Changes in Cognitive Capital in Eastern and Western Europe: Some Implications from School Assessment Studies

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of national differences in the relative increase or decrease in scores on PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS between the year 1995 and the year 2019. We found that former Eastern Bloc countries and former Soviet republics had significantly stronger growth in PISA scores from 2000 to 2018 when the lower, on average, starting levels of school and economic performance are taken into account. However, this finding could hardly be replicated in the case of TIMSS between 1995 and 2019 and PIRLS between 2001 and 2016. We examine possible reasons for this finding, such as differences in the relative decline in cognitive ability between countries, and we explore their implications with regard to where future centres of cognitive capital may be located.