Abstract
This chapter reports on a project that utilised data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) study which followed the PISA 2003 cohort from secondary school along their post-school pathways. This project investigated what differentiates low-performing students who have positive and successful outcomes in the years after leaving school from those who have less successful outcomes.
Members of the LSAY Y03 cohort who did not reach Proficiency Level 3 on the Mathematics literacy component of PISA made up the target sample for this project. Their pathways over the subsequent 4 years, through school and into further education, training and the labour force, were tracked, and those who had successful outcomes by age 19 were identified. Similar analyses were also conducted with a sample of high performers, those who achieved at Proficiency Level 5 or 6 on the mathematics assessment, to provide a comparison with the results for the low performers.
Multilevel logistic regression analyses were carried out to identify those factors that distinguished between low performers who ‘succeeded’, in that they were fully engaged in study, training, employment or a combination of these activities and were happy with various aspects of their lives, and those with less positive outcomes. The sample included 1,596 students from 294 schools. Those who were from high or medium socioeconomic backgrounds, who were scored high on the instrumental motivation scale, enjoyed school, got along well with their teachers, planned to undertake an apprenticeship or came from schools in non-metropolitan areas were more likely to be successful than other sample members, while those who did not have any plans for what they might do after leaving school, particularly girls without firm career or study plans, were less likely to have a successful outcome.
The comparisons made with the outcomes for low and high-performing students highlighted the importance of a positive and supportive school climate, in which all students can find a teacher with whom they can get along. Ensuring that the school experience is a positive one not only impacts on young people’s lives at the time they are at school but appears to continue to influence them once they have left.
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Notes
- 1.
Similarly, the PISA samples for 2006 and 2009 have also formed the commencing cohort for successive waves of LSAY.
- 2.
As this group of young people were already a sub-group of the original LSAY sample, use of the existing sample or attrition weights for the Y03 cohort was inappropriate.
- 3.
Previous research with the LSAY data that has used these variables has reported that all of the items load together sufficiently in factor analyses (Hillman & McMillan, 2005) as to be used in this way.
- 4.
It is acknowledged that not all of the young people could accurately be described as ‘students’ in 2007, however because the bulk of the variables included at this level of the model were indeed collected while the young people were students, this is the term that will be used to describe Level 1 influences.
- 5.
In Australia, Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions are a government-owned system of colleges that offer post-secondary qualifications, often with a practical training focus (e.g. vocational education and training). Courses are developed in consultation with business and industry.
- 6.
The data behind these graphs are provided in the Appendix.
- 7.
The predicted probability is calculated as probability = odds/(1 + odds).
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Appendix: Odds-Ratio Coefficients for Logistic Regression Analyses
Appendix: Odds-Ratio Coefficients for Logistic Regression Analyses
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Thomson, S., Hillman, K. (2013). Success Despite the Odds? Outcomes for Low-Performing Students in Australia. In: Prenzel, M., Kobarg, M., Schöps, K., Rönnebeck, S. (eds) Research on PISA. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4458-5_11
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