This open access book focuses on trends in educational inequality using twenty years of grade 8
student data collected from 13 education systems by the IEA's Trends in Mathematics and Science
Study (TIMSS) between 1995 and 2015. While the overall positive association between family
socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement is well documented in the literature the
magnitude of this relationship is contingent on social contexts and is expected to vary by
education system. Research on how such associations differ across societies and how the
strength of these relationships has changed over time is limited. This study therefore
addresses an important research and policy question by examining changes in the inequality of
educational outcomes due to SES over this 20-year period and also examines the extent to which
the performance of students from disadvantaged backgrounds has improved over time in each
education system. Education systems generally aim to narrow the achievement gap between low-
and high-SES students and to improve the performance of disadvantaged students. However the
lack of quantifiable and comprehensible measures makes it difficult to assess and monitor the
effect of such efforts. In this study a novel measure of SES that is consistent across all
TIMSS cycles allows students to be categorized into different socioeconomic groups. This
measure of SES may also contribute to future research using TIMSS trend data. Readers will gain
new insight into how educational inequality has changed in the education systems studied and
how such change may relate to the more complex picture of macroeconomic changes in those
societies.
