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We evaluate whether a scalable online teacher professional development (OTPD) module that requires little time investment enhances students' financial literacy. Two randomised controlled trials were performed, with 1827 students, 53 teachers and 47 schools participating. The financial education programme on its own increased students' financial knowledge, but did not improve financial behaviour. Regarding the OTPD effects, we observed that students' knowledge scores did not significantly improve, but that behaviour scores were enhanced relative to students whose teachers did not receive access to the OTPD module. In comparison with students in the control condition, behaviour scores improved with 0.39 SD.

Given the expected advantages for individuals and societies, financial literacy is high on the policy agenda in many countries. This paper reports the results from a unique survey conducted on a sample of 13-16-year-old students in five European countries, aimed at measuring and comparing their level of financial literacy skills. The results indicate significant differences in the level of financial literacy across countries that are interpreted in the light of the differences in the countries' educational policies and experiences with financial education. The findings suggest that supra-national coordinated action is needed to guarantee better financial knowledge and safeguard economic stability in future crises.

The school closures owing to the 2020 COVID-19 crisis resulted in a significant disruption of education provision, leading to fears of learning losses and of an increase in educational inequality. This article evaluates the effects of school closures based on standardised tests in the last year of primary school in the Dutch-speaking Flemish region of Belgium. Using a 6-year panel, we find that students of the 2020 cohort experienced significant learning losses in three out of five tested subjects, with a decrease in school averages of mathematics scores of 0.17 standard deviations and Dutch scores (reading, writing, language) of 0.19 standard deviations as compared to previous cohorts. This finding holds when accounting for school characteristics, standardised tests in Grade 4 and school fixed effects. Given the large observed effect sizes, the effect of school closures appears to be a combination of lost learning progress and learning loss. Moreover, we observe that inequality both within schools and across schools rises by 7% for mathematics and 8% for Dutch. The learning losses are correlated with observed school characteristics, as schools with a more disadvantaged student population experience larger learning losses.

Purpose: Professional development interventions (PDIs) are crucial for equipping teachers to use data effectively. Relying on previous studies reporting on such interventions, this paper aims to identify and synthesise the goals, dimensions and conditions of PDIs for data use. This paper also examines the evidence of the effect of such interventions on student outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, the authors employ a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to analyse teacher PDIs for data use. Findings: The results suggest that conceptual, practical and continual goals are identified in data use PDIs. Supported by conceptual, practical or normative tools, facilitators employ a variety of techniques in facilitating teachers' data use through data teams or professional learning communities. The facilitation techniques include assessing needs, using models or modelling, observing performance, providing feedback, providing built-in time for reflection and brokering. Further, the results highlight the influence of several conditions that contribute to the success of the interventions. Finally, the meta-analysis shows a significant positive effect of the interventions on student outcomes, with an effect size of 0.17. Research limitations/implications: The authors' proposed framework should be empirically tested and validated through field studies in various contexts. Since the authors focussed on studies reporting data use PDIs for instructional purposes as well as providing the descriptions of the PDIs, the number of included studies was only 27 and represented only four countries. Of the 27, 10 studies were used for the meta-analysis and the results may be subject to publication bias. Seemingly, the result may be related to the authors' inclusion/exclusion criteria that only included peer-reviewed journal articles and excluded non-peer-reviewed studies such as theses or dissertations. This criterion potentially neglected some relevant studies. Practical implications: Policymakers interested in developing a data use PDI should take into account the various goals of data use PDIs, depending on policymakers' interests. Building teachers' understanding of data use can be addressed by the practical goals. This can be conducted within a short period of time through training or courses, either in-person or online. This is appropriate for an initiation strategy for data use within schools. However, targeting specific skills and dispositional attributes around data use should adopt practical and continual goals. These types of goals require a PDI with a sustained duration embedded in teachers' classroom practices; therefore, political and practical support is necessary. Social implications: The authors argue that the review findings contribute to knowledge and insights by presenting data use PDIs that support teacher learning, implementation and sustainability of data use practices. Originality/value: This article provides a proposed framework for studying teacher PDIs for data use and sheds light on several goals, a variety of facilitation strategies and conditions and the effect of the interventions on student outcomes.

Internationalisation is a major trend in higher education worldwide. Yet, little evidence is given on the net impact of international students on national economies. This study addresses this gap by estimating the benefits against the costs driven by international students in Belgium and its Flemish region in particular. Using a unique combination of various sources of micro-data, the results show net positive benefits that exceed costs by a factor ranging between 2.4 (lower bound) and 3.1 (upper bound) times. The results vary highly with the level of education, as the ratio is the lowest for doctoral students (1.2-1.6) and highest for master students (5.1-6.3). The effect is mainly driven by a high stay rate of international students, who are likely to work in the country after graduation. When considering indirect effects, our results show that there are no significant peer effects due to the presence of international students in the classroom.

