Poverty and the perception of poverty – how both matter for schooling outcomes

by Andreas Schleicher
Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Note: The size of the bubbles is representing the strength of the relationship between mathematics performance and ESCS (Percentage of explained variance in mathematics performance)

Compensating for students’ socio-economic disadvantage is one of the greatest challenges facing teachers,school leaders and education systems as a whole. However, data from PISA show that some countries are much better at this than others.

Consider the chart above. The horizontal axis shows the percentage of lower secondary teachers who work in schools where their principal reported that more than 30% of students in their school were from disadvantaged homes.¹  The vertical axis shows the actual percentage of 15-year-old students from disadvantaged homes, measured by PISA’s internationally standardised index that summarises various indicators of socio-economic disadvantage, including parents’ income and education level, educational resources at home, and other family possessions.² In other words, the horizontal axis reflects school principals’ perception of disadvantage by national standards while the vertical axis reflects the prevalence of disadvantage as compared internationally.

Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico and Portugal are found in the upper right corner of the chart because their schools have a large share of disadvantaged children and that aligns with the reports of principals. The lower left corner includes the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Korea and Norway where disadvantage in schools is limited, and fewer than one in ten principals reports significant disadvantage.³ These are the results one would expect.

But actual disadvantage and principals’ perceptions of disadvantage don't always align: 65% of principals in the United States say that more than 30% of their students are from disadvantaged homes, far more than in any other country. However, the actual percentage of disadvantaged students reported by PISA is just 13%, marginally higher than in Japan and Korea; but in those two countries, only 6% and 9% of principals, respectively, report a comparable share of disadvantaged students in their schools. In other words, the actual incidence of child poverty is roughly the same among these three countries, but more than six times as many US principals reported that more than 30% of their students are disadvantaged. Conversely, in Croatia, Serbia and Singapore, more than 20% of students are disadvantaged, while 7% or fewer principals report significant populations of disadvantaged students.

Obviously, a child considered poor in the United States may be regarded as relatively wealthy in another country, but the fact that the perceived problem of socio-economic disadvantage among students is so much greater in the United States - and in France too - than the actual backgrounds of students also suggests that what school principals in some countries consider to be social disadvantage would not be considered such in others.

And there is a third important dimension, namely the actual impact of disadvantage on learning outcomes, which is shown by the size of the circles in the chart.⁴   That impact reflects whether an education system provides equitable learning opportunities. In countries like Finland, Iceland and Norway, one would expect this impact to be small because these countries have very little socio-economic disadvantage in their student populations. Achieving equity in school is easy when society distributes wealth and family education equitably. But the more impressive examples are countries like PISA top-performer Singapore, where disadvantage is significant, but its impact on learning outcomes is only moderate. These countries seem very good at nurturing the extraordinary talents of ordinary students and at ensuring that every student benefits from excellent teaching. In contrast, France has a comparatively small share of disadvantaged students, but school principals perceive this share to be large, and student learning outcomes are closely related to social background – more closely, in fact, than in any other country except Chile and the Slovak Republic. More generally, the results show that principals’ perception of disadvantage correlates with inequalities in education opportunities more strongly than real disadvantage does.

There is another way of looking at this: In Korea and Singapore, more than one in two students from the bottom quarter of the socio-economic spectrum score among the most proficient quarter of the world’s students on PISA; in Japan, 45% of disadvantaged students are similarly “resilient” and perform better on the PISA test than their backgrounds would predict. By contrast, in France and the United States, only around 20% of students are resilient, and in Israel, just one in 10 is.

So what does all this mean? Socio-economic disadvantage is a challenge to educators everywhere, but in countries like France and the United States, perceived disadvantage is far greater than real disadvantage and it makes a significant difference for student performance. In countries like Singapore, real disadvantage is far greater than school principals’ perception of it, but Singapore’s schools seem to be able to help their students overcome that disadvantage.

<sup>1. Or more precisely, the percentage of lower-secondary teachers in schools whose principals reported that more than 30% of students are from disadvantaged homes. Data are based on the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), which is representative of the teaching force in the participating countries.
2. Referred to as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS).
3. Significant here means more than 30% of students from disadvantaged homes in the school.
4. Measured here by the percentage of variation in mathematics performance that is explained by the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS).</sup>

Links
PISA 2012 Results: Excellence Through Equity: Giving Every Student the Chance to Succeed (Volume II)
The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) - 2013 Results
Chart source: © OECD TALIS 2013 and PISA 2012 database

School systems trump family background

by Andreas Schleicher
Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD's Secretary General

There has been much discussion on the extent to which the performance of nations on tests like PISA is shaped by the socio-economic context of families, schools and nations. Surely, economic, social and cultural capital are always an advantage. Owing to advantaged families’ greater capacity to reinforce and enhance the effects of schools, as students from these families attend higher-quality schools and schools are simply better-equipped to nurture and develop children from advantaged backgrounds, school systems tend to reproduce social disadvantage. And that is what the data from PISA have shown.

