The digital gender divide is one of the most critical issues in education today. Digital gender gaps can exist in students' access to and use of ICT, attitudes toward technology, and digital knowledge and skills. However, previous research has primarily examined these divides in isolation and largely ignored their interdependencies. Using student…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education delivery around the world, with school closures affecting over 1.6 billion students worldwide. In India, schools were closed for over 18 months, affecting 248 million students. This study estimates the effect of the pandemic on adolescent literacy and schooling outcomes in India. We used data from the…

Since a nationwide reform of pre-primary education in 2010, Ethiopia has experienced a massive expansion of pre-primary enrolment that increased tenfold in six years. Our paper aims to assess the distribution of early literacy outcomes between children who attended preschool and those who did not and explore how that distribution has changed…

Why do certain students thrive when facing adversity while others languish? In the mindset theory, growth mindset is opposed to fixed mindset, and could explain why some people fulfil their potential and others do not. With the COVID pandemic dragging on, having a growth mindset may be even more critical. For students who are able to set their own…

This paper uses data from 4745 first-year accountancy students of a large South African university, for a 7-year period (2011-2017), to understand how certain skills endowments and individual attributes have changed in their contributions to student's performance over time. To do so, the variance associated with an external shock to the learning…

This report supplements Jerrim (2012) where John Jerrim investigated the link between family background and children's reading tests across a series of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Previous studies for the Sutton Trust (Smithers 2012) have suggested that policy and provision for the highly able in…

The "achievement gap"--the term typically used to refer to differences in pupil attainment associated with social class, ethnicity and gender--remains an enduring obstacle to government goals of creating a socially just society. This article explores the nature of the achievement gap and some of the mechanisms that serve to perpetuate…

In this paper, we provide a particular critique of policy-making processes related to addressing the gender achievement gap in the Ontario context. The focus is on tracing the effects of a neoliberal regime of accountability in terms of the designation of boys as a disadvantaged group alongside other minority groups who have historically faced…

This Report Card presents an overview of inequalities in child well-being in 41 countries of the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It focuses on 'bottom-end inequality' -- the gap between children at the bottom and those in the middle -- and addresses the question 'how far behind are…

This study explores the educational achievement of immigrant youth in Spain employing data from 3 waves of the Longitudinal Study of Families and Childhood (Panel de Families i Infancia), a representative sample of children in Catalonia first interviewed at ages 13-16 in 2006 (N = 2,710). Results suggest consistent disadvantage in achievement…

As secondary students' interest in science is decreasing, schools are faced with the challenging task of providing adequate instruction to engage students--and more particularly the disadvantaged students--to learn science and improve their science inquiry skills. In this respect, the integration of Web-based collaborative inquiry can be seen as a…

The dominant discourse regarding Black males in America is that they are less academically successful than European American males and Black females. Similarly, Black males in the Bahamas are described as less successful than Black Bahamian females. School Counselors are in a unique position to alter the trajectory of success for Black males if…

In this follow-up to "Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? Performance Trends of Top Students," the academic growth of 35,000 elementary and middle school students in 31 states, all of them high achievers within their own schools, were followed over a three-year period. Their achievement scores were matched with their associated…

This report focuses on the extent to which students who are academically far off track in fourth or eighth grade in Kentucky catch up by eighth or eleventh grade. We studied three recent cohorts of Kentucky students whose eighth-grade ACT Explore® scores were more than one standard deviation below the ACT Explore benchmark scores associated with…

Across the globe, education is essential to social mobility, bettering the lives of individuals and moving whole nations from poverty to affluence. Yet educational opportunity and the upward mobility it can bring are not equally available to everyone. In rich and poor nations alike, the disadvantaged--defined by gender and geography, race and…