During the prolonged pandemic with periods of lockdowns, children could not attend educational institutions. According to UNESCO (2021) data, the most affected countries of complete or partial school closure in Europe during the period from 2020.02.16 to 2021.10.31 was Latvia with 80% closure or partial closure of the whole schooling period, followed by Slovenia with 70% and the Czech Republic with 65% closure or partial closure. During this time, education and educational resources were dependent on family socioeconomic factors and support from governmental institutions, especially in those countries where the school closure periods were the longest.

While the data from PIRLS2022, TIMSS2022 and PISA2021 are still gathered and processed researchers of this proposal wanted to find out whether there is a proof in international comparative studies of education that learners’ family socioeconomic status (SES), as it is reported in parental or learners’ questionnaire, have impact on academic self-reported competences, i.e., academic self-concept in reading, Mathematics, Science, and financial matters. The data from International Association’s for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 of 4^th grade students and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 of 4^th grade students’ parental questionnaire, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 study of 15-year-old students’ Financial Literacy Questionnaire and Students’ Questionnaire were used from countries across Europe: Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Russian Federation, and the Slovak Republic. Countries were chosen to represent Western and Eastern Europe as well as High GDP and Low GDP countries.

Reports of international comparative studies of education have well documented the significant role of SES in achievement (Broer et al., 2019; OECD, 2020; Mullis et al., 2017), while meta-analysis studies on family SES show that in hight GDP English speaking countries SES has proved moderate to very strong impact on child’s achievement (Harwell et al., 2017) and thereby to child’s self-beliefs in reading literacy and Mathematics, as achievement in these domains strongly correlates with academic self-concept (Geske et al., 2021a; Geske et al., 2021b; Mullis et al., 2017; Marsh et al., 2006). Meta-analysis studies on SES in developing countries have proved less important impact on child’s achievement (Kim et al., 2019). Meta-analysis studies on child’s cognitive development proved a small but significant impact of SES (Letourneau et al., 2011). The analysis of PISA 2012 study showed that students from advanced SES were more confident in their ability to solve problems of Mathematics (OECD, 2015), i.e., SES has its impact on 15-year-old student self-efficacy in Mathematics. The influence of family SES on students’ self-reported competence in other domains is not yet studied, and current studies show a wide range of variety in the significance of SES.

Self-reported competence from the perspective of this study includes academic self-concept and self-efficacy as it is defined in the international comparative studies. The PIRLS2016 and TIMSS2019 define academic self-concept as student’s own perceived competence (Hooper et al., 2015; Mullis et al., 2016). The PISA2018 makes a distinction between self-concept and self-efficacy, by defining self-concept as students perceived ability in a domain (OECD, 2019) and self-efficacy as students’ perceived capacity of performing specific tasks (OECD, 2019). Typically, self-concept and self-efficacy are measured in the Likert-type scale while self-confidence is measured with percentage scale, but, as in the PISA2018 students’ competence in money matters is measured in the Likert-type scale, the authors presume it to be a self-concept scale with different statements of the Likert-type scale than the usual one. 

The PIRLS2016, TIMSS2019 of 4th grade students and the PISA2018 of 15-year-old students’ data from 12 countries was analysed with linear regression models. The students’ self-belief in the domain was used as dependent variable whereas the SES and achievement in the domain as independent variables. The PIRLS2016 and TIMSS2019 studies use a “Home Resources for Learning” scale for SES measurement. Scale includes number of books and children at home, number of home study supports (internet or own room), highest parental occupation, and highest level of education of either parent. The Cronbach’s Alpha (CA) reliability coefficient for countries of comparison differ form 0.64 – 0.81 in PIRLS2016 and from 0.63 – 0.78 in TIMSS2019. In the PISA2018 SES is measured with the index of economic, social, and cultural status. This composite score is computed from three factors: highest parental occupation, highest parental education, and home possessions. Home possessions include items that characterise wealth, home or cultural possession, home educational resources, and home ICT resources, for example, number of books at home, a child’s own room, a link to internet, works of art. The CA reliability coefficient for countries of comparison differs from 0.59 to 0.74. In the PIRLS2016 and TIMS2019 students’ self-reported competences are measured with “Confident in [reading]/[Mathematics]/[Science]” scale. This continuous scale contains numerous statements depending on the domain. Students indicate their answers in the Likert-type scale from “Agree a lot” to “Disagree a lot”. The CA reliability coefficient for countries of comparison differs from 0.68 to 0.83 in PIRLS 2016, from 0.84 to 0.89 in TIMSS 2019 Mathematics, from 0.8 to 0.86 in TIMSS2019 Science. Two self-reported competence measures were selected from the PISA2018. To measure students’ self-concept in reading, the index of perception of competence in reading was used. It contains three statements with options in the Likert-type scale from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree”. The CA reliability coefficient for countries of comparison differs from 0.68 to 0.86. Students’ confidence level in financial matters is measured with the index of confidence in dealing with money matters by aggregating students answering to six Likert-type scale statements from “Very confident” to “Not confident at all”. The index is standardised to have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1 across the PISA2018 study. Results showed that linear regression models explained from 1% to 27% of variation of students’ self-beliefs depending on country and subject domain.

This study proved the impact of SES. Overall conclusion is that SES has small to very small but significant impact in all countries of comparison in all studies, except for the TIMSS2019 Mathematics, where almost all values for SES in linear regression models, when analysed together with achievement, were not significant. In this study, the authors did not find strong correlation between SES impact and GDP. The largest difference between countries where in PISA where Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, the Slovak Republic had twice as large impact of SES comparing with Germany on 15-year-old students’ self-reported competence in reading. On average, the Standardized Regression Coefficient of SES impact on 4th grade students’ reading self-reported competences in PIRLS2016 was 0.08, it varied between 0.05 and 0.09, except for the Russian Federation where it was 0.16. Standardized Regression Coefficient of SES impact on 4th grade students’ self-reported competences in the TIMSS2019 Science varied between 0.05 and 0.08, except for Austria, Germany and the Russian Federation where it was between 0.10 and 0.12. SES was not significant for students in Ireland. The results of SES impact on students’ self-reported competences in the TIMSS2019 Mathematics were surprising as for all countries of comparison, except for Austria, the Standardized Regression Coefficient was negative or was not significant. It might be that SES and achievement intercorrelations are too strong and these variables should be analysed separately. The model explained variation of student self-reported competences between 1% and 27%. In the PIRLS2016 between countries of comparison the model explained 15%-24%, in the TIMSS2019 Mathematics – 18%-27%, TIMSS2019 Science – 3%-13%, PISA2019 reading – 10%-25% (the Russian Federation did not participate in self-reported competence module), and in the PISA2019 Finances – 1%-4% (Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France did not participate in financial competence module).

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