Miquel Àngel Alegre

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...

School Segregation and Its Effects on Educational Equality and Efficiency in 16 OECD Comprehensive School Systems

Using PISA data for 16 Western OECD countries having comprehensive school systems, we explore the conditions under which the socioeconomic composition of schools affects educational efficiency and equality, to a greater or lesser extent. First, a multilevel analysis is applied to examine and compare the effect of school socioeconomic composition on students’ outcomes across countries and comprehensive models. Second, a simulation exercise shows the variations in the efficiency and equality levels that would result in two distinct hypothetical school scenarios in each country—a segregated scenario and a nonsegregated scenario. We find that a hypothetical reduction in school segregation would positively affect educational equality in all of the countries considered, but the impact on levels of educational efficiency in individual countries varies with the structure of comprehensive schooling.

‘The best school for my child?’ Positions, dispositions and inequalities in school choice in the city of Barcelona

This article deals with the discourses and practices employed by families involved in school choice processes in the city of Barcelona (Spain). It draws upon a study conducted by the authors in 2008/09, and it is based on surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, as well as 60 in-depth interviews with families with children at the age of commencing universal pre-primary education (three years old). Firstly, the article focuses on the types of concerns and pressures that families experience when choosing a school for their child. Secondly, we analyse the level and type of knowledge that parents have at their disposal about the field of school choice, as well as how they use and benefit from available information channels. Finally, we identify three unequal positions in which families find themselves when negotiating the field of school choice: ‘maximising’, ‘guaranteeing’ and ‘displaced’. These positions are, in turn, directly related to families’ locations in the social structure, which are also unequal.

The impact of training-intensive labour market policies on labour and educational prospects of NEETs: evidence from Catalonia (Spain)

Background: The literature has shown that the way active labour market policies (ALMP) aimed at youth are designed and implemented can influence the labour and educational prospects of youngsters. The evaluation of the Catalan PQPIs (initial vocational qualification programmes) presented here seeks to provide new evidence on the effectiveness of ALMPs for a social, economic and geographical context – the south of Europe – in which such evaluations are scarce but particularly necessary, given current unemployment conditions. Purpose: This evaluation focuses on the impact of the PQPIs on participants’ labour and education outcomes during the period 2009–2013. Research questions are: Does participation in the PQPIs increase the probability of finding a job? What is the impact of the PQPIs on the probability of returning to formal education? Does the impact of the PQPIs vary according to characteristics of the participants, such as age and gender? Programme description: First launched in 2006, PQPIs target 16–25-year-olds who are unemployed and who left education without earning the certificate of compulsory secondary education (GESO). PQPIs have two objectives: (a) to increase the labour prospects of participants, and (b) to facilitate their re-engagement into formal education, either by completing the GESO or by enrolling in middle vocational courses (CFGM). PQPIs take one academic year to complete and they include vocational training, work internships and preparation for returning to formal education. Sample: Our evaluation focuses on the two main types of PQPI, the PQPI-FIAP and the PQPI-SBS. Our sample consists of all students who started any of these courses during the 2008–2009 academic year – 2401 participants in the PQPI-SBS and 1220 in the PQPI-FIAP. Both sets of students were observed from the beginning of their courses until April 2013. Design and methods: Using propensity score matching, we estimate the intention-to-treat and treatment-on-the-treated impact of PQPIs on participants’ labour and educational outcomes. For labour outcomes, we focus on the monthly labour force participation from the moment that the programmes started (October 2008) until April 2013. For educational outcomes, we analyse the accumulated percentages of GESO and CFGM enrolments and graduations from the time the programmes finished (June 2009) until September 2012. Results: Results show that both the PQPI-FIAP and the PQPI-SBS are ineffective in increasing the labour prospects of participants. In contrast, both the PQPI-FIAP and the PQPI-SBS are significantly effective in re-engaging youths in formal education, although such gains are not translated into a higher level of attainment in post-compulsory education. The positive educational impact identified is concentrated among 16–18-year-olds, while the effects are null or even negative for all other age ranges. Conclusions: First, the study demonstrates the shortcomings of ALMPs and school-to-work transition programmes in increasing the labour participation of their participants. Second, despite these shortcomings, PQPIs do function as a mechanism for re-engaging early school leavers back into formal education. Third, the educational effectiveness of programmes such as the PQPIs question the capacity of comprehensive schooling to prevent early school leaving, especially when comprehensiveness is implemented without any margin of flexibility.

