Social Composition Of Schools Research Articles

О КОНФЕССИОНАЛЬНОМ И СОЦИАЛЬНОМ СОСТАВЕ ОБУЧАЮЩИХСЯ УЧИЛИЩ И ГИМНАЗИЙ РОСТОВА-НА-ДОНУ В НАЧАЛЕ ХХ В.

The article considers the confessional and social composition of schools and gymnasiums in Rostov-on-Don at the beginning of the twentieth century in the context of the outbreak of the World War. On the footing of statistical information by, the example of two educational institutions, the article evaluates dynamics of changes in the composition of students, religious groups, and social categories of the population. Conclusions are drawn about the degree of the general processes of social dynamics reflected in society in the South of Russia during the war years. The author highlights the regions of migration to the South of Russia from other regions of the world, the peculiarities of the social and confessional composition of the Don Region as a zone of border and transit movement of social flows. A statistical calculation of the composition of the contingent of students was carried out and the features of the functioning of the educational system and its impact on the development of society during that period were analyzed. Attention is paid to the topic of the representation of the Cossacks, commoners, and nobility in the secondary education system. The conclusion is made about the peculiarities of reflecting in the work of educational institutions the restrictions for Jews within the framework of observance of the Jewish residency line before 1915. Statistically recorded violation of quota norms for Jews in 1915.

The relevance of tracking and social school composition for growing achievement gaps by parental education in lower secondary school: a longitudinal analysis in France, Germany, the United States, and England

Abstract There is substantial variation in the degree of social stratification in students’ achievement across countries. However, most research is based on cross-sectional data. In this study, we evaluate the importance of social origin, namely, parents’ education, for achievement inequalities during lower secondary school using recent longitudinal microdata form the French Direction de l’Evaluation de la Prospective et de la Performance panel, the German National Educational Panel Study, the US-American Early Childhood Longitudinal Study 1998, and the British Millennium Cohort Study. We evaluate whether country differences can be attributed to different tracking systems or the social composition of schools. We find substantial SES gaps in math achievement progress in all four countries but more pronounced gaps in England and Germany. Yet, within-school SES gaps are similar across countries suggesting that the allocation of students to schools drives country differences. Moreover, we find that between-school tracking in Germany accounts for a large share of the SES gaps, whereas course-by-course tracking seems less important in the other countries. The role of schools’ social composition is similar across countries.

The dynamics of achievement inequality: The role of performance and choice in Chile

Research on education inequalities has long established the relationship between the social composition of schools and achievement levels. However, the empirical study of the social processes in choosing schools and their potential effects on achievement inequalities has often been neglected. This article investigates the extent to which such social processes, related to parents’ educational preferences and expectations, influence the development of students’ achievement throughout their schooling career, as a channel of transmission of social inequality. Using longitudinal census data from Chile, which allows us to observe students’ achievements between the 4th and 10th grades, we find support for the claim that the development of achievement inequalities operate partly through well-off parents’ educational preferences and expectations. Moreover, these preferences and beliefs explain most of the social composition effect of schools on achievement inequalities. We conclude that choice processes should be considered as an integral part of theories aimed to explain achievement inequalities as a dynamic process.

School equity, marketisation and access to the Australian senior secondary curriculum

ABSTRACT This study examines how access to the academic curriculum creates patterns of inequality in Australian schools. Examining students’ access to the academic curriculum gives an indication of how schooling is structured to support students in pursuing higher education opportunities. To date, little research attention has been given to the opportunities schools offer students to access the academic curriculum in order to enter university. Using administrative data on students and schools, we find that there are fewer average curriculum subjects, and less complexity in the subjects offered, in schools with low levels of socio-educational advantage. We argue that curriculum differentiation across schools is a systemic constraint that students in schools with higher levels of socio-educational disadvantage face in progressing to university because these schools are less able to provide students with access to core academic curriculum subjects in the final year of secondary school. Previous research has highlighted the social differences reflected in both educational access and outcomes due to the marketisation of schools and policies of school choice. Our findings indeed demonstrate that there are relationships between access to the academic curriculum, school socio-educational advantage and the social composition of schools, and these factors have important educational policy implications.

