Why Do Socially Disadvantaged Students in Australia Have Lower Academic Performance Than in Canada?

• In Event: Socioeconomic Segregation in Schools and Student Achievements: Cross-National Comparisons, Differential Effects, and School Choice

Abstract

"While societal factors such as poverty are associated with educational inequalities and the
stunted performance of socially disadvantaged students, educational policies related to choice and competition may also play a role, particularly through a school’s social composition. We explore this possibility by examining educational inequalities in two prosperous countries that have similar national contexts but that have embraced educational marketization to different degrees, namely, Australia and Canada.
In both countries, where most public schools are low-performing, school choice
advocates argue that the ability to choose a non-local public school is a matter of fairness and equity. According to this line of argument, students should not be forced to attend a low-performing school. In fact, it is argued that the state has a moral obligation not to force families to send their children to the local schools if those schools are underperforming.
However, the literature suggests that marketizing policies might have an indirect negative
effect on academic outcomes via school segregation, particularly after parents select their
schools of choice. In other words, school choice leads to increased segregation, and social
segregation has negative consequences for academic achievement, and possibly for a whole host of other, non-academic outcomes. Building on this understanding of the relationships among marketization, segregation, and achievement, we thus compare the Australian education system with the Canadian education system because these two countries have developed somewhat differently when it comes to the marketization of K-12 schools.
We compare the two systems to examine how different degrees of school marketization
might correlate with school segregation, and in turn, school achievement outcomes, especially among socially disadvantaged students. For the purpose of this comparison, we use data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has been administered every three years since 2000 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We use data from PISA 2009 because it includes a measure of school segregation. The PISA 2009 dataset for Australia includes 14,251 students and 353 schools. The PISA 2009 dataset for Canada includes 23,207 students and 978 schools.
Based on the achievement data, educational policies, achievement outcomes, and a
survey of principals and students, we show that the Australian education system has more choice and competition, is more socially segregated, and has larger between-school inequalities of educational experiences than in Canada. These differences are linked with lower academic performance for socially disadvantaged students in Australia, but show no benefit for that country’s socially advantaged students.
Now that school choice is part of the educational landscape around the globe, few people
in these two countries would argue that it should be rolled back. But policies that promote
competition, incentivizing schools to adopt practices that differentiate access to quality options for different students, are problematic from both an equity and effectiveness perspective. Our findings thus suggest that if these countries aim to increase academic achievement, especially for socially disadvantaged students, then future educational policies should promote school social integration by finding ways to reduce competition and segregation."

Authors

• Ee-Seul Yoon, University of Manitoba

• Laura Perry, Murdoch University

• Christopher A. Lubienski, Indiana University