More to improve gains: PISA and TIMMS scores in relation to economic and well-being factors in selected EU countries

The aim of this paper is to identify and assess the factors that are key to educational outcomes in primary education on the basis of the results of selected EU countries in the international PISA and TIMMS surveys and their correlations with selected characteristics of their education systems; a partial aim of this paper is to assess the position of the Czech Republic. The evaluation covers EU countries participating in TIMMS 2014 and PISA 2018. Two indexes were created for the evaluation - the financial index, which is composed of government expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP, spending per student in primary education in US dollars/student and of teachers’ salaries, average for primary and lower secondary education with 15 years’ experience, and the educational well-being index, which is composed of students per teacher ratio in primary education, teachers by age (50 years and over) in primary education (percentage of all teachers) and teachers (ISCED 1 and ISCED 2) working part-time (percentage of all teachers). By comparing the sum of the indexes with the PISA and TIMMS results, the selected countries were divided into four groups.