What Makes the Difference in Reading Achievement? Comparisons Between Finland and Shanghai

Abstract

Finland and Shanghai are strong performers in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The current study explored the similarities and differences in educational effectiveness between these 2 strong performers. To this end, 14 predictors representing student background and school process characteristics were selected from the PISA 2009 database. The results show that the Finnish educational system is more efficient in transforming given inputs, specially student background characteristics, into reading achievement, while the general condition of the school climate in Shanghai, in terms of value and effect size of the predictors, contributes a large part to its comparative strength in reading achievement. Suggestions for improvement at school and system level are given.

Keywords:

• reading achievement
• Finland
• Shanghai
• educational effectiveness

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Dr. Hongqiang Liu, Dr. Dickson Nkafu Anumendem, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this study, when we talk about country (or countries), we also refer to economy (or economies).

2. PISA draws an age-based student sample in each participating country/economy. All participating students are those who are 15 years old, independent of their grade level. The difference in students’ average grade level between Finland and Shanghai is largely due to differences in nationally stipulated school entry age (7 in Finland and 6 in Shanghai) and the proportion of students who begin school later than the nationally stipulated school entry age (9.82% in Finland and 36.66% in Shanghai). Meanwhile, this difference in students’ average grade level is partly due to differences in grade retention ratios (2.89% in Finland and 5.97% in Shanghai) and the proportions of students who begin school earlier or skip one grade level or more (0.41% in Finland and 0.43% in Shanghai). Therefore, the 15-year-olds in Finland should be in grade 9 and their peers in Shanghai should be in grade 10 if they entered school on time and progressed successfully. Correspondingly, a grade level higher in Finland, as well as in Shanghai, indicates a successful school year, if we consider a one-year delay in entering school and the year repeated as an unsuccessful school year.

3. When decomposing gaps in reading scores at country level, we took Finland as the reference category. The results from the current decomposition model are equivalent to the results that would have emerged if we had taken Shanghai as a reference country.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chinese Scholarship Council, China (grant number 2010614006) and KU Leuven, Belgium (grant number 000000002707). The authors are grateful for their generous support.