment has remained the percentage…

This study investigated a decade of candidates' performances in NECO-SSCE mathematics in NIGERIA. A total of 9266459 valid results were collated for the study and analyzed for zones in the country. Already validated results of NECO for 2000 to 2009 were used for the study. Three research questions guided the conduct of the study. Results showed…

Our model uses a complex quality assessment method of academic training of graduates. We have used a synthesized model, which is based on both positive and negative experience and uses qualimetric approach in quality assessment. The complex factor of the graduate's competency is a sum of scores for knowledge, skills and expertise in subjects that…

Schooling can produce both cognitive and non-cognitive skills, both of which are important determinants of adult outcomes. Using very rich data from a UK birth cohort study, I estimate teacher value added (VA) models for both pupils' test scores and non-cognitive skills. I show that teachers are equally important in the determination of pupils'…

This paper reports how the context in which a mathematics item is embedded impacts on students' performance. The performance of Year 10 students on four PISA items was compared with performance on variants with more familiar contexts. Performance was not better when they solved items with more familiar contexts but there was some evidence that…

Two key measures to determine the quality of higher education are the performance of students and the accreditation of a programme's quality. We analyse the difference in the distributions of the student's scores in a standardised test of economics knowledge between accredited and non-accredited undergraduate economics programmes in a…