Cross-national Variations in Educational Achievement and Child Well-being Dominic Richardson International Society for Child Indicators Inaugural Conference June Allerton Hotel, Chicago, USA

Background  What drives educational achievement?  Youth outcomes in EU statistics  EU child index  UNICEF reports  OECD  CEE / CIS  Merits further investigation

Do children’s relationships matter?  Possibilities of PISA  Greater range of explanatory factors  Coleman’s human and social capital interactions  Develops a child-centered approach  Nine countries (CH, DE, IE, FI, FR, NZ, SE, UK and the US)  RLA  Evidence to show that relationships matter

Child centred social capital ‘The pitfall of the notion of social capital as previously used in relation to children and young people…is that it plays down children’s agency, and overemphasises the influence of parents on children’s lives. It also plays down wider socio- structural influences on children, especially the middle and older age range, in terms of the possibilities for autonomy, participation and decision-making in the environments and institutions in which they are situated, particularly within the education system which is, after all, where children spend a large proportion of their time.’ (Morrow 1999: 760)

Parental human capital indicators (b) interact with an indicator of the strength of the parent and child bond (1) to account for the quality familial relationships on the child’s educational achievement Human And Social Capital Interaction

Do children’s relationships matter?  Possibilities of PISA  Greater range of explanatory factors  Sample and dependent variable  Coleman’s human and social capital interactions  Interaction terms and structural measures  Develops a child-centered approach  Nine countries (CH, DE, IE, FI, FR, NZ, SE, UK and the US)  Evidence to show that relationships matter

YES! They do.

Interaction effects are shown (UK)…  Relationship (bond) main effects are retained for:  Pupil teacher bond  Parental institutional bond  Teacher peer group bond  Significant interaction terms are  Parental cultural possession  Student teacher ratio  Highest parental ISEI  Structural measures are insignificant

And these things don’t matter so much…  Parental highest education qualification*  Number of home educational resources*  Parental wealth items in the home*  Shortages of support/teaching staff  Proportions of fully certified teachers  Poor teaching facilities  Quality of the learning environment  Achievement of the peer group*

However…  Models only explained between 36 to 46 percent of the variation  Unexplained country level variations impact on individual outcomes for children in terms of educational achievement (CH, DE, FR, NZ, SE, and the US).  What is it about living in these countries?  Economic and social context  Policies and delivery  Other CWB factors (UNICEF / EU 25)

Parameter Estimates and significance levels for unobserved country variation

However…  Models only explained between 36 to 46 percent of the variation  Unexplained country level variations impact on individual outcomes for children in terms of educational achievement (CH, DE, FR, NZ, SE, and the US).  What is it about living in these countries?  Economic and social context  Policies and delivery  Other CWB factors (UNICEF / EU 25)

Economic context (0.67**)

Social context (-0.66**)

Policy (Expenditure) (0.44**)

Private school enrolment

Risk behaviour (-0.69**)

Child Mortality

Child relationships

Deprivation (Educational items) (0.82**)

Subjective well-being

Regression results

Conclusions  Personal, home and family attributes impact more on EA than teacher and institutional factors  Using interaction terms can uncover hidden associations  For some countries secondary social networks matter (FR, NZ and the US)  Independently strengths of relationship bonds matter  Child well-being indicators at the national level inform what drives achievement  Both micro and macro analysis is required to fully understand variation in achievement  Context vs. Effort?

Cross-national Variations in Educational Achievement and Child Well-being International Society for Child Indicators Inaugural Conference June Allerton Hotel, Chicago, USA

Deprivation

More deprivation is reported by children in low achieving countries