This paper reviews studies on diversity in higher education institutions and suggests empirical approaches to measure diversity. "Diversity" in this paper refers to the internal and external differences among academic programs and institutions. As the empirical literature is relatively salient about how to measure diversity in higher education, the study suggests and compares the use of the Herfindhal index, Gini coefficient, Theil entropy index and the Birnbaum (1983) measure. Applying the indices to data on Dutch higher education, the results indicate limited diversity between institutions, disciplines, and bachelor's programs. The diversity at the master's program and first year bachelor's program levels increased between 2008 and 2013.

This paper assesses the effect of need-based grants on the performance of university students in Italy. We performed a series of between-universities and within-universities propensity score matching analyses to evaluate the effect of grants on several student performance indicators, such as dropout rate, first year credits and efficiency of study. Our findings suggest that financial aid has a positive, substantial and statistically robust effect on university students' performance and on if and when they complete their undergraduate degree courses. The positive impact is heterogeneous across universities, while few differences were detected for subgroups of students. Reinforcing financial aid policies can simultaneously help disadvantaged students and improve overall academic performance in Italian universities.

This study examines whether online teacher professional development (OTPD), in the form of an interactive webinar series that encourages collaborative learning, improves student achievement. We conducted a randomised controlled trial with 1102 students, 45 teachers and 30 secondary schools in Flanders, Belgium. As a basis for the study, we developed a digital learning path aimed at improving student scores on financial literacy--a multidimensional key competence recently integrated into the curriculum. We demonstrate that the learning path improves student learning outcomes and that enhanced teacher involvement in this programme does not increase learning outcomes unless the teachers participate in the OTPD initiative. Teacher engagement in the webinar series generated student learning outcomes 0.39 standard deviations higher than those of students whose teachers did not receive this intervention, thus, confirming the effectiveness of the OTPD initiative. This effect was found immediately after programme implementation, and it persisted until at least 6 weeks later. As an underlying mechanism, we observe that engagement in the webinar series enhances teachers' self-efficacy. Classroom observations suggest that engagement increases the frequency of providing students with content-related help.

Modular education refers to the division of conventional courses into smaller components or modules. Each module enables students to obtain a partial certificate that can be combined into a qualification. This article evaluates whether modular education, which is widely used in secondary and tertiary education, has been effective in reducing school dropout. For this purpose, the study exploits a policy change in the Flemish Community of Belgium, which recently introduced modular education for some programmes. Using a difference-in-differences framework with diverse adoption dates per school, the results indicate that modular education may significantly reduce school dropout by 2.5 percentage points, with the largest effects on foreign origin students. Therefore, modular education is likely to be an effective policy to tackle school dropout and reduce the ethnic attainment gap. Additionally, students enrolled in modular education are more likely to be employed and to incur higher earnings on the labour market.

This paper systematically reviews the literature on the causes of leaving school early in Africa and Asia. Despite the improvement in primary school enrolment in the developing countries by 2015, the persistence of school dropout, however, renders this improvement almost insignificant. This leads to the necessity of observing the prolonged determinants of dropping out from school amid the current global development efforts to improve educational attainment in these countries. For this purpose, we review 43 articles in this study. These articles are peer-reviewed publications on the causes of early school leaving or school dropout in Africa and Asia, from the year 2001 to present (2018). A great number of causes are found to be linked to the reason for leaving school early. However, the most common causes for early school leaving include lack of income, parents' education and employment status, living in a single-parent household, being a illegitimate child, age, region of residence and school performance. Specifically, for Asia, immigration and ethnicity are important factors. This paper recommends that policies to prevent early school leaving require multi-perspective targeting, involving individual, school, community and family. For instance, attention needs to be drawn to the effective trickling down of necessary school provisions and other contemporary societal provisions to all communities. There is also need for improved individual and family awareness on the positive impact of education as well as the dangers of certain cultural beliefs.

Teacher absenteeism has high individual and societal costs and triggers a vicious cycle by increasing teacher absenteeism for the remaining teachers. Moreover, teachers' non-attendance disrupts the learning process and affects student motivation and achievement. Teacher absenteeism further exacerbates the increasing teacher shortage observed in many countries. This paper provides a systematic literature review of studies analysing teacher absenteeism and develops a conceptual model of the predictors of teacher non-attendance at school. Our findings provide a nuanced and overarching approach to analysing teacher non-attendance at work, revealing the most significant correlates to absenteeism and exposing the consequences of educator absences on student achievement. Finally, several concrete policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]