Series on the Academic Gap

The Academic Gap


In this series, Patrice de Broucker reviews the economic instruments used by UNICEF and international agencies to assess inequities in education. Using PISA to look at comparative data across countries, Patrice offers a different approach to adequately measure the academic gap.

In this series

Looking at the academic gap is assessing how far behind are under-performing students from their peers performing on average. Since under-performance can be the product of social and financial barriers, a large academic gap may indicate inequity across students in a country.

Patrice’s take: the academic gap measures how far behind from the PISA “standard” 500 benchmark are students whose average scores on the three subjects (reading, mathematics and science) fall in the lowest 10th percentile of the performance distribution measured in PISA – considered the 10% weakest students in each country.

Academic gap: How deep societies let their kids sink academically?
9 May 2016

Academic gap: How much did it change between 2006 and 2012?
26 May 2016

Academic gap: Any progress since 2012?
26 February 2017