“Separate but Equal”: Boarding and Inequality of Academic Achievement in Urban and Rural China

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 19. International Topics in Student, Family and School Relationships: China

Abstract

Abstract: This paper explores the moderating effect of boarding on inequality of academic achievement, and whether such an effect varies between urban and rural areas in China. I hypothesize that boarding at school alleviates academic inequality among students of different social origins through two major mechanisms: (1) rigid school-home dissociation, and (2) the egalitarian ethos of the boarding school, including a unified curriculum arrangement, unbiased teacher preferences, compensational resource distribution for students of lower social origins and common organized extra-curricular activities. Such an alleviation effect is expected to be larger in urban areas than in rural areas, due to different historical backgrounds and institutional contexts. I conduct propensity-score weighted regressions based on the data from the China Education Panel Survey 2013-2014. The findings show that all else being equal, boarding is more beneficial to students of lower social origins than to those of higher social origins. In addition, boarding students experience more rigid school-home dissociation and more egalitarian teaching ethos than their non-boarding counterparts. These features are more evident in urban schools. In other words, boarding schools in China play an important role in alleviating inequality of academic achievement within schools, and urban boarding schools are doing better at this task than rural ones.

Author

• Junchao Tang, Harvard University