Global Data Set on Education Quality (1965-2015)
This paper presents the largest globally comparable panel database of education quality. The database includes 163 countries and regions over 1965-2015. The globally comparable achievement outcomes were constructed by linking standardized, psychome...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/706141516721172989/Global-data-set-on-education-quality-1965-2015 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29281 |
| Summary: | This paper presents the largest globally
comparable panel database of education quality. The database
includes 163 countries and regions over 1965-2015. The
globally comparable achievement outcomes were constructed by
linking standardized, psychometrically-robust international
and regional achievement tests. The paper contributes to the
literature in the following ways: (1) it is the largest and
most current globally comparable data set, covering more
than 90 percent of the global population; (2) the data set
includes 100 developing areas and the most developing
countries included in such a data set to date -- the
countries that have the most to gain from the potential
benefits of a high-quality education; (3) the data set
contains credible measures of globally comparable
achievement distributions as well as mean scores; (4) the
data set uses multiple methods to link assessments,
including mean and percentile linking methods, thus
enhancing the robustness of the data set; (5) the data set
includes the standard errors for the estimates, enabling
explicit quantification of the degree of reliability of each
estimate; and (6) the data set can be disaggregated across
gender, socioeconomic status, rural/urban, language, and
immigration status, thus enabling greater precision and
equity analysis. A first analysis of the data set reveals a
few important trends: learning outcomes in developing
countries are often clustered at the bottom of the global
scale; although variation in performance is high in
developing countries, the top performers still often perform
worse than the bottom performers in developed countries;
gender gaps are relatively small, with high variation in the
direction of the gap; and distributions reveal meaningfully
different trends than mean scores, with less than 50 percent
of students reaching the global minimum threshold of
proficiency in developing countries relative to 86 percent
in developed countries. The paper also finds a positive and
significant association between educational achievement and
economic growth. The data set can be used to benchmark
global progress on education quality, as well as to uncover
potential drivers of education quality, growth, and development. |
|---|