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 changing patterns of individual and school effects on educational transitions. Evidence from Catalan data (Spain)

Background: This article engages with the tradition of educational transitions research, particularly with its attempt to evaluate the effect of exogenous variables on educational attainment. The study revisits a number of hypotheses that have attempted to explain the changing patterns of such effects throughout students’ educational career, particularly: life course hypothesis, selective attrition, maximally maintained inequality, effectively maintained inequality and path dependence hypothesis. Purpose: The article aims at examining the extent to which individual level variables influence the transition patterns that Catalan students follow, in the frame of the Spanish education system, from the completion of compulsory education up to the transition to higher education. Furthermore, the study evaluates the effects of an exogenous independent variable that educational transition’ studies have tended to neglect, that is, school composition. Particular emphasis is placed on observing the scope of changes in variables’ effects across transitions. Sample: Analyses are carried out on the responses to a questionnaire given by a sample of students in the final grade of lower-secondary education (age 16), upper-secondary academic (Baccalaureate) (age 18), middle vocational (age 17/18) and higher vocational education (age 20 and above). The selection of schools was made through cluster sampling based on the following five strata: public lower-secondary education (1580 students), private lower-secondary education (1373 students), Baccalaureate (964 students), Middle Vocational Courses (566 students) and Higher Vocational Courses (377 students). In each of these five strata, a random selection was made from the secondary schools that offer the educational stage in question. In total, 4860 students were surveyed in 56 different schools. Design and methods: In each of the schools included in the sample, questionnaires were distributed to all students in the last year of the various educational stages that the schools offer. The statistical analyses carried out rely on multinomial hierarchical logit models. The dependent variables relate to the transition options students follow when completing each of the educational stages under consideration. These data were devised by fusing students’ transition decisions taken at the end of the last year of each stage and the data provided by the schools after the end of the year regarding the results obtained by each student. The independent dummy variables used in the models are: gender, student educational capital, student immigrant background, parental professional category; prior grade point average (individual level variables); school type; school educational composition; school immigrant background composition; school professional composition (school level variables). Results: Whereas school level variables, as well as individual variables such as parental professional category or student immigrant background, are only significant on conditioning transitions at the end of lower-secondary education (compulsory), other variables such as gender or educational capital maintain their explanatory capacity on transitions across post-compulsory stages. In addition, the multinomial transition perspective utilised here allows us to evaluate the scope of significant path dependent effects. Conclusions: The study concludes that a clear pattern of ‘waning effects’ of exogenous variables does not occur throughout students’ educational career. That is, the effect of individual characteristics on the probability of students transitioning across consecutive educational stages does not systematically decrease as they progress in their educational career.

How Policies of Priority Education Shape Educational Needs: New Fabrications and Contradictions

This article aims to interpret how different policies of priority education deal with the notions of “educational needs” and “educational inequalities.” Indeed, it is the processes and mechanisms embedded in the deployment of such policies that ultimately model a category of educational need that goes beyond the conceptualization of educational inequality used to justify the policies themselves. The authors reach this conclusion by examining four European programs of priority education (PPE). Two basic tendencies are identified. On the one hand, recent deployment of the English and French initiatives seems to be altering the formulation of problems they are designed to address by enhancing in practice a decontextualized notion of individual educational need in which it is considered legitimate to intervene. On the other hand, the Catalan and Dutch programs, which theoretically address both territorial and nonformal educational inequalities, in fact apply prioritization schemes and interventions mainly based on school-based social measures.

Measures and Determinants of Student Body Socioeconomic Diversity: Evidence from Spain

This article deals with the debate on the assessment of pupils socioeconomic dispersion among schools. First, the paper complements the traditional way of measuring “segregation,” which refers to the distribution of a specific subgroup of pupils across different schools, by introducing a new measure which we call “school polarization level.” As argued here, “school segregation” and “school polarization” are associated with different phenomena and so point to different problems with different policy implications. Second, the paper illustrates the application of such measures for the cases of 10 Catalan municipalities (Spain) that apply different policies of school assignment based on residence (school zoning).

How Do School Regimes Tackle Ethnic Segregation: Some Insights Supported in PISA 2006

The basic purpose of this chapter is to analyze and understand the effect of certain articulations of the educational systems and policies on school ethnic segregation. On the grounds of the well-known effects of school ethnic composition on student outcomes, we explore the impacts of distinct components of what we are calling “school regimes” on school ethnic segregation measures across countries and regions. Our analysis considers data for 30 OECD educational systems. Most of them correspond to national units (24 countries), whilst a few of them capture sub-national school features (6 regions). Certain school regimes’ characteristics are assessed: level of differentiation or stratification 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; models and criteria defining the public regulation of parental choice processes. As basic measure of ethnic segregation, we use the ratio between the proportion of immigrant students attending with a more disadvantaged socio-economic intake and the proportion of native students enrolled at these same schools. The PISA 2006 database has been used as the main source of information for such measures. The results of the interactions and regression analyses suggest that school regimes modelled, which are more stratified and market-oriented, tend to increase school ethnic segregation, whilst those others characterized as more comprehensive and publicly regulated tend to reduce it. Keywords School choice, School markets, School regimes, Ethnic segregation.