SCHOOL SEGREGATION IN PUBLIC AND SEMIPRIVATE PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN ANDALUSIA

ABSTRACT

School segregation by socio-economic background is a feature of most education systems and impacts negatively on educational outcomes for poor children. Evidence on this issue is lacking for the Spanish primary education system and in particular the extent to which a) poor and rich students sort into different types of school and b) the extent of segregation within different school types. We measure the level of segregation of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds into public and semiprivate schools and within these two types of school using the Hutchens Index. The analysis is based on data for students attending 5^th grade in the largest region in Spain (Andalusia). Our results indicate significant differences in the level of segregation across and within both school types. Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to attend semiprivate schools. This provides evidence of the inequity of providing public funding for semiprivate schools that are then disproportionately attended by wealthier students.

Keywords:

• school segregation
• socioeconomic level
• public schools
• semiprivate schools
• Hutchens Index

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The data used in this research have been provided by the Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Andalucía. This work has been supported by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad under Research Project ECO2017-88883-R and Fundación Pública Centro de Estudios Andaluces under Research Contract PRY85/19. Claudia Prieto Latorre acknowledges the scholarship FPU2017-00432 of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports [Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte] and the training received from the University of Malaga PhD Program in Economics and Business [Programa de Doctorado en Economía y Empresa de la Universidad de Malaga].

9. Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

12. Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can ce accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article

Notes

1. For Spain the share of low achievers in mathematics in PISA 2012 is 23%. 8% obtain a competency level of 5 or 6. In countries such as Japan and Finland (at the top of the OECD, 2014 distribution), the proportion of top performers is up to four times higher than in Andalusia (23.7% in Japan and 15.3% in Finland) while the share of students performing at Level 2 or below is half the Andalusian rate (11.1% in Japan and 12.3% in Finland).

2. In the case of public and semiprivate schools, there is not statistical significant differences between the proportion of missing data in each type of school, i.e. the missing data are randomly distributed.

3. There are other differences between semiprivate and public schools. Recruitment of teachers in the former does not have to be based on the official state exams for teachers, whereas that is a requirement in the case of public schools. Public schools are secular. Semiprivate schools can be religious or secular. Around 70% of semiprivate schools are religious.

4. Data referred to 2009–10 non university studies (INE, 2010, Survey of Financing and Expenditures of Private Teaching). This information is not disaggregated by educational level.

5. Results available on request.

6. Although their results are not strictly comparable with our findings, because they use a sample of Andalusian students (instead of census data).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad [Research Project ECO2017-88883-R]; Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte [Scholarship FPU2017-00432]; Centro de Estudios Andaluces [Research Contract PRY85/19]; Universidad de Málaga [PhD Program in Economics and Business].