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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) Dk Fi Ice No Se OECD
Difference in PISA score points between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged students 78 score points 79 72 73 89 89 score points
203 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
Top performers in reading among advantaged students
among disadvantaged
Explained variance in mathematic performance by socioeconomic status
Top quarter of reading performance among disadvantaged students
Staff shortage and material shortage in disadvantaged schools according to principals
among advantaged schools 16%
3% 26%
6% 12%
3% 20%
4% 25%
5% 17%
3%
10% 12% 9% 8% 13% 14%
12% 13% 13% 12% 11% 11%
11%
~ 0% 4% 17%
9% 1% 17% 40% 34%
3% 18% 18%
Many studies show that educational performance is strongly associated with socioeconomic background.204,205,206,207,208 A recent research anthology on socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes209 compared the situation in different countries including Finland210 and Sweden.211
To understand the impact of this relationship, it may be necessary to include the relationships between parental education, their offspring’s education, and their offspring’s later lifetime outcome. In an
204 Breen, R., & Goldthorpe, J. H. (1997). Explaining educational differentials towards a formal rational action theory. Rationality and Society, 9(3), 275–305. 205 Breen, R., & Jonsson, J. O. (2005). Inequality of opportunity in comparative perspective: Recent research on educational attainment and social mobility. Annual Review of Sociology, 31, 223–243. 206 Breen, R., Luijkx, R., Müller, W., & Pollak, R. (2010). Long-term trends in educational inequality in
Europe: Class inequalities and gender differences. European Sociological Review, 26(1), 31–48. 207 Erikson, R., Goldthorpe, J. H., Jackson, M., Yaish, M., & Cox, D. R. (2005). On class differentials in educational attainment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, 102(27), 9730–9733. 208 Sirin, S. R. (2005). Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: A meta-analytic review of research. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417–453. 209 Volante, L., Schnepf, V., Jerrim, J., & Klinger, D. A. (Eds.). (2019). Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes. Cross-national trends, policies, and practices. London: Springer. 210 Salmela-Aro, K., & Chmielewski, A. K. (2019). Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes in
Finnish school. In L. Volante, V. Schnepf, J. Jerrim, & D. A. Klinger (Eds.), Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes. Cross-national trends, policies, and practices (pp. 153–168). London: Springer. 211 Löfstedt, P. (2019). Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes. In L. Volante, V. Schnepf, J.
Jerrim, & D. A. Klinger (Eds.), Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes. Cross-national trends, policies, and practices (pp. 133–152). London: Springer.
empirical study, this model212 was tested and it was found that income inequality was associated with several key components of the intergenerational transmission process –including access to higher education, financial returns on education, and the residual effect of parental education upon labour-market earnings. Moreover, consistent with the theoretical models, educational attainment was an important driver of the relationship between intergenerational mobility and income inequality. It was concluded that unequal access to financial resources plays a central role in the intergenerational transmission of advantage. More details are given in the original publication.215
A systematic review of international comparative studies of the determinants of socioeconomic inequality in student performance found 814 references, of which 35 studies met the eligibility criteria.213 After reviewing studies on topics such as learning environment inside and outside the school, educational expenditure, teacher education, autonomy, accountability, differentiation, and competition from private schools, the researchers tentatively argued that the opportunity of choice reinforces inequality. However, most studies were descriptive in nature and their findings ambiguous at times. The review concludes that socioeconomic inequality is higher in countries where preschool is voluntary rather than compulsory, different tracks exist, the share of public funding is low, and private schools charge fees. Furthermore, there was little evidence on how to arrange the school learning environment to reduce social inequality.
A recent Swedish study found that both income and educational levels of mothers seemed to be more important for school achievement than those of the fathers.214 However, unemployment among fathers seemed to have a stronger impact on risks of failure to graduate. A strong effect of poor mental health (measured by prescription of psychoactive drugs, ATC codes N05 and N06) was seen on both girls’ and boys’ school performance. Moreover, high family socioeconomic resources had a substantial mitigating effect for girls but much weaker effect for boys and only with regard to
212 Jerrim, J., & MacMillan, L. (2015). Income inequality, intergenerational mobility, and the Great
Gatsby Curve: Is education the key. Social Forces, 94(2), 505–553. https://johnjerrim.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/jerrim_macmillan_2015.pdf 213 Strietholt, R., Gustafsson, J. E., Hogrebe, N., Rolfe, V., Rosén, M., Steinmann, E., & Hansen, K. Y. (2019). The impact of educational policies on socioeconomic inequality in student achievement: A review of comparative studies. In L. Volante, V. Schnepf, J. Jerrim, & D. A. Klinger (Eds.),
Socioeconomic inequality and student outcomes. Cross-national trends, policies, and practices (pp. 17–38). London: Springer. 214 Brännlund, A., & Edlund, J. (2019). Educational achievement and poor mental health in Sweden: The role of family socioeconomic resources. Education Inquiry, 11(1), 69–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2019.1687079
