Mathematics Achievement in Primary and Secondary Schools: A Comparison Between Students in European Public Schools and Students in Schools Following the Luxembourgish Curriculum

Luxembourg is a highly diverse country in terms of the socioeconomic, sociocultural, and linguistic composition of its population. To deal more adequately with the language diversity of the student population and to encounter educational inequalities that are assumed to result (at least partially) out of a curriculum with high language expectations, the Luxembourgish government has broadened the educational offer by introducing European public schools (EPS), which allow students to select one main language of instruction among the available language sections (i.e., German, French, and English).
By integrating EPS into the Luxembourg School Monitoring Programme “Épreuves Standardisées” (ÉpStan), the full-cohort data including primary and secondary school students collected in autumn of the school year 2022/23 was analysed to understand whether EPS students differ in their achievement in mathematics from students in schools following the Luxembourgish curriculum (LC).
Regarding mathematics achievement in primary school, EPS students were found to perform better (higher standardized test scores) than students in schools following the LC, and this particularly so in later school years. In secondary school, EPS students performed better in mathematics than their peers in the intermediary (ESG) and lowest (ESG-VP) school track, while staying below the performance of students in the highest track (ESC). Looking at student subgroups with specific background characteristics, the findings offer a preliminary indication that EPS students with a low SES and/or students speaking another language than Luxembourgish/German (i.e., Portuguese) perform better in mathematics than their respective peers in schools following the LC.
These preliminary findings will be discussed in light of important methodological limitations (e.g., small Ns in EPS, different tracking approaches) before presenting potential explanations (e.g., differences in student population, structural differences, assumed better linguistic fit in EPS) and implications (e.g., targeted diversification of the EPS student population, integration of EPS characteristics in schools following the LC).