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Recent empirical literature has highlighted that adolescents show gender differences in academic performance. The present study intends to disentangle the contribution of some less well-known factors to that gender difference in the fourth year of secondary education. To this aim, we use recent methodological advances in decomposition techniques. We observe that girls are less likely to get low scores than boys. More interestingly, gender differences in the returns to expectations about the future have been found to explain most of this advantage for girls, while boys rely more on their initial learning skills to pass. Additionally, we found that boys are more prone to misbehaviour than girls, whereas boys’ academic results are more sensitive to changes in their family socio-economic status, which also explains a significant portion of the gender differences in academic achievement.

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As children spend more and more time on electronic devices and social networks, there is a growing concern about the influence that these activities may have on their development and social well-being. In this context, the present research is aimed at analysing the influence that Internet use may have on 6th grade primary school students’ academic performance in Spain. In order to do so, we have employed a methodological approach that combines econometric and interval multiobjective programming techniques, which has let us identify the traits and Internet use patterns that allow students to maximise their academic performance in terms of scores in four competences. Our results show that, while daily use of the Internet to listen to music or search for information about other topics of interest can favor the maximization of educational outcomes, the use of social networks should be limited as much as possible to avoid hindering the educational process.

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Parents and their children's expectations on educational achievement have been highlighted in the literature as proper proxy indicators for students' forthcoming performance. In this research we intend to measure the effect of these indicators accounting for the existence of endogeneity-due to their reciprocal relationshipand also their correlation with unobservable variables conditioning students' achievement. The aim is to determine the extent to which the potential positive correlation between expectations and children's educational performance could help to overcome the limiting effect of low socio-economic characteristics of the household on the latter and, consequently, the well-being of children in the medium and long run. Our results show a positive influence of the agreement of parental and children's expectations on students' achievement and on the likelihood of children's enrollment in a particular academic track. In addition, parental expectations have been found to be dependent on family socio-economic background, what supports the persistence of strong barriers to socioeconomic mobility of children. We suggest policy interventions as, e.g., fostering the participation of both parents and children on university and professional orientation in early stages of secondary education, so they could have complete and symmetric information to set their expectations on a realistic basis.

It has long been thought that encouraging children to read is likely to be beneficial for the development of their literacy skills. However, a lot less attention has been paid to the issue of whether what students read matters for their academic progress. This paper therefore considers the association between the frequency young people read five different types of text (comics, short stories, books, newspapers and magazines) and their scores on standardised reading and mathematics tests. Drawing upon large longitudinal census data from the largest administrative region in Spain, we find that frequency of reading comics, newspapers and magazines is not associated to the development of children's cognitive skills. In contrast, there is clear and consistent evidence of a positive and increasing association between the frequency children read books and their academic achievement. We consequently conclude that recommended reading time for children should be focused upon the time they spend reading books and not other material.

Homework has traditionally been considered positive for students’ academic achievement, to the extent that it makes children more responsible while learning. Nevertheless, making students do a large amount of homework has been one of the most criticised practices in recent years. Parental associations have long held the view that Spanish elementary school pupils spend too much time on homework. This situation is so alarming that it has recently caused a ‘homework strike’, which has been supported by many children's parents. Furthermore, being assigned an excessive amount of homework is a serious problem which extends well beyond Spain. In light of this context, this article aims to provide new evidence on the relationship between homework and academic performance. To carry out this research, rich longitudinal census data, together with a twin fixed‐effects approach and value‐added models, have been used. In this way, we can control for variables that are the same within twins, allowing us to generate a better understanding of the association between homework time and primary children's academic achievement. Our main finding is that homework is not associated with young people's academic achievement (at least within this specific country context).