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This paper exploits the sharp escalation of violence in Colombia in the 1980s associated with the emergence of drug cartels to provide novel evidence on the long-run effects of violence exposure throughout the life-course, on children's educational attainment and academic achievement using administrative data. I find that, a higher homicide rate in early-childhood is associated with a higher probability of school dropout and conditional on completing high school, lower scores on a national end-of-high school exam. Results are robust to several falsification tests, and analyses of potential sources of selection bias. I provide supportive evidence that changes in fetal, child, and adolescent health outcomes are important potential mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the case for a focus on place-based drivers of inequalities in educational attainment among secondary school students in Scotland. Using desk-based sources, it provides an account of the post-2015 policy episode around improving educational attainment among children from disadvantaged areas. This started with the Scottish Government claiming that its 'defining mission' was to 'close the gap' but the place-based focus of policy was soon dissipated and the legislation that intended to be the flagship of reform was shelved. The paper shows that international evidence prompts a need for the impact of disadvantage based on place to be factored into approaches to schooling and provides a regretful account of its insecure traction in Scottish policy. It argues that a serious weakness of the case for place in Scotland is the underlying evidence base and concludes by suggesting how existing data sources could be used more effectively and by outlining some alternative policy approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the notion that quantitative data – as a numeric truth – exist independent of a nation's political and racial landscape. Utilising large-scale national attainment data, the analysis challenges the belief that 'White working class' children in England, especially boys, are 'the new oppressed' – as a former equality adviser has publicly claimed. The analysis applies Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or 'QuantCrit', an emerging quantitative sub-field of Critical Race Theory in education. The paper argues that far from being 'oppressed', White boys continue to enjoy achievement advantages over numerous minoritised groups; especially their peers of Black Caribbean ethnic origin. Additionally, the analysis uniquely exposes racialised trends of 'equivalency' in core subject qualifications, whereby minority ethnic children are over-represented in certain lower-status qualifications that are counted as equivalent in education statistics but not in the real world labour market. The analysis concludes that knowing misrepresentations of quantitative data are at the heart of an institutional process through which race and racism are produced, legitimised and perpetuated in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 300 natural disasters affected more than 140 million people in 2014 (Guha-Sapir, Below, and Hoyois 2016). Little is known about the impact of natural disasters on student achievement, an important input into later growth and development. This paper examines the impact of severe flooding on student achievement. By using a difference-in-differences strategy, I exploit the severe flooding in Thailand in 2011 as a natural experiment to measure its effect on the national examination, the O-net. I combine the school-level O-net examination scores from the National Institute of Educational Test Service (NIETS) with school specific data from the Ministry of Education for the academic year 2006-2013. The variation in the impact of the severe flooding allows me to estimate the impact of the flood on the O-net examination scores, a proxy for student academic achievement. The estimates suggest that the flood had a negative and significant effect on all test scores for grade 6, except for social studies. In addition, for grade 9 the flood had a negative and significant effect on all test scores. But, for grade 12 the flood had no significant effect on test scores, except for social studies. The absolute sizes of the change in test score as a result of the flood range from 0.03 to 0.11 standard deviations, depending on the subject and level. My work provides the first empirical evidence of the adverse impact of severe flooding on student achievement. My results suggest that additional support is needed to lower the adverse impact of severe flooding on highstakes examinations like the O-net examination, because researchers found that a decrease in test scores can lead to lower educational attainment and earnings (Ebenstein, Lavy, and Roth 2016). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have demonstrated the existence of simple, unidimensional socioeconomic gradients in body mass index (BMI). However, in the present paper we move beyond such traditional analyses by simultaneously considering multiple demographic and socioeconomic dimensions. Using the Spanish National Health Survey 2011–2012, we apply intersectionality theory and multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy (MAIHDA) to analyze 14,190 adults nested within 108 intersectional strata defined by combining categories of gender, age, income, educational achievement and living situation. We develop two multilevel models to obtain information on stratum-specific BMI averages and the degree of clustering of BMI within strata expressed by the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). The first model is a simple variance components analysis that provides a detailed mapping of the BMI disparities in the population and measures the accuracy of stratum membership to predict individual BMI. The second model includes the variables used to define the intersectional strata as a way to identify stratum-specific interactions. The first model suggests moderate but meaningful clustering of individual BMI within the intersectional strata (ICC = 12.4%). Compared with the population average (BMI = 26.07 Kg/m2), the stratum of cohabiting 18-35-year-old females with medium income and high education presents the lowest BMI (-3.7 Kg/m2), while cohabiting 36-64-year-old females with low income and low education show the highest BMI (+2.6 Kg/m2). In the second model, the ICC falls to 1.9%, suggesting the existence of only very small stratum specific interaction effects. We confirm the existence of a socioeconomic gradient in BMI. Compared with traditional analyses, the intersectional MAIHDA approach provides a better mapping of socioeconomic and demographic inequalities in BMI. Because of the moderate clustering, public health policies aiming to reduce BMI in Spain should not solely focus on the intersectional strata with the highest BMI, but should also consider whole population polices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effect of school closure in the Chilean market-oriented educational system. Between 2002 and 2011 the system exhibited a large turnover: 1282 schools closed -roughly one-tenth of the current stock- and 2350 new schools entered, mostly private-voucher schools. We use a large panel of administrative data, which contains individual students’ academic achievement and socio-demographic characteristics, to estimate some of the potential educational costs of this dynamics. We identify a causal effect of school closures on school dropouts and grade retention. School closure increases the probability of high-school dropout between 49 and 68% (1.8 and 2.5 percentage points). Also, school exit implies between 3.9 and 4.4 percentage points increase in the probability of grade retention in fifth grade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper estimates the effect of students’ position in the classroom register on their academic performance. We use a unique dataset from Poland which contains information on the academic outcomes of students in the humanities, science and mathematics lower secondary school exams as well as the position students occupy in their classroom register. We find that students whose names are recorded near the end of the class list have lower performance than those students whose names are recorded near the beginning of the list. The effect appears to be larger for performance in the humanities exam, and for low-achieving boys who attend large classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high achievement of British Chinese students in the British education system is established in the official literature and has recently been subject to increased attention and comment; albeit it remains the case that few studies have asked students or their families about the factors contributing to their success. This paper revisits findings from an earlier research project that investigated the extent to which British Chinese students and their parents value education (and their rationales), their experiences of British education, and the construction of British Chinese students by their teachers. The study revealed the ‘hidden racisms’ experienced by British Chinese students, the problematisation of their perceived approaches to learning by British teachers in spite of their high attainment, and the benefits, costs, and consequences of their valuing of education. This article contextualises these prior findings within more recent discourses and debates around ‘Chinese success’, precipitated by increased policy attention to the educational attainment of different groups of students, especially from low socio-economic backgrounds. It argues that these discourses on one hand elevate Chinese successes and teaching methods (in contrast to prior narratives), but on the other they continue to exoticise and ‘Other’ the British Chinese, misrecognising educational practices common among White middle-class parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A much larger proportion of English 14-year-olds expect to apply to university than ultimately make an application by age 21, but the proportion expecting to apply falls from age 14 onwards. In order to assess the role of socioeconomic status in explaining changes in expectations, this paper applies duration modelling techniques to the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, analysing transitions in young people’s expectations both from being ‘likely to apply’ to being ‘unlikely to apply’ and vice versa. Young people’s socioeconomic background has a significant association with changes in expectations, even after controlling for prior academic attainment and other potentially confounding factors; in addition, young people’s backgrounds affect their responsiveness to new evidence on academic attainment at age 16. This suggests more could usefully be done to maintain the educational expectations of academically able young people from less advantaged families, especially providing guidance on how to view new academic results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate whether the institution attended or type of course taken in further education, by students who are classified as low achievers at age 16, influences the probability of their subsequent educational success. Design/methodology/approach – To evaluate the probability of educational success of this subsample of young people, a probit model with sample selection is estimated, using the Youth Cohort Survey data for England and Wales and covering the period 1982 to 2004. Findings – The results suggest that the best route to educational success for "lower achievers" is through further education colleges. There are further significant gains in the probability of educational success for young men who take vocational courses at the FE college. Furthermore, the students taking this route into post-compulsory education are subsequently most likely to enter higher education; a result relevant to policy, since the aim of the Education Act (2008) is to increase the educational attainment of all young people up to the age of 18. Originality/value – The paper provides an analysis of the educational decisions and outcomes of young people who were considered of low ability at age 16. