3. Socioeconomic inequalities in school achievement Question: Are there differences in school achievement between children living in families with different socioeconomic status? A first concern when studying the socioeconomic inequalities is which measure or measures of family background should be used. All three main indicators have disadvantages: parental education, parental occupation, and family income. It also matters which sources are available to provide the data. If the data comes from children, then reports on parental occupation and parental education can have a reasonable quality. 203 Research shows that children’s reports of their father’s occupation provided a reliable foundation on which to base comparisons across countries in socioeconomic gradients in reading test scores. The same was not true for children’s reports of the number of books in the home – a measure of cultural capital often used in educational studies. However, relying on child self-reports may result in considerable missing data. Therefore, the addition of parental reports or linking to registry are beneficial. Table 7 shows results from PISA 2018. The differences in PISA score are substantial between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students in the Nordic schools. There is also some variation between the Nordic countries. The shortage of staff and resources is more often reported in Sweden. Table 7: Equity related to socioeconomic status (PISA 2018)
Difference in PISA score points between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students
Dk
Fi
Ice
No
Se
OECD
78 score points
79
72
73
89
89 score points
Jerrim, J., & Micklewright, M. (2014). Socio-economic gradients in children’s cognitive skills: Are cross-country comparisons robust to who reports family background? European Sociological Review, 30(6), 766–781. https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcu072
203
72
