The Effect of One Extra Year of Schooling on Pisa Results: a Case of Countries with Different Tracking Systems

The purpose of our study is to compare the impact of an extra year of schooling on PISA achievement across several national education systems and explore why that impact may differ across systems. We first attempt to measure and compare the impact of an extra year of schooling on PISA achievement in selected countries. Second, we conduct analyses of possible interaction effects: whether the impact of an extra year of schooling differs for female vs. male students and for students of higher and lower social class. Third, we explore whether splitting students into general vs. vocational tracks changes the effects of an extra year of schooling on achievement. The paper addresses the issue of PISA result interpretation for policy-making: whether countries with low scores also have low school effectiveness and vice versa. Also looking at the specific effects of tracking allows us to consider the academic-vocational problem in a new way