In the study that strives to contextualize the findings of several international comparative knowledge assessment studies within the broader context of educational systems and critically analyzes certain shifts in the interpretation of the results, we have carried out a separate comparative analysis of reading literacy (i.e., scores in the international comparative study PIRLS 2006) for children in eight- and nine-year primary schools in Slovenia. We demonstrated that the differences between the two groups are not statistically significant on any of the measures of reading literacy; however, score differences are sigificant with regard to sex, parental education, and preschool attendance for both groups. We separately examined whether possible differences in the samples of children from eight- and nine-year primary school programs (differences in sex ratio, or subgroups with regard to parental education or preschool attendance) could have been the reason for nearly the same scores in both groups. While these hypotheses were not confirmed too, we went on to consider possible systemic and substantive reasons for the relatively small (and, in our view, insufficient) effect of an additional year of schooling in the nine-year program in comparison to the eight-year program, which among other things may also be reflected in major or excessive pressure on teaching and learning in the upper grades of primary school.
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