Causes of educational segregation in Sweden – school choice or residential segregation

ABSTRACT

The aims of the study were to examine changes in school segregation across different types of municipalities between 1998 and 2011 in Sweden, and to explore the extent to which these changes are the consequences of school choice. Multilevel models were applied to register data using a counterfactual approach. The results showed that school segregation with respect to migration background and educational achievement had increased over time, while social segregation remained rather constant. The degree of school segregation varied largely across different municipality types, and it was concluded that school choice was a determinant of school segregation. The findings have strong policy implications and are discussed in relation to the recent educational reforms in Sweden.

KEYWORDS:

• School segregation
• school choice
• residential segregation
• social background
• counterfactual approach

Acknowledgements

The current study presents some of the results from the CESS project (Dnr 2007-4054) – Causes and Effects of Educational Segregation in Swedish Schools – financed by the Swedish Research Council of Education. We would like to express our gratitude to the research team FUR (Prerequisites, Education, and Results) at the Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, for their valuable comments and advice on our analysis and paper.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Kajsa Yang Hansen’s research lies mainly in sociology of education, with the main focus on educational quality and equity from a comparative perspective. To study and to explain the variation in academic achievement between individuals, schools, across countries, and over time have always been her primary research interests. Her methodological interest lies in analytical techniques for large-scale survey data, such as the multi-level analysis, structural equation modelling (SEM) and second-generation SEM. Currently, she is involved in projects investigating trends in Swedish pupils’ educational outcomes with respect to changes in opportunity to learn, educational reforms in Sweden, and organizational differentiation across countries, all of which are financed by the Swedish Research Council’s, committee for educational science.

Jan-Eric Gustafsson has been Professor of Education at the University of Gothenburg since 1986. His substantively oriented research focuses on individual differences in cognitive abilities, and on determinants of educational outcomes at individual and system levels. His methodologically oriented research focuses on conceptual and technical issues of measurement within classical and modern test theory, and on the application of latent variable models to both non-nested and nested data.