The high performance of Dutch and Flemish 15-year-old native pupils: Explaining country differences in math scores between highly stratified educational systems

This paper aims to explain the high scores of 15-year-old native pupils in the Netherlands andFlanders by comparing them with the scores of pupils in countries with the same highly stratifiededucational system. Therefore, we compare only the educational performance of 15-year-old pupilsfrom the following regions: the Netherlands, Flanders, Wallonia, the German Länder, the SwissGerman cantons, and Austria. We use the data from the general Program for International PupilAssessment (PISA) 2006 together with the specific PISA data of Germany and Switzerland also from2006. We apply a multilevel model that takes into account the individual-, curriculum-, andsystem-level features in these highly stratified educational systems. The high scores of the Dutchpupils can be explained by the size of the Netherlands’ vocational sector. The high Flemish scorescan be only partly explained by the high curriculum mobility (as indicated by the lowest level ofentrance selection). Central exit exams are not a good explanation of the high Dutch scores.Despite being limited to highly stratified systems, we still find educational policies andarrangements to have significant effects on the educational performance of pupils.