Consequences of Educational Upgrading: The Emergence, Expansion and Universalization of Shadow Education Worldwide

• In Event: The consequences of educational upgrading: persisting inequalities?

Proposal

The presentation focuses on one particular consequence of educational expansion which has become apparent in all societies alike: the emergence, expansion and universalization of shadow education and how it affects social inequality. Clearly, investments in shadow education may largely contribute to the persistence of inequality if students from families with high economic, social, and cultural status (ESCS) make more use of such extra-curricular, fee-based lessons and by this possibly increase their chances of better educational placement thus securing their advantaged status.
International research highlighted the expansion of supplementary education markets worldwide and often emphasized that such a development would inevitably result in growing educational and social inequality in numerous countries. However, research often falls short of providing empirical evidence based on directly comparable, international data on the subject, enabling us to scrutinize at which developmental stage shadow education systems become a threat to equality in educational opportunities.
Through the lens of new institutionalist theory (NIT) the global growth of shadow education systems and their increasing cross-national similarities is highlighted, pointing to the emerging convergence of shadow schooling across the globe. Consecutively, shadow education systems are classified from high (“advanced) to low (“traditional”) developed systems, followed by some hypotheses on how social inequality is affected in countries with different shadow sectors.
To elaborate at which point shadow education becomes a threat to the proclaimed equality of educational opportunities, data of the internationally representative 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is analyzed for 63 countries. To test whether the impact of shadow education varies according to a country’s developmental stage of its shadow system, first, shadow systems are classified based on the examination of the level of institutionalization (scale, intensity and composition) and the overall impact of shadow education on the national performance in a country. Second, the differences in the probability to access shadow education between advantaged and disadvantaged ESCS students is analyzed across nations. Third, the impact of national characteristics of shadow education, i.e. the system which exists in a country, on the degree of access restrictions by ESCS background is predicted, also controlling for national characteristics such as school enrolments. Finally, the possible impact of differences between shadow systems for social inequality is computed at the country level (reduction, maintenance, or intensification of inequality).
Findings show that shadow education massively affects social inequality in advanced developed (e.g. Korea, Greece, or Thailand), and already considerably affects such inequality in less advanced systems (e.g. Germany, Spain, or Switzerland). A reduction of social inequality is unlikely, and only possible in shadow systems that remain very traditional (e.g. Canada, Finland, or Iceland).
Shadow education generally feeds into the broader institutionalization of education and its role for social stratification. But, great differences in the probability of disadvantaged in comparison to advantaged ESCS strata to access shadow education across countries based on the kind of shadow system in a country were detected. Overall developmental patterns show that shadow education is not necessarily a threat to societies by inevitably fostering inequalities. Depending on the developmental stage of a shadow system, social inequality in educational attainment can be strengthened, maintained, or reduced. However, these findings imply that with the international expansion of shadow education, inequality of educational opportunities will only grow further, wherefore the development of these shadow systems and how to adequately respond to their expansion calls for more recognition of and more research in the field.

Author

• Steve R. Entrich, Freie Universität Berlin