EDUCATION INDICATORS: An International Perspective

Notes on Figures and Tables for Indicator 7

In some cases, countries limited assessments by excluding certain student groups, such as those in private schools, schools serving handicapped children, or schools where the language of instruction is different from the primary national language. A description of these limitations follows:

Belgium

Includes schools in French-speaking Belgium only; students instructed in Flemish or German were excluded.

Finland

Swedish-speaking, special education, and laboratory schools were excluded.

France

Private schools were excluded (16 percent of 9-year-olds and 21 percent of 14-year-olds).

East Germany (former)

Students in special schools for the handicapped and institutions for specially talented students were excluded.

West Germany (former)

Students in special schools for the handicapped and nongraded private schools were excluded.

Greece

For 14-year-olds, 1.4 percent in evening schools were excluded.

Hong Kong

International schools, ESF Foundation schools, schools not participating in Secondary School Places Allocation System (SSPA), and schools with class size of less than 20 were excluded.

Hungary

Very small schools in remote areas and ungraded schools were excluded.

Iceland

Schools where there were fewer than five students were excluded. Iceland tested students in all schools, therefore no standard errors were calculated.

Ireland

Private schools and schools with fewer than five students were excluded.

Italy

Non-government schools were excluded.

Norway

Schools for Lapps were excluded.

Spain

Students from schools with fewer than 10 students in the defined grade and from schools where medium of instruction was not Castilian/Spanish were excluded.

Thailand

Laboratory schools and schools controlled by the Department of Fine Arts and Culture were excluded.

United States

Students in eligible schools not capable of taking the test (4.9 percent of each age group) were excluded.

Venezuela

Students attending private rural schools were excluded.

Technical Notes

In the Study of Reading Literacy, 32 countries assessed the reading achievement of students in the grades where most 9- and 14-year-olds were enrolled. See the Sources section of this publication for additional information on this study.

The reading literacy scores reported in the indicator tables were scaled using the Rausch procedure. The domain scores for each age group were scaled to a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. The average overall score is the mean of the domain scale scores.