Chapter 3. Primary School Skill Development: from First to Sixth Grade continue to increase throughout the entire schooling period. The report by Passaretta and Skopek (2018a) shows significant cross-country variation in the development of the native-migrant achievement gap, with this gap being most pronounced in the early years but diminishing as children progress through education. The native-migrant achievement gap decreases throughout schooling, particularly in the UK (Skopek & Passaretta, 2018) and the Netherlands (Van Huizen, 2018), where these gaps close entirely by the end of schooling. In contrast, the gap persists into adolescence in Italy (Lovaglio et al., 2018). In Germany, the gap narrows in language, while it remains more stable in other domains (Passaretta & Skopek, 2018a). SES plays a major role in explaining these disparities, especially in Germany, where it accounts for a large portion of migrant disadvantages. Furthermore, we examine the development of the achievement gap between male and female students. The existing literature describes that this gap in literacy and numeracy increases during childhood (Lovaglio et al., 2018). Using U.S. data, Robinson and Lubienski (2011) report no math achievement differences between male and female students at the start of kindergarten. However, they observe that differences favoring males emerge in first grade. These differences widen between first and third grade but tend to stabilize from third to fifth grade. By the end of middle school, a significant achievement gap in math remains. In contrast, sex differences in reading achievement are already evident at the beginning of kindergarten, with females outperforming males. 48
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