In order to use attendance monitoring within an integrative strategy for preventing, assessing and addressing cases of youth with school absenteeism, we need to know whether the attendance data collected by schools cover all students with (emerging) school attendance problems (SAPs). The current article addresses this issue by comparing administrative attendance data collected by schools with self-reported attendance data from the same group of students (age 15–16) in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (N = 4344). We seek to answer the following question: does an estimation of unauthorized absenteeism based on attendance data as collected by schools through electronic registration differ from self-reported unauthorized absenteeism and, if so, are the differences between administrative and self-reported unauthorized absenteeism systematic? Our results revealed a weak association between self-reported unauthorized school absenteeism and registered unauthorized school absenteeism. Boys, students in technical and vocational tracks and students who speak a foreign language at home, with a less-educated mother and who receive a school allowance, received more registered unauthorized absences than they reported themselves. In addition, pupils with school refusal and who were often authorized absent from school received more registered unauthorized absences compared to their self-reported unauthorized school absenteeism. In the discussion, we elaborate on the implications of our findings.

This study compared the effects of being in different tracks during the first three years of secondary education on student academic performance. A sample of a longitudinal cohort study in Flanders (3205 students in 46 schools) was used to describe the learning gains for mathematics and reading comprehension. Four tracks were distinguished, with a clear hierarchy in mean student academic ability. A comparison was made per pair of tracks that are hierarchically consecutive by matching students who are comparable across these tracks. Three matching methods were applied: propensity score matching, Mahalanobis distance matching and coarsened exact matching. Multilevel latent growth curves and generalized estimating equations were used to describe learning gains over the first three years of secondary education. The results reveal that hierarchically higher tracks benefit students' academic performance for mathematics and reading comprehension. However, effect sizes differ across tracks, time and outcomes. Moreover, differences in relative learning progress between compared tracks diminish over time.

This study assessed whether textbooks affect academic performance and engagement in reading comprehension in primary education in Flanders (Belgium). The data of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016 and a reassessment of this study in 2018 were used to describe students' learning progress in reading comprehension and evolution in engagement between the fourth and sixth grade. The sample consisted of 3051 students in 98 schools. The averages of students' learning progress and engagement were compared for five textbooks by using multilevel autoregression model and multilevel change score models. Contrasts between textbooks in average learning progress and engagement were also estimated. To control for differences between student populations that are educated with the different textbooks, we controlled for student's socioeconomic status, language and initial academic performance in fourth grade at the student-and school-level. The main hypotheses were that textbooks affect learning progress and reading engagement. This was based on the literature and prior (mainly) cross-sectional research which describe textbooks as playing an important role in the curriculum that is taught to students on a daily basis. The results of both models showed that textbooks do not affect student's average learning progress in reading comprehension and evolution in engagement between the fourth grade and sixth grade in Flanders. Hence, the hypotheses were rejected.

This study considers how class composition, in terms of between-student variability and the average level of achievement, is related to the academic development of students, and how these relationships can be explained by features of the class learning environment. At the start of secondary education, Flemish schools can decide autonomously how to group their students, leading to variation in class mean and class heterogeneity between classes. In a sample of 2,895 Flemish students from 158 classes, math achievement at the end of grade 8 was found to be unrelated to class heterogeneity, after accounting for previous achievement, intelligence, gender, and social background. Path analyses showed that class heterogeneity was positively associated with teachers' use of differentiated instruction to accommodate for differences between students, and that differentiated instruction was related to higher student achievement. Second, students were found to achieve better in classes with high average achievement. While this held true for all students, high achieving students seemed to benefit the most from being in a class with a high average level. Although class-average achievement was positively related to the academic orientation of the class, this did not explain the association between class mean level and achievement. These results suggest that, although it might be beneficial for the students in the high ability groups, grouping students in distinct classes according to ability might have little overall benefit, and emphasize that teachers' responses to student diversity might be more decisive for improving student achievement than homogenizing classes in terms of ability. Educational Impact and Implications StatementIn a sample of 2,895 Grade 8 students from 158 classes, students were found to achieve better when they were in a class with a high mean achievement level, after accounting for previous achievement, intelligence, gender, and social background. By contrast, class heterogeneity (i.e., the extent of betweenstudent differences) was largely unrelated to subsequent student achievement. Hence, while sorting students according to ability could benefit those sorted into high ability classes (given the benefits associated with being in a class with a high mean level), this would come at the expense of those sorted into low ability classes. Moreover, teachers in heterogeneous classes appeared to differentiate their instruction more to student capacities, which was subsequently related to higher student achievement.

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