Equity in mathematics and science outcomes: characteristics associated with high and low achievement on PISA 2006 in Ireland

Equity in education is a key concern internationally; however, it is rare that this issue is examined separately for low- and high-achieving students and concurrently across different subject domains. This study examines student and school background characteristics associated with low and high achievement in mathematics and science on the Programme for International Student Assessment. Based on the results of a multilevel multinomial model of achievement for each domain, findings indicate that a greater number of the variables examined are associated with low rather than high achievement. At student level, home language, intention to leave school early, socioeconomic status, grade level, cultural capital, and books in the home are significantly associated with achievement in mathematics and science. At school level, only school average socioeconomic status is statistically significant in the models. Significant gender differences are found in the distribution of high and low achievers, which vary across the domains. In mathematics, females are more likely to be low achievers while males are more likely to be high achievers. In science, gender interacts with early school-leaving intent whereas males intending to leave school early are more likely to be in the low-achieving group than females intending to leave early. Conclusions emphasise the need for targeting resources aimed at promoting equity in outcomes at student level as well as at school level. Future work may extend the current analyses by incorporating domain-specific variables or examining cross-country differences

Adult Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills: An Overview of Existing PIAAC Data

As of summer 2019, more than 60 PIAAC datasets from participating countries worldwide were available for research purposes. These datasets can be differentiated, for example, in terms of their accessibility, the extent of the information provided, the population group in focus, and the design of the underlying study. PIAAC Public Use Files, for instance, are freely available and are therefore highly anonymised, whereas PIAAC Scientific Use Files are available only for scientific research purposes and provide access to more detailed variables. The majority of the PIAAC data are available as public use files, but some participating countries (e.g. Germany and the United States) have also made several scientific use files or other extended file versions available to the research community. Some of the available PIAAC datasets focus on specific population groups - for example, the incarcerated adult population in the United States. Regarding the design of the underlying studies, most available datasets are cross-sectional, but some longitudinal data already exist (e.g. PIAAC-L in Germany). The present chapter provides an overview of the structure, accessibility, and use of the PIAAC datasets available worldwide

Inclusive growth in English cities: mainstreamed or sidelined?

<p>The concept of inclusive growth is increasingly presented as offering prospects for more equitable social outcomes. However, inclusive growth is subject to a variety of interpretations and lacks definitional clarity. In England, via devolution, cities are taking on new powers for policy domains that can influence inclusive growth outcomes. This opens up opportunities for innovation to address central issues of low pay and poverty. This paper examines the extent to which inclusive growth concerns form a central or peripheral aspect in this new devolution through the content analysis of devolution agreements. It concludes that inclusive growth concerns appear to be largely sidelined.</p

Institutions versus market forces: Explaining the employment insecurity of European individuals during (the beginning of) the financial crisis

In reaction to the recent financial crisis, the European Commission re-stated its view that the balance between flexibility and security is the key to success for the future of the European social economy, as well as its belief in the power of institutional arrangements it deems necessary for this balance. However, do powerful institutions actually counter market forces where flexicurity is concerned? In this paper we address this question by analysing the impact of institutional configurations and market factors on perceived employment insecurity among workers in Europe. We use the 4th wave of the European Social Survey for 2008/2009, which covers 22 countries, and implement a multi-level approach where contextual effects are taken into account and individuals are considered to be embedded within a country. We find that policies that secure one’s income and employability skills, such as passive and active labour market policies, are more important for providing employment security for individuals than institutions that secure one’s current job, such as employment protection. Of the economic and labour market factors, general market conditions (measured as employment rate average) and the strength of the financial crisis (measured as gross domestic product growth rate from 2008 to 2009) are both similarly influential in explaining cross-national variance in the employment insecurity perception of individuals. More generally, and most interestingly, we find that institutional factors lose their significance when market factors are taken into account. Thus, it seems that differences in economic and labour market conditions between countries better explain why workers feel insecure about their employment, than the differences in employment and income policies. Although this result could be influenced by the time period under investigation, which is characterized by a financial crisis, results from previous studies using data from different periods suggest that it is not period-specific

Urban performance at different boundaries in England and Wales through the settlement scaling theory

