August 2015: Advanced academic performance: exploring country-level differences in the pursuit of educational excellence

While every country strives for its students to have advanced achievement in some form, competence is often a higher policy priority than excellence, and shrinking minimum competency gaps is a higher priority than closing excellence gaps. In this brief, educational excellence is defined as the percent of students who meet or exceed the TIMSS advanced benchmark. Policy implications are highlighted, along with recommendations for further research into excellence gaps.