Trends in educational inequalities in Ireland’s primary schools: an analysis based on TIMSS data (2011–2019)

Background

Socioeconomic characteristics are persistently and systematically related to academic outcomes, despite long-standing efforts to reduce educational inequality. Ireland has a strong policy focus on alleviating educational disadvantage and has seen significant improvements in mathematics and science performance in recent years. This study investigates patterns of socioeconomic inequalities in 4th grade students’ performance in mathematics and science between 2011 and 2019. Two measures of inequality are examined: (i) inequality of achievement, i.e., the degree of variability in student performance and (ii) inequality of opportunity, i.e., the extent to which student performance is related to background characteristics.

Methods

Data for 4th-grade students in Ireland from TIMSS 2011, TIMSS 2015 and TIMSS 2019 were used. Mathematics and science achievement were the main outcome measures. The home resources for learning index was used as a proxy for student-level socioeconomic status. School-level socioeconomic status was examined according to schools’ participation in the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) programme, which is the Department of Education’s main policy initiative addressing educational disadvantage. Descriptive and multilevel regression analyses were conducted to explore variability in student performance and to investigate the variance in achievement explained by socioeconomic factors, across cycles and subjects.

Results

Between 2011 and 2015, between-student and between-school differences in mathematics and science performance became smaller, as shown by the decrease in standard deviations and the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). This points to reduced inequality of achievement. Between 2015 and 2019, a small increase in inequality of achievement was observed.

Regarding inequality of opportunity, students’ home resources for learning and school disadvantaged status were statistically significantly related to mathematics and science achievement across all three cycles. Overall variance explained by these two variables increased from 2011 to 2019. This points towards increasing inequality of opportunity over the period examined.

Performance gaps between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged schools have been reduced over time; however, the relationship between home resources for learning and achievement appears to have strengthened. Findings were consistent for both subjects.

Conclusions

The findings indicate that improvements in overall performance do not necessarily reflect improved equality. Ireland’s improvements in average mathematics and science performance between 2011 and 2015 were accompanied by reduced inequality of achievement. Performance differences between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged schools have been reduced over time, suggesting that the DEIS policy is meeting its goal of narrowing achievement gaps based on concentrations of educational disadvantage. However, inequality of opportunity linked to student-level socioeconomic factors (i.e., home resources for learning) appears to have increased over time. These findings are valuable in the context of measuring and tracking educational inequalities.