Factors influencing academic performance in France and the United Kingdom

This book sets out to examine the determinants of academic performance, focusing on pupils from migrant backgrounds in France, in comparison with the situation in the United Kingdom. The results of the estimates carried out using a multilevel model, employing Mundlak's approach to address endogeneity bias, both confirm and qualify the findings published in the recent PISA 2012 report on French pupils. Although the scores of students from immigrant backgrounds in France are lower than those of native-born students, the performance gap between these two groups is significantly smaller than that reported by the PISA 2012 survey. Furthermore, contrary to the findings of the same survey, there appears to be no certainty that second-generation immigrant pupils perform better than their first-generation peers, once the relevant variables determining these pupils' academic performance have been controlled for.