It is widely discussed that the pandemic has impacted educational inequalities across the world. However, in contrast to data on health or unemployment, data on education outcomes are not timely. ...Hence, we have extremely limited knowledge about pandemic-related learning losses at the national and cross-national levels. As it might take years to get suitable comparative data, this study uses the latest large-scale international achievement survey from before the pandemic, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2019, to answer two research questions. First, which European countries are most likely to have experienced higher learning loss among their children? Second, which European countries have most likely experienced the greatest increases in learning inequalities? Results based on 4th graders’ school achievements indicate that educational inequalities between and within countries are likely to have augmented substantially throughout Europe. Some European countries are probably already facing an education crisis.
Abstract
Background
Loneliness has been recognized as a public health issue and has moved into a number of European countries’ policy agendas. Literature examining loneliness in young people (and ...especially in adolescents) is scarce, but it does show that at this age feelings of loneliness have been increasing in recent decades and are detrimental for both adolescents’ current and future well-being. In order to explain loneliness, current literature focuses generally on individual, rather than on broader, environmental characteristics. This study examines school associates of loneliness and compares their importance to those at the individual level because schools are the most important places in which adolescents are socially embedded. In addition, policy interventions on loneliness might be more feasible at the school than the individual level.
Methods
This study uses a single-item measure of adolescents’ loneliness feelings in schools and exploits rich data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2018) on 23 European countries covering 118,698 students (50.2% female) in 4,819 schools. This study applies multi-level models to investigate school level factors jointly with those at the individual level.
Results
Differences between European schools can explain a 20% variation in feelings of loneliness, thereby indicating the importance of the school environment. Furthermore, adolescents’ bullying experiences and a bullying climate in school more than doubles incidences of loneliness. In addition, a cooperative climate as well as teacher support can considerably decrease school loneliness. Cross-level interactions do exist: being from a lower socioeconomic background for instance, while not important generally, increases loneliness feelings if most of the school peers are from a better socioeconomic background. School factors appear to be more important for explaining young people’s loneliness incidence than individual characteristics.
Conclusion
This is the first study to compare school level and individual level factors relating to youth loneliness in schools throughout Europe. Results emphasizing the importance of school environment for explaining adolescents’ loneliness suggest that school level initiatives may be most appropriate in tackling loneliness when compared to wider and less contextualized national policies that focus on adolescents outside of school.
•Civic education is associated with a wide range of civic attitudes teenage students develop.•Relevant educational approaches include formal civic learning, school democracy and community work.•An ...open classroom climate is particularly important in promoting civic attitudes.•To develop positive civic attitudes, students need to acquire a sense of civic self-efficacy.•Civic knowledge has a negative association with some attitudes and a positive association with others.
This article explores the diverse associations between different educational approaches in civic and citizenship education and a number of civic attitudes and behaviours, including citizenship, expected participation and attitudes towards equal rights, among teenage students in 13 European countries. The results obtained using the 2016 International Civic and Citizenship Survey (ICCS) show that all three educational approaches identified (formal civic learning, school democracy and active community involvement) are related to what students think and how they feel about civic and citizenship issues, although the role of each approach varies considerably across the different civic attitudes and behaviours. Furthermore, students’ civic and citizenship knowledge shows somewhat controversial associations with the various attitudes and behaviours discussed here, while civic self-efficacy is consistently positively related to them.
This article looks at the status attainment process of young Hungarian graduates, devoting special attention to the impact of social origin, defined as the education and occupation of parents. The ...authors’ estimates show that graduates from high status families enjoy notable advantages in the labour market, even when type of education, fi eld of study, and a range of labour market experience factors are held constant. The greatest wage-premium for coming from a ‘good’ family is measured for men, occurring four-to-five years after graduation. Patterns of status inheritance are found to be genderdependent, with women being more infl uenced by their social background at earlier phases of their careers. The authors argue that the substantial growth in the number of graduates and the increasing variety of jobs they occupy contribute to a social-selection process, moving further up from the educational ladder to the labour market. The authors describe possible mechanisms driving the direct inheritance of social advantages, but further research is needed to explore them in detail.
International student mobility (ISM) prepares young people for the challenges of global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lower participation rates in mobility ...schemes and, hence, benefit less from their positive impacts on career progression. Therefore, policymakers aim to make mobility programs more inclusive. Nevertheless, it is far from clear how policy design can achieve this aim. This study investigates factors driving inequality in international student mobility uptake. The study’s novelty is twofold: first, in contrast to most existing studies it does not only investigate individual but also university characteristics as possible drivers of unequal uptake. This is possible due to the use of rich graduate survey and administrative data merged with university-level European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) data. Second, the study compares results across four European countries. Results show that the socio-economic mobility gap remains still sizable even when taking university characteristics into account. However, universities matter considerably and especially student compositions in terms of socio-economic background and ability contribute to unequal ISM uptake. As a consequence, intergovernmental policies should aim to distribute grants and mobility opportunities more equally across all universities, independent of their student composition.
Policies supporting international student mobility prepare young people for the challenges of global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lower participation rates in ...mobility schemes, and hence benefit less from their positive impacts on career progression. Therefore, policy makers aim to make mobility programmes more inclusive. Nevertheless, it is far from clear how policy design can achieve this aim. This study investigates factors driving unequal mobility uptake. It goes beyond existing research by not only focusing on individual choices but also on university characteristics, like university segregation, excellence and student support. In addition, the study is novel in comparing rich graduate survey and administrative data merged with university level ETER data across four countries. Multilevel regression results show consistently across all countries that disadvantaged students do not only lose out on mobility experience due to their background but also due to them being clustered in universities with lower mobility opportunities. Universities' support and excellence while important for explaining mobility uptake do not appear to mitigate unequal uptake in any of the countries examined.
It is widely discussed that the pandemic has impacted on educational inequalities across the world. However, in contrast to data on health or unemployment, data on education outcomes are not timely. ...Hence, we have extremely limited knowledge about the actual impact of the pandemic on learning outcomes at the national and the cross-national level. As it might take years to get new comparative evidence on the actual extent of the problem, this paper uses the latest large scale international student assessment data from before the pandemic, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 and applies simple descriptive analysis, regressions and logical deductions to map potential consequences of the Covid-19 crisis across Europe. We obtain the relative trajectories of children's learning loss and its unequal distribution from information on home and school resources, the importance of these resources for learning outcomes and countries' school closure duration policies and compare Covid-19 related risk of learning loss between European countries. Results based on 4th graders' school achievements indicate that throughout Europe educational inequalities between and within countries are likely to increase substantially. Some European countries are highly likely to face already an education crisis.
This report investigates alternatives to the current targets related to early childhood education and care (ECEC), in particular by looking at socio-economic differences in the level of ECEC ...attendance in EU Member States. Using data from the EU Survey on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), it assesses different categorisations of socio-economic disadvantage, based on household income, maternal education and whether or not the child lives in a household which is at risk of poverty (AROP) or at risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE). Irrespective of which categorisation is used, the report shows considerably lower ECEC attendance rates for children from a lower socio-economic background when compared to those from a higher one. This suggests that the attempt to focus on particular subgroups of children is well justified. Based on a range of methodological and conceptual considerations, AROPE emerges as the most appropriate measure to build a possible ECEC indicator.
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