A new international database on education quality: 1965–2010

The aim of this article is to propose a new database allowing a comparative evaluation of the relative performance of schooling systems around the world. We measure this performance through pupils’ achievement in standardized tests. We merge all existing regional and international student achievement tests by using a specific methodology. When compared with other existing databases, our approach innovates in several ways, especially by including regional student achievement tests and intertemporal comparable indicators. We provide a data set of indicators of quality of student achievement for 103 countries/areas in primary education and 111 countries/areas in secondary education between 1965 and 2010.