Segregación Social y Desigualdad de Logros Educativos en Argentina

En este artículo se analiza el impacto de la segregación estudiantil por nivel socioeconómico sobre la equidad educativa en la escuela secundaria argentina. La presencia de segregación implica que los alumnos se distribuyen de forma desigual en el sistema, tendiendo a concentrarse en ciertos establecimientos según su origen social. El objetivo es evaluar si este proceso contribuye a incrementar la desigualdad de logros educativos. Empleando la base de datos de PISA 2009, se estiman modelos multinivel para examinar el efecto de la composición social estudiantil de las escuelas en el desempeño individual en las pruebas de Lectura. La evidencia apoya la existencia de efectos composicionales significativos que contribuyen a explicar la dispersión en los resultados. Esto indica que los jóvenes de bajo estatus socioeconómico enfrentan un doble riesgo educativo: a la desventaja inicial relacionada con su contexto social y familiar desfavorable se suma la probable asistencia a centros con una población estudiantil más vulnerable y la exposición a efectos de pares negativos. Los hallazgos permiten sostener la importancia de considerar a la composición social de las escuelas como una variable clave de política educativa, y señalan la necesidad de analizar medidas orientadas a fomentar la integración social en el sistema.

School educational project as a criterion of school choice: discourses and practices in the city of Barcelona

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of school educational projects in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical goals, missions and orientations, their academic resources and organisational structures. Through the analysis of 60 in-depth interviews with parents of children at the age of commencing universal pre-primary education (three years old) and data collected from surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, this article explores the impact of this policy on discourses and practices of school choice amongst families in the city of Barcelona. On the one hand, we observe that interest in educational projects has penetrated the discourses of the most educated parents, even though, at the same time, we detect a generalised lack of knowledge of the content of such projects. On the other hand, we note that the social composition of schools is still a prominent factor in choice practices. Such findings question the ideal of the autonomous and rational citizen-consumer that underlies the policy of establishing educational projects.

The effects of a free school choice policy on parents’ school choice behaviour

Recently, European school systems have seen various attempts to ‘modernise’ their governance. Market and competition oriented reforms have not been central to governance innovation strategies in German speaking countries, however, their number and relevance is rising in recent years. A free school choice policy which abolishes “school districts” which legally define fixed school catchment areas was introduced in the school year of 2007/2008 in the Austrian city of Linz.The effects of the implementation of this policy on the primary school sector were studied by a standardised questionnaire administered to a representative sample of 3425 parents of five age groups of primary school children. The return rate was about 55%. By special measures during data collection a satisfactory representation of parents with migrant background was achieved.Three questions are discussed in the paper: (1) Is there a rise in segregation in schools as a result of free choice policy? (2) Is there a change in the composition of the student population in different schools as a result of free choice policy? (3) Is there a change in parent school choice behaviour of as a result of free choice policy?Our data indicates that segregation in primary schools with respect to ethnic and social family characteristics increases after the policy implementation, but the sample size is too small to find significant results. In addition, no significant change is observed in the social composition of schools. In accordance with the previous findings no significant modifications of choice behaviour occur for different ethnic or social groups after free choice. However changes in choice motives can be observed.

School regimes and education equity: Some insights based on PISA 2006

This paper aims to analyze the effects of certain characteristics of the educational systems on the social composition of schools. After accounting for significant effects of schools’ social composition on student outcomes (this is confirmed on the basis of a multilevel analysis), we explore the impacts of distinct components of what we name ‘school regimes’ on measures of school social segregation (Hutchens indices) across countries and regions. The PISA 2006 database has been used as the main source of information for such measures. Our analysis considers data for 32 OECD educational systems. Certain characteristics of school regimes are specially assessed: the level of institutional differentiation existing in the educational career; the presence of private schools in compulsory education; the level of school autonomy as regards the process of student admission; and the models and criteria defining public regulation of school access processes. Results of the regression analyses suggest that more market‐oriented school regimes tend to increase schools’ social segregation, whilst those characterised as more comprehensive and publicly regulated tend to reduce it.

Regional and Local Differences in Admission Arrangements for Schools

This paper describes the results of an analysis of the secondary school admissions arrangements, current and past, published by 40 Local Education Authorities in England and Wales. Arrangements are separated here into application procedures and school allocation criteria, and explored through an examination of specific examples of each type. The potential impacts of these arrangements for school admissions and for the changing social composition of schools are discussed. Perhaps the most significant finding is the scale of variation, even between apparently similar regions, in the nature of the admissions process, given that all procedures are presented as being in accordance with national legislation. Because the local implementation of national policy gives authorities this leeway in interpretation, many areas have not changed their procedures much, either in response to the Education Reform Act 1988, or the subsequent School Standards and Framework Act 1998.

Bullying behaviour in Irish schools: A nationwide study

Most of our knowledge of bullying behaviour in Irish schools has been gained from empirical studies carried out in Dublin (Byrne, 1994a; O’Moore & Hillery, 1989). The present paper, reports results from the first nationwide study of bullying behaviour in primary and post-primary schools in Ireland carried out during 1993–94. The results presented include data on the incidence of being bullied and bullying others, year differences, gender differences, types of bullying, where bullying occurs, whether teachers or parents are aware and pupils attitudes to bullying. Some correlations of bullying are also examined, in particular school size, class size, ability groupings and the social composition of school. Finally implications for intervention against bullying are discussed.

Intra‐system variation in the effectiveness of schooling

Abstract Recent studies have shown that sectors defined by the denominational status and by the era in which schools were founded account for some of the variation in the effectiveness of schooling in Scotland. Other components of the total variation among schools can be attributed to variation in the social composition of schools, and to variation in the process and teaching characteristics of schools. The present paper complements these studies by considering other sources of intra‐system variation. In particular, it investigates variation in pupil‐attainment among different types of communities, and among educational authorities (EAs). It focuses on analyses of pupil attainment in fourth year Ordinary grade English and arithmetic, and on an overall attainment measured across subjects in the Scottish Certificate of Education (SCE) examinations. The effectiveness of schools is then assessed as the variation in pupil‐level attainment that is associated with schools, both before and after adjustment for pupil social background characteristics. The recently developed statistical technique of multilevel modelling is employed to model variation in the effectiveness of schools. This methodology has been developed in order to overcome some of the statistical problems that have bedevilled studies of the performance of schools. Its two main strengths are that it explicitly takes account of the multilevel nature of the information embodied in pupils’ examination results, and that it allows each school to vary in terms of its performance characteristics to a considerably greater extent than previous aggregate‐level methods. In analysing the variation among schools it is important to take account of the selective nature of school intakes, otherwise the apparent differences among schools may reflect no more than the variation in the quality of their intakes. The data available to the present study contain information on pupils’ social background characteristics, but not on their prior cognitive attainments. The selectivity of school intakes derives principally from two sources: variation in the residential pattern of socioeconomic groups, and voluntary choice of school. The data analysed here relate to pupils who entered their secondary schooling in the mid‐1970s before the Parent's Charter was enacted; thus voluntary choice of secondary schooling was constrained mainly to the independent sector. In addition to formal selection in relation to entry to the independent sector, the schools in the cities and large burghs were subject to informal selection through the creaming of their more able and socially advantaged pupils by the independent sector. The study attempts to control for some of the effects of these formal and informal selection processes by stratifying the analysis by the degree of selectivity of schools. Variation among schools in five types of community are investigated: cities, large burghs and towns, small burghs and towns, new towns, and rural areas. The cities account for about one‐third of all pupils in the system, while the two burgh sectors combined account for slightly more than half of all pupils in the system. Although the rural areas account for 10 per cent of pupils, they account for 17 per cent of the schools in the system, because of the smaller size of rural schools. The lowest performing community sector is the city sector, but it also contains the widest range of variation among its schools. The analysis of variation among EAs reveals that the median effectiveness of schools varies to a much smaller extent than the variation among schools, but that the assessment of EA performance is sensitive to the population of schools included in the analysis.