here - TIMSS and PIRLS Home - Boston College

42 chapter 1: international student achievement in reading
a symbol indicates no significant difference in performance, and a circle with
a triangle pointing down indicates significantly lower performance than the
comparison country or Canadian province.
The results in Exhibit 1.2 help interpret the typically small differences
in achievement among the PIRLS 2006 participants shown close to each
other in Exhibit 1.1. The Russian Federation, Hong Kong SAR, and Singapore
were the three top-performing countries, and fourth-grade students in the
Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Colombia had similar average
achievement. Considering the five participants with the highest achievement,
the Russian Federation and Hong Kong SAR had significantly higher average
achievement than all of the remaining participants except the other three in
the top five, while the Canadian province of Alberta also performed similarly
to Luxembourg and the province of Ontario. In turn, Singapore and the
Canadian province of British Columbia showed no significant difference
compared to two additional countries—Italy and Hungary. Luxembourg,
the Canadian province of Ontario, Italy, and Hungary also performed very
well. Luxembourg and the Canadian province of Ontario were outperformed
only by the Russian Federation and Hong Kong SAR, Italy by those two and
the Canadian province of Alberta, and Hungary also by Luxembourg. Next,
although outperformed by the highest achieving countries and provinces,
Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium (Flemish), Bulgaria, and
Denmark achieved at comparable levels, and had higher achievement than
the majority of other participants.
Looking at the other end of the achievement continuum in Exhibit 1.2,
the lowest performing countries were each, in turn, outperformed by one or
two additional countries. That is, South Africa had lower achievement than all
the other countries, while Kuwait and Morocco had higher achievement than
South Africa (but no other countries). In turn, Qatar had higher achievement
than the previous 3 countries, Indonesia than the previous 4 countries, Iran
than the previous 5 countries, Trinidad and Tobago together with Macedonia
than the previous 6 countries, and Georgia had higher achievement than
the previous 8 countries. The next cluster of countries after Georgia all had
similar achievement—Romania, Norway, Belgium (French), and Moldova.