School segregation across the world: Has any progress been made in reducing the separation of the rich from the poor?

• In Event: Understating Exclusion and Inequality: The Value of International Datasets for Policy Development – The Thomas J. Alexander Fellowship Programme, I

Proposal

The uneven distribution of students from different social classes across schools is a matter of concern to educational policymakers across the world. Although the extent and mechanisms by which school composition effects are displayed is a contested topic, there is a general agreement that composition matters and shapes educational outcomes (Trupp, 1995). Indeed, previous research has suggested that having a higher proportion of students from advantaged backgrounds as one’s peers has a positive effect on a range of educational outcomes (Van Ewijk and Sleegers, 2010). Moreover, student performance is more strongly related to socio-economic status than to other compositional characteristics such as gender, immigrant condition or race (Palardy, Rumberger and Truman, 2015). Consequently, schooling systems which tend to cluster low socio-economic status students together could be increasing educational inequality and reducing social mobility over time (Levacic and Woods. 2002).

In this study, we aim to contribute to this small but growing field of the literature on how between-school segregation compares across the world. Our contribution over and above existing studies is as follows: first, rather than focusing on only one region or “type” of education system, we include all OECD countries. This provides us with a more comprehensive set of benchmarks to compare each individual country against. Second, some previous papers in this literature have focused on segregation measures using a single threshold – typically the median value upon an index of socioeconomic status (e.g. Jenkins, Micklewright and Schnepf, 2008). However, such an approach potentially neglects important and interesting differences, such as segregation between the poorest (or richest) students and the rest of the population, and may therefore offers only a partial insight into the level of segregation across education systems. Finally, a significant limitation of the existing literature is that it is cross-sectional, and has not considered whether countries have made any progress in reducing between-school segregation over time. With 6 cycles and 15 years of PISA data available, this represents one of the first studies to consider this issue.

Our results show that only few countries show improvements in their levels of segregation between 2000 and 2015. Out of the 35 countries included in this work, 29 do not show any significant differences in the pairwise comparison between PISA 2000 and 2015. Moreover, trends over time using our point estimates when comparing the poor versus non-poor population (using percentiles 20 as a threshold to estimate school segregation in this case) show that there is no important variation when estimating the best linear fit across our measures of segregation per country over time. Although our point estimates are subject to uncertainty, the pattern is consistent across countries and seems to reflect low levels of improvement in school segregation for those living in poor conditions.

The present study provides substantive evidence about the current state of segregation at schools. It highlights how, in many countries, children from rich backgrounds are still effectively segregated from children from poor backgrounds. Moreover, we show how this situation is not likely to change any time soon. Despite important rhetoric and policy efforts designed to narrow the achievement gap, provide high quality education to all pupils and raise the educational attainment of disadvantaged groups, significant levels of school segregation still remain for young people from different social backgrounds. This has important social and policy implications.


References

Jenkins, S., Micklewright, J. and Schnepf, S. (2008) "Social Segregation in Secondary Schools: How Does England Compare with Other Countries?" Oxford Review of Education 34.1 21-37.
Levaçić, R, and Woods, P.A. (2002) "Raising School Performance in the League Tables (Part 1): Disentangling the Effects of Social Disadvantage." British Educational Research Journal 28.2 207-26.
Palardy, G. J. (2013) "High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment." American Educational Research Journal 50.4 714-54.
Palardy, G. J., Rumberger, R. W., and Butler, T. (2015) "The Effect of High School Socioeconomic, Racial, and Linguistic Segregation on Academic Performance and School Behaviors." Teachers College Record 117.12 Teachers College Record, 2015, Vol.117 (12).
Thrupp, M. (1995) "The School Mix Effect: The History of an Enduring Problem in Educational Research, Policy and Practice." British Journal of Sociology of Education 16.2: 183-203.
Van Ewijk, R., and Sleegers, P. (2010) "The Effect of Peer Socioeconomic Status on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis." Educational Research Review 5.2: 134-50.

Authors

• Rodrigo Torres, Institute of Education, University College London

• John Jerrim, Institute of Education, University College London

• Gabriel Gutierrez, Institute of Education, University College London