The high performance of Dutch and Flemish 15-year-old native pupils: Explaining country differences in math scores between highly stratified educational systems

This paper aims to explain the high scores of 15-year-old native pupils in the Netherlands and Flanders by comparing them with the scores of pupils in countries with the same highly stratified educational system. Therefore, we compare only the educational performance of 15-year-old pupils from the following regions: the Netherlands, Flanders, Wallonia, the German Länder, the Swiss German cantons, and Austria. We use the data from the general Program for International Pupil Assessment (PISA) 2006 together with the specific PISA data of Germany and Switzerland also from 2006. We apply a multilevel model that takes into account the individual-, curriculum-, and system-level features in these highly stratified educational systems. The high scores of the Dutch pupils can be explained by the size of the Netherlands’ vocational sector. The high Flemish scores can be only partly explained by the high curriculum mobility (as indicated by the lowest level of entrance selection). Central exit exams are not a good explanation of the high Dutch scores. Despite being limited to highly stratified systems, we still find educational policies and arrangements to have significant effects on the educational performance of pupils.