This report delves into the relationship between fourth-grade students' home socioeconomic status (SES) and their reading achievement. Using the newly created Home Socioeconomic Status (Home SES) scale, which combines responses from students' parents/guardians with established SES indicators, the report reveals a strong positive correlation between home SES and reading performance, both internationally and within individual countries.
While the Home SES scale provides the most direct measurement of socioeconomic status in PIRLS 2021, the report also examines additional variables within the PIRLS questionnaires. These variables offer complementary insights into the resources available to students and schools. The report further explores how these variables align with and predict SES as reported by parents/guardians, especially in countries where the Home Questionnaire response rate was lower.
PIRLS Insights is an ongoing series of reports that provides deeper analysis of educational research topics using both PIRLS achievement data and contextual information. Two previous reports in the series, Aspects of Student Well-Being and Reading Achievement in PIRLS 2021 and COVID-19 Research Resources in PIRLS 2021, are also available here.
PIRLS 2021 was the fifth cycle of the PIRLS assessment which provides international comparative data on how well children read by assessing students’ reading achievement at the fourth grade, directed by the TIMSS and PIRLS International Study Center at Boston Colleges’ Lynch School of Education and Human Development.