A new international database on education quality: 1965-2010

The aim of this paper is to propose a new database allowing a comparative evaluation of the relative performance of schooling systems around the world. The authors measure this performance through pupils achievement in standardized tests. They merge all existing regional and international student achievement tests by using a specific methodology. Compared to other existing databases, this approach innovates on several ways, especially by including regional student achievement tests and intertemporal comparable indicators. The paper provides a dataset of indicators of quality of student achievement (IQSA) for 103 countries/areas in primary education and 111 countries/areas in secondary education between 1965 and 2010.