Explores the characteristics of education systems that are successful in science through secondary analysis of data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011.

Summary
This research, for the Department of Education in Northern Ireland (DENI), explores the characteristics of education systems that are successful in science through secondary analysis of data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011, and from the TIMSS encyclopaedia.

Northern Ireland participated in TIMSS for the first time in 2011. Although the performance of the country’s nine- and ten-year-olds in maths was strong, with pupils from Northern Ireland significantly outperforming 44 of the 50 participating countries, their performance in science was not as strong, with 17 countries doing significantly better. In March 2015, DENI commissioned NFER to conduct secondary analysis of the TIMSS 2011 data and encyclopaedia to explore the characteristics of seven education systems (Czech Republic, England, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Slovak Republic) which outperformed Northern Ireland in the TIMSS 2011 science assessment.