Home Environment Support

Home environment support has four components: (1) “home resources”, (2) “student speak the language of test”, (3) “emphasis on early literacy and numeracy development”, and (4) “literacy and numeracy readiness for school”. Availability of home resources for learning and digital devices for fourth graders and of educational resources for eighth graders were significantly related to average scores in math, science and reading in TIMSS and PIRLS in all cycles. The strength of the statistical relationship was highest when students with Many Resources were compared with those with Few Resources. There was no consistent relationship between the frequency of speaking the language of the test at home and test scores regardless of the cycle or the subject matter. Fourth graders who spent more years at pre-primary school scored higher, on average, than those who spent fewer years. However, this relationship did not apply to the 15-year-olds in the PISA test. Furthermore, the combined effect of pre-primary education attendance and parental engagement in early numeracy and literacy activities had a stronger impact on academic achievement of fourth graders than had each of these two factors alone. Average scores in mathematics, science and reading were significantly associated with how well students could do literacy and numeracy tasks when they began primary school.