Segregation

secondary school graduation but not GPA (grade point average). Why is that? The analysis is a good example of a registry-based study. It was conducted on children born in Sweden in 1990 who continued to live in the country up to 2010 (115,882 in total).

Segregation

A second concern is the pattern of segregation, which is a structural factor of importance also for school achievement. One study found that increased segregation with respect to student composition and academic outcomes across different schools was the main source of the declining educational equity in Sweden between 1998 and 2014.215 The Swedish Government has mandated the Swedish Research Council to carry out a mapping of research into segregation.216 The review covered the following areas: housing segregation, criminality, unemployment, schooling, and democracy/civil society with a focus on socioeconomic segregation. Studies of health were included if they also dealt with one of the five areas included in the mandate. Two main research themes emerged from the survey. One group of researchers primarily focused on the mechanisms that lead to segregation, while another group examined its consequences. The latter focus relates primarily to outcomes at the individual level, where the most common are the consequences of segregation on school results and educational level. Subject areas include research into the consequences of school segregation due to free choice of schools and market-driven schools and, ultimately, the consequences for pupils’ school results. It was noted that the role of schools in societal segregation is a growing research field. Swedish segregation research compares well in an international perspective, thanks to, for example, the longitudinal register data at individual level produced by Statistics Sweden.

The report identified three knowledge gaps: the causal question, geographic focus, and specific shortcomings in the five different fields of the mapping exercise. According to the survey,218 there are knowledge gaps regarding how the choice of preschool depends on household segregation and more generally how school choice on all levels varies by gender. Moreover, the question of how municipalities can mitigate school segregation and negative effects of school choice has been given too limited attention by policymakers and researchers. The long-term impact of the

215 Hansen, K. Y., & Gustafsson, J.-E. (2019). Identifying the key source of deteriorating educational equity in Sweden between 1998 and 2014. International Journal of Educational Research, 93, 79–90. 216 VR. (2018). Svensk forskning om segregation – En kartläggning av Vetenskapsrådet [Swedish research on segregation – A survey by the Swedish Research Council]. https://www.vr.se/download/18.4dd26b09169cbe0ddda629/1555326345256/Svensk-forskning-omsegregation_VR_2018.pdf