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper first discusses the theoretical approaches regarding the choice of participating in post-secondary (or "higher") education, starting with a presentation of the standard neoclassical economics approach, and then adding concepts taken from the emerging behavioural economics literature to take into account “cultural” factors that affect access. The paper then presents the results of an empirical analysis based on a very rich Canadian dataset, the Youth in Transition Survey, which follows youth from age 15 through to age 25 and includes remarkably detailed information on family and other background factors as well as schooling experiences, which provides evidence that points to the importance of cultural influences on PSE choices. Policy implications for children in care are then discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• This paper examines the effects of sibship composition and birth order on the school enrolment and educational attainment of children, using data from the Vietnam Population and Housing Census 2009. • We find that sibship size has a significant, negative effect on child education and having an additional boy lowers children's average educational attainment for both girls and boys. • We establish that birth order has a significant, negative effect on child education attainment, although that effect seems to vanish with the youngest sibling. • The findings imply that the result of family planning policy during the 1990s and 2000s may contribute to its remarkable educational achievements. • As parents disproportionately allocate more resources for boys and earlier born children, government-targeted programs should tackle those issues to provide equal school opportunities for all children. This paper examines the effects of sibship composition and birth order on the school enrolment and educational attainment of children, using data from the Vietnam Population and Housing Census 2009. Utilizing an instrumental variable estimation method to address the endogeneity of sibship size, we find that it has a significant, negative effect on child education. Examining the impact of sibling sex composition, we find that having an additional boy lowers children's average educational attainment for both girls and boys. We establish that birth order has a significant, negative effect on child educational attainment, although that effect seems to vanish with the youngest sibling. Our findings have several policy implications. First, the negative effect of sibship size on education implies that Vietnam's lower fertility rate, the result of family planning policy during the 1990s and 2000s, may contribute to its remarkable educational achievements. Second, we find that birth order and sibling sex composition are more important than sibship size in children's educational outcomes. As parents disproportionately allocate more resources for boys and earlier born children, government-targeted programs should tackle those issues to provide equal school opportunities for all children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarises our research into the relationship between pupil assessment at age 14 (Key Stage 3) and participation in age 16+ education. We question whether a systematic gap between teacher-based assessment and externally marked tests indicates assessment bias or uncertainty, either in testing procedures or through teachers' perceptions of pupils' skills. We explore whether these errors have consequences for pupils' subsequent educational attainment and participation. We find that teacher and test assessments diverge slightly along lines of pupil characteristics, especially prior achievement, clearly observable to the teacher but less so to external assessors, but this does not conform to notions of teacher stereotyping. Moreover, the divergence between the assessments at age 14 has almost no bearing on pupil qualifications or participation in education after age 16, and is unlikely to influence participation rates in higher education (HE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Obesity is a global health concern. This is the first study to explore if the relationship between body fatness and time preference is consistent across different ways of objectively measuring body fatness. Our second aim is to explore if there are differential associations between educational attainment and being a saver to determine if education can be used to change saving behaviour and subsequently body fatness. This paper uses data on 15,591 individuals from 2010/2011 of the Understanding Society Survey (UK) to explore the relationship between time preference, measured as being a saver and three objective measures of body fatness: BMI, percent body fatness (PBF), and waist circumference (WC). Our findings show that there is a negative relationship between the three measures of body fatness and being a saver. The strongest relationship is found for WC and being a saver for both genders. Overall, a stronger association is found for women than men. Our results suggest that differential effects by educational attainment can be found in the relationship between being a saver and body fatness. Educational interventions to improve savings behaviour and subsequently obesity may be more effective for women with lower levels of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the drastic educational reforms during the Communist period changed the effects of family background on education in China, in comparison to other nations. Data are from the Life Histories and Social Change in Contemporary China survey and the World Inequality Study; N=130,109 in 28 societies. Since World War 11, the mean number of years of education in China paralleled, at a lower level, the rises in Eastern European Communist countries and in Western market economies. Multi-level regression analysis shows that China's educational level is not higher than would be predicted on the basis of worldwide patterns linking education to g d p and family background. Overall, the drastic educational reforms of the Communist period do not seem to have raised educational attainments, contrary to the Rousseau/Marx understanding of the primacy of private property as a