The relationship between transport-led agglomeration and economic performance is evaluated in an English and Welsh context. We examine the effects of scale, i.e., inter- versus intra-city mobility infrastructure, on urban size–cost performance. An additional contribution of this paper lies in its use of power-law scaling models of urban systems, enabling an assessment of optimality in the trade-off between economic output and mobility costs accounting for ease of access within cities coupled with their built density. Findings suggest economic underperformance coincides with inadequate mobility at both inter- and intra-city scales, while overperformance is accompanied by overgrown urbanized area and escalating mobility costs

What determines women's participation in collective action? Evidence from a western Ugandan coffee cooperative

Women smallholders face greater constraints than men in accessing capital and commodity markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Collective action has been promoted to remedy those disadvantages. Using survey data of 421 women members and 210 nonmembers of a coffee producer cooperative in Western Uganda, this study investigates the determinants of women's participation in cooperatives and women's intensity of participation. The results highlight the importance of access to and control over land for women to join the cooperative in the first place. Participation intensity is measured through women's participation in collective coffee marketing and share capital contributions. It is found that duration of membership, access to extension services, more equal intrahousehold power relations, and joint land ownership positively influence women's ability to commit to collective action. These findings demonstrate the embeddedness of collective action in gender relations and the positive value of women's active participation for agricultural-marketing cooperatives

Sustainable Agricultural Productivity Growth and Bridging the Gap for Small-Family Farms: Interagency Report to the Mexican G20 Presidency

In 2011, G20 leaders committed to sustainably increase agricultural (production and) productivity (paragraph 43 of the Cannes Declaration). They "agree(d) to further invest in agriculture, in particular in the poorest countries, and bearing in mind the importance of smallholders, through responsible public and private investment," they "decide(d) to invest in research and development of agricultural productivity. Early in 2012 Mexico, as G20 President, invited international organisations to examine practical actions that could be undertaken to sustainably improve agricultural productivity growth, in particular on small family farms. The preparation of this report, co-ordinated by the FAO and the OECD, responds to this request. It is a collaborative undertaking by Bioversity, CGIAR Consortium, FAO, IFAD, IFPRI, IICA, OECD, UNCTAD, Coordination team of UN High Level Task Force on the Food Security Crisis, WFP, World Bank, and WTO. We, the international organisations, are pleased to provide you with this joint report and look forward to continuing collaboration within the G20 framework to further elaborate and, as appropriate, implement the recommendations that it contains

The domestic and gendered context for retirement

Against a global backdrop of population and workforce ageing, successive UK governments have encouraged people to work longer and delay retirement. Debates focus mainly on factors affecting individuals’ decisions on when and how to retire. We argue that a fuller understanding of retirement can be achieved by recognizing the ways in which individuals’ expectations and behaviours reflect a complicated, dynamic set of interactions between domestic environments and gender roles, often established over a long time period, and more temporally proximate factors. Using a qualitative data set, we explore how the timing, nature and meaning of retirement and retirement planning are played out in specific domestic contexts. We conclude that future research and policies surrounding retirement need to: focus on the household, not the individual; consider retirement as an often messy and disrupted process and not a discrete event; and understand that retirement may mean very different things for women and for men

Indicators for trade facilitation : a handbook (Version 1.0)

As governments continue their efforts to reduce trade costs by streamlining trade-related procedures and enhancing the quality of related infrastructure and services, it is important that officials in charge of developing future plans in this area be fully cognizant of the available data and indicators they may use to monitor progress. Accordingly, this Handbook, developed by ESCAP in collaboration with OECD and other partners, aims at providing a comprehensive source of information on publicly available cross-country databases and indicators relevant to trade facilitation in a format easy to use for both trainers and individual readers alike

Defining sustainable transport in rural tourism: experiences from the New Forest

Transport policy agendas have long sought to bring about more sustainable transport at tourism destinations. While there are examples of successes, it remains unclear what inroads have been made towards creating a sustainable transport future. Policy directions have evolved over a number of years and in many tourism destination contexts it is far from clear what a desirable transport future looks like. When translated to implementation, the aims of initiatives can be unclear and baseline measures inconsistent, making success difficult to judge. This paper analyses how sustainable travel has been implemented in practice at a destination level. The focus is rural tourism and data are derived from a specific case, the New Forest National Park, UK, where a wide range of transport initiatives have been implemented since the Park’s designation in 2005. The study adopts a social practice theory perspective. Data are derived from a visitor survey, interviews and observations. It finds there is scope to improve sustainable transport provision at destinations through understanding visitor practices, but limited scope to influence meanings associated with visitor travel and travel skills. Policy meets the needs of some visitors more than others