ICCS 2009 Technical Report - IEA

their parents’ levels of education). ICCS classified levels of parental education according to theInternational Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) (UNESCO, 2006).Indices of parental education were constructed by recoding educational qualifications into thefollowing categories:(0) None;(1) ISCED 1 (primary education);(2) ISCED 2 (lower secondary);(3) ISCED 3 (upper secondary);(4) ISCED 4 (non-tertiary post-secondary) or ISCED 5B (vocational tertiary);(5) ISCED 5A (theoretically oriented tertiary) or ISCED 6 (post-graduate).Indices with these categories were provided for each student’s mother (MISCED) and father(FISCED). The index for highest educational level of parental education (HISCED) corresponded tothe higher ISCED level of either parent.For some ICCS analyses, a recoded version of HISCED was used in order to recode levels ofeducation into approximate years of education (index PAREDYRS). Table D.1 in Appendix Dshows, for each participating country, the number of years that were assumed to correspondto each category. Many cases of variation were found within the same levels, which made itnecessary to choose approximate midpoints. For students who reported that their parents hadnot finished primary school, a value of two years was chosen on the assumption that mostparents who had not finished primary school would have had at least some schooling.Students’ expected education was derived from a question that asked students which level ofeducation they expected to achieve. The resulting index (SISCED) had the following categories:(0) No completion of ISCED 2;(1) Completion of ISCED 2 (lower secondary);(2) Completion of ISCED 3 (upper secondary);(3) Completion of ISCED 4 (non-tertiary post-secondary) or ISCED 5B (vocational tertiary);(5) Completion of ISCED 5A (theoretically oriented tertiary) or ISCED 6 (post-graduate).For some analyses, this index was recoded into approximate years of further schooling basedon the approximate years of schooling for the ISCED categories shown in Table D.2 inAppendix D. The index EXPEDYRS consisted of the approximate years of schooling minus thecorresponding numbers of years in the target grade.The ICCS student questionnaire collected information on the country of birth of the studentsand their parents. The index of immigrant background (IMMIG) that was created from these datahad three categories:(1) Students without immigrant background (students born in the country of assessment orwho had at least one parent born in the country); 1(2) Students born in the country of assessment but whose parent(s) were born in anothercountry;(3) Students born outside the country of assessment and whose parent(s) were born in anothercountry.1 Students who were born abroad but had at least one parent born in the country of the test were also classified as studentswithout immigrant background.158ICCS 2009 technical report