generator of social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework for understanding the growing interest in establishing single-gender schools and classrooms for African American males in the United States. From a legal perspective, CRT proponents contend that single-gender education offers African Americans a viable strategy for addressing and reversing the systemic and cultural forces that limit the academic achievement, educational attainment and destinies of African American males. Both potential benefits and problematic aspects of single-gender education as a timely reform strategy to raise academic achievement and improve the lives and futures of African American males are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is widely considered as the most important path to social mobility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), yet there are very few studies of the extent to which it fulfills this promise. In this paper we use survey data from eight MENA countries to understand the relationship between schooling attainment of youth and the circumstances into which they are born, namely gender, parental education, parental household's position in the per capita expenditure distribution and urban/rural location. We consider various attainment levels from the chance of entering any kind of schooling to attending upper secondary schooling and address the fact that many children are still in school by using a censored ordered probit model. We find high degrees of inequality of opportunity in school attainment, especially with respect to attending secondary school. The most opportunity unequal countries in this respect are Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia are the least opportunity unequal in this respect. This paper builds on a previous study of inequality of opportunity in educational achievement, which showed that in most MENA countries, learning opportunities are not equal. In this study, we find that - even in attending and staying in school- the playing field is not level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on educational attainments have tended to focus on attainments at a specific level of education. The change in disparities in attainment over the educational life cycle, however, has been neglected in literature-in India, for instance, the only exceptions are Vaid () and Desai and Kulkarni (). This paper uses unit level National Sample Survey data (2004-2005) to examine gender disparities at different educational levels up to the high school level. Bi-variate analysis of gender disparities computed using the Sopher-Kundu index indicates that although there are substantial gender disparities at lower levels of education, this gets reversed at higher levels in several states. At the all-India level, too, in recent years, a reversal of disparity may be observed in urban areas. Econometric analysis using the variable parameter variant of the generalized ordered logit model reveals that robustness of females increase over the educational life cycle, though disparity remains, after controlling for socio-economic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to identify those school-level and locality-level factors that significantly affect each of the three stages in a young adult's educational trajectory in North West England: GCSE results, track taken at age 16 and 'A'-level scores. By applying three-level models to data collected as part of the EFFNATIS project, we find no evidence of any locality-level effects. Overall, none of the explanatory variables conventionally considered to affect educational attainment had a consistent effect across all three stages. Rather, each explanatory variable had a contingent effect at specific points within the overall trajectory of educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The voucher system in Denmark combines unrestricted generous subsidies with substantial autonomy of private schools as to schedule and teaching methods. This has produced a private school sector with a wide variety of school types. This paper uses data on eight cohorts of students (over 510,000 individuals) to compare educational attainment in public and private voucher schools, including religious schools (Catholic and Protestant) and various types of non-religious schools. The findings suggest that, after controlling for individual and peer characteristics, the average public student would attain moderately higher levels of education if he/she attended grammar or Catholic school, relative to the public alternative. Attainment of students at Protestant, international and German minority schools is not different from public schools. However, attending free, boarding and, particularly, little and Waldorf schools is associated with substantially lower completion rates at the upper secondary level, which is probably at least partly due to the clustering of special education students in these school types, which cannot be controlled for. At the tertiary level, differences between private and public schools generally vanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use household survey data to study the determinants of children's educational achievement in Uruguay. As an indicator of this educational achievement, we build the "educational gap" which is the difference between expected years of schooling of a child and actual years of schooling. Among the determinants, we introduce indicators of family environment, focusing on the impact of the parents' marital status on their children educational attainment. In particular, the results suggest positive infuence of having married parents on daughter's educational outcomes, after controlling for household background variables such as parents' education, income percapita, wealth and number of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a study of the experiences and outcomes of older and younger community college students. We developed a discrete-time hazard model using longitudinal transcript data on a cohort of first-time community college students in Florida to compare the impact of enrollment pathways (such as remediation) and enrollment milestones (such as attaining a certain