Underachievement among disadvantaged pupils in Dutch primary education

Abstract

This article focuses on underachievement among disadvantaged pupils in Dutch primary education. Underachievement is defined as the discrepancy between cognitive ability and school performance. Based on data from the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education (NCO), enriched with individual information on cognitive learning potential and achievement test scores in reading comprehension, spelling and arithmetic-mathematics, we investigated to what extent underachievement is more likely to be identified among pupils with low-educated parents, those with a non-Western migration background and boys. The empirical analysis concerns 3,402 fourth grade pupils of school year 2020-2021. The results show considerable numbers of underachievers. Underachievement is mainly found among pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. In particular, pupils with low- and intermediate-educated parents are identified as underachievers in all three domains.