Sense of school belonging is related to school/classroom social membership. Students' sense of school belonging depends on teachers, classmates and parents, and arises from a positive interpersonal relationship based on care and support, which contributes to students' sense of community. Th e scientifi c problem analysed in the article is defi ned by the following question: which factors of school educational environment are signifi cant for the sense of school belonging and social membership to arise? Th e databases of tests, student and school questionnaires of the OECD PISA worldwide study were used for the survey. 4618 students aged 15 from 216 general and vocational schools of Lithuania participated in the survey. Analysis of data showed that some factors of school educational environment have a positive, while other ones-negative relation to the sense of school belonging.

We focus on two types of centralised national examinations (the 10th grade tests and Matura examination) that are being carried out in Lithuania for two decades. The aim of the paper is to analyse assessments of mathematics for the entire Lithuanian secondary school population that have no sampling errors while considering the factors of location, school ownership and gender as important indicators when judging about educational effectiveness in terms of quality and equity. We analyse the results of the 10th grade tests for the 2011-2015 period and the results of the same cohorts participating in the Matura examination. We observe that the distribution of the assessments of both exams is asymmetric with a positive skew. The median often is below the middle of the grade scale indicating poor performance or mismatch between knowledge and examination tasks. There are limited differences in assessments with respect to gender and school location, although we detect a tendency to have better mathematics achievement in private schools. The conclusions drawn from national assessment data is somewhat different from international data thus one cannot neglect national information for the development of educational policy. The variables analysed in the analysis has limited predictive power for achievements in mathematics and further analysis is called-for.

Neoliberal conceptions are pervading educational context worldwide. Lithuania is not an exception. Originally conceived as a sociocultural educational paradigm is being rapidly replaced by an economical paradigm. Constrained and short-sighted preoccupation with labour market needs is a sharp shift from humanistic and cultural vision of education as social good per se. Effectiveness and efficiency as an important endeavour of The New Public Management today permeates our education system. Data from international surveys show clear links between investment in education and student learning outcomes, yet, as EBPO PISA 2015 demonstrates, science classrooms in Lithuanian schools come short of laboratory equipment, leaving teachers with traditional chalk and talk methods, significantly lagging behind the international ones. We ask rhetorically “outputs without inputs”? Despite the criticism of narrow input-output mindset growing numbers of educational efficiency studies are observed. Moving away from economical concerns to focus on the educational process educational effectiveness research includes such variables as classroom microclimate, student motivation, socioeconomic and cultural status, which is proven to have tremendous influence on student learning outcomes and overall wellbeing. Effectiveness and efficiency research though seemingly complement each other but still rarely merge. Our most important educational documents – Lithuania’s progress strategy “Lithuania 2030”, National Education Strategy, Education Act, The Good School Concept are characterized by humanistic rhetoric stressing the importance of social and cultural aspects of education, but more than often indicators of success are oriented towards the implementation of the neoliberal economic education paradigm which leaves a lot to be desired.

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