Gil Nata

Social inequality in access to higher education: grade inflation in private schools and the ineffectiveness of compensatory education

Abstract Access to higher education is affected by inequalities worldwide. Here we present a longitudinal study based on large databases of scores in upper secondary education and access to higher education in Portugal. Our findings show how access to higher education builds on and reinforces social inequalities: (1) private, fee-paying secondary schools inflate their students’ scores; (2) this inflation unfairly improves their chances of accessing higher education; (3) the Portuguese national compensatory education programme is ineffective in bridging the gap in academic performance between the less privileged and the rest of the schools. This study, then, provides further insights into how the upper classes are disproportionately benefited by the massification of higher education. To achieve greater equity, issues such as the State supervision of grading practices, the assessment and reconfiguration of compensatory education programmes, and the admission process into higher education have to be addressed.

Head teachers' perceptions of secondary school rankings: Their nature, media coverage and impact on schools and the educational arena

AbstractThis article begins by noting the significant role played by school rankings in the progressive transformation of the educational arena into a quasi-market. To better understand how schools deal with this situation, we interviewed head teachers of secondary schools. To increase sample diversity, we conducted interviews in public and private schools located in opposite extremes of the Portuguese schools ranking. The data show that, while agreeing that rankings provide a simplistic account of school work, head teachers of all schools find themselves engaged in an inescapable competition spiked by the pressure generated by media coverage. This impacts schools in several ways, including manipulation of the schools position in the rankings, parental demand and staff frustration. Finally, rankings and the associated competition reinforce the divide between public and private schools.