number of credits) on educational outcomes of older students—those who enter college for the first time at age 25 or later—with those of traditional-age students. Results suggest that reaching milestones such as obtaining 20 credits or completing 50 percent of a program is a more important positive factor affecting graduation probabilities for younger students than it is for older students. We also found that although enrollment in remedial courses decreases the odds of graduating for all students, older students who enroll in remediation are less negatively affected than are younger ones who take remedial classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continued lower academic attainment of Black (especially Black Caribbean) pupils is now well established. Yet, to date there has been no single coherent national Government strategy that has successfully closed the gap in educational attainment between either Black and White pupils or between Black pupils and the national average. Academic and policy debates centring on the causes and potential ways of addressing this gap remain marred by controversy and disagreement. This paper is based on qualitative research, which explores how staff and pupils at an inner city secondary school in the south of England construct academic success. Focusing on one aspect of the findings, it reveals that staff subscribe to two forms of success: an inclusive, low D to G grade success and an exclusive, high A* to C grade success, each of which are seen as attainable only by certain types of pupils. The appearance and behaviour of Black pupils, particularly those engaged in what is termed 'Black street culture', are seen as directly at odds with the aims of the school and therefore minimize their likelihood of attaining success in exclusive terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a literature review conducted in the UK for the Design Council and CfBT (Higgins et al., 2005) which looked at the evidence of the impact of environments on learning in schools. We have reviewed the available evidence regarding different facets of the physical environment and provided an analysis based on different areas of effect, including the extent to which different facets interact (positively and negatively) with one another. Our conclusions suggest that, although the research often indicates the parameters of an effective environment, there is an overall lack of empirical evidence about the impact of individual elements of the physical environment which might inform school design at a practical level to support student achievement. However, at a secondary level of analysis, there are indications that environmental change can be part of a catalytic process of school development and improvement. The implications of these findings for Building Schools for the Future will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The strongest predictor of visible homelessness was child welfare involvement. • Being Indigenous was a significant predictor of visible and hidden homelessness. • University education not preventative against homelessness for Indigenous peoples. Existing evidence suggests that child welfare involvement has a deleterious impact on Indigenous peoples in Canada in terms of increasing their risk of becoming a visible or hidden homeless individual. Visible homelessness is generally understood as those individuals found sleeping in parks, cars, shelters, or on the streets and other locales such as in abandoned buildings or under bridges. Whereas the hidden homeless are those who find interim accommodations with friends, family members, and acquaintances. Although in saying this, many of the visible homelessness scenarios can also be considered hidden. Regardless, all situations of homelessness reflect uncertainty, lack of safety, and an increased vulnerability to abuse and exploitation. The pathways to homelessness are rooted in structural deficits in the society, which are multiplicative and intersectional in nature. They include housing affordability, oppression, conditions of physical and mental well-being, employment and employability, as well as family support and community connection. On the other hand, the greater the educational achievement experienced by Indigenous peoples the less the risk of being subjected to homelessness. The premise of this paper is that Indigenous peoples are multiplicatively oppressed and that these intersecting sites of oppression increase the risk of Indigenous peoples in Canada becoming homelessness. Hypotheses were tested using the 2014 panel of Canada's General Social Survey, including 1081 Indigenous peoples and 23,052 non-Indigenous white participants. Indigenous identity, involvement in the child welfare system, and level of educational achievement were all significantly associated with experiences of hidden and visible homelessness, p <.001. As hypothesized, the odds associated with being involved in the child welfare system (odds ratio [OR] = 4.15) were stronger than that associated with identifying as Indigenous (OR = 1.47). As predicted, achieving a university education served as a protection against becoming homelessness (OR = 0.27). The hypothesized relationship between ethnicity and child welfare system involvement interaction was not observed. However, Indigenous participants (7.1%) were nearly four times as likely to have been involved with the child welfare system than were non-Indigenous white people (1.9%). Thus, at the population level, Indigenous peoples are at far greater risk of having been involved in the child welfare system, and consequently experiencing homelessness than non-Indigenous peoples. Of note, the hypothesized ethnicity by educational attainment interaction was observed. Among white people in Canada, a university education likely prevents most (83%) of visible homelessness otherwise experienced by those who did not complete high school (OR = 0.17) and prevents a significant amount (18%) of hidden homelessness. Startlingly, no such prevention was associated with completion of university among Indigenous peoples in Canada. Implications and future research needs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]