Ricard Benito

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.

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.

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).