Ethnic composition of the class and educational performance in primary education in The Netherlands

Abstract

This article examines the effect of the ethnic composition in the school class on school performