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

Abstract

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.

The politics of school choice in two countries with large private‐dependent sectors (Spain and Chile): family strategies, collective action and lobbying

“…School choice contributes to socio-economic segregation insofar as some schools that compete for students manage to establish their own admission filters (West et al, 2004;Fuchs and Wößmann, 2006;Alegre and Ferrer, 2009). Spain and Chile replicate this general pattern insofar as tuition fees divide two large sectors of public and privatedependent schools in the two countries.…”

“…In fact, when parents can choose the institution they prefer and educators can select which pupils they admit, the average resulting trend is a socio-economic, ethnic and academic segregation of school intakes (West et al, 2004;Fuchs and Wößmann, 2006;Alegre and Ferrer, 2009). This pattern posits an interesting sociological question on the complex links between microdecisions and macro-politics (Zanten, 2003;Ball, 2008).…”

“…In Spain, qualitative studies include samples of interviews and focus groups carried out in Catalonia, Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha since the nineties (Bernal, 2005;Rambla, 2006;Benito and González, 2007;Olmedo and Santa Cruz, 2008). These are complemented by an estimation of the trend of indexes in Catalonia (Valiente and Rambla, 2009) as well as multi-level models based on census (Valiente, 2009) and PISA (Escardíbul and Villarroya, 2009;Alegre and Ferrer, 2009) data. In Chile, qualitative studies include samples of interviews carried out in the last decade (Almonacid, Luzón and Torres, 2008), some of them with families and head-teachers in the areas of Santiago and Rancagua (Frias, 2009) as well as estimation of indexes and multivariate analyses of local segregation patterns (Valenzuela, Belleï, De los Rios, 2008).…”

Is There Real Freedom of School Choice? An Analysis from Chile

“…The results reveal the importance of social class, information and family expectations on school choice. This conclusion, like Saporito (2003), Schneider et al (2006) and Alegre and Ferrer (2010), show a social stratification and separation by schools and indicate how distance and social composition are the most critical factors for families when choosing a school.…”

Equal Opportunities?

“…In a recent study Alegre and Ferrer (2009) tried to examine how and to what extent certain characteristics of educational systems influence school social segregation across countries using PISA data. Their analysis considers data for 32 OECD educational systems.…”