But there is more to this. There are huge differences across countries in the extent to which individual factors (such as family structure, parents’ job status and immigrant background), school factors (such as how resources are allocated across schools) and the broader economic context of education systems shape learning outcomes.

New analyses from PISA shed light on this. The chart above shows the performance of 15-year-old students in each country by decile of their social background. For example, the highest dots show how the 10% of students from the most privileged socio-economic backgrounds in the OECD area perform in each country. In turn, the lowest dots show how those students perform who belong to the 10% most disadvantaged students in the OECD area.

These data suggest several things. First, poverty isn’t destiny. For example, the poorest 15-year-olds in Shanghai – and there are lots of them, about 20% of the 15-year-old population in Shanghai compared to an OECD average of 12% comes from very poor families – do as well as the 10% most privileged students in the United States. Second, to foster excellence, you don't need to tolerate social disparities. For example, while students from the most privileged families in France and the Netherlands perform similarly, the bottom decile in the Netherlands still match the performance of the 3rd decile of French 15-year-olds. Last but not least, the data clearly show that, for many countries, the issue is not just with poor kids in poor neighbourhoods, but with many kids in many neighbourhoods: The top 10% of students from advantaged backgrounds in the United States do just about as well as their peers in Italy and Spain.

The bottom line is that the country where you go to school seems to have a much greater impact on your learning outcomes than the social background of your family or even your country.

Links:
PISA 2012 Results
Shanghai (China) – PISA
Strong performers and Succesful Reformer: Shanghai
Related blog posts by Andreas Schleicher:
Are the Chinese cheating in PISA or are we cheating ourselves?
What we learn from the PISA 2012 results
Learning in rural China: The challenges for teachers
Chart source: OECD, PISA 2012 Database.

Are countries educating to protect against unemployment?

by Dirk Van Damme
Division Head, Innovation and Measuring Progress (IMEP) and Head of Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)

More people than ever before now reach a level of educational attainment equivalent to upper secondary education. The available evidence is very conclusive: this level of education can be considered a minimum level to ensure a job and a living wage. As the latest issue of the OECD’s Education Indicators in Focus details, the difference in unemployment risks in OECD countries between individuals with and without an upper secondary qualification is significant. In 2010, across OECD countries, 19.1% of 25-34 year-olds without an upper secondary qualification were unemployed, compared with 9.8% of young adults of the same age who had an upper secondary qualification. And without an upper secondary qualification, the risk of poverty is looming: some 27% of people without an upper secondary education earn less than half the median income – around 10 percentage points more than the proportion of people who do have that level of education.

The negative effects of lacking an upper secondary qualification are excacerbated during the crucial phase of transition from education to work. Among NEETs  (not employed nor in education and training) in 2010, there were 8 percentage points more 20-24 year-olds without an upper secondary education than 20-24 year-olds with that level of education. In 2010, in Estonia, France, Ireland, the Slovak Republic and Spain, at least 25% of the 20-24 year‑olds who had not attained an upper secondary education were neither in school nor employed.

So, countries have very good reasons to ensure that as many young people as possible graduate from upper secondary education. Over the past decades almost all OECD countries have seen dramatic increases in educational attainment from one generation to the next. The average difference between the 25-34 and 55‑64 year‑old generations in OECD countries was 20 percentage points, but in Chile, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Portugal and Spain the difference was 30 percentage points or more.

Most OECD countries – especially European ones – have increased their upper secondary graduation rates over the past ten years. As the graph above indicates, this trend coincided with declining numbers of 20-24 year-olds who were neither in education nor employed. But the start of the economic crisis in 2008 was a turning point: the size of the NEET population started to swell again. The wage gap between people with an upper secondary qualification and individuals with a tertiary level qualification increased. The evidence suggests that the crisis has accelerated job polarisation based on skills levels. People without an upper secondary qualification are highly vulnerable to unemployment, while those who have an upper secondary education are working for less money. In today’s unstable economy, an  upper secondary qualification no longer provides sufficient insurance against unemployment and low income.

For more information
On this topic, visit:
Education Indicators in Focus: www.oecd.org/education/indicators 
On the OECD’s education indicators, visit:
Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators: www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012 
On the OECD’s Indicators of Education Systems (INES) programme, visit:
INES Programme overview brochure
Chart source: Education at a Glance 2012: OECD Indicators, Indicators A1 (www.oecd.org/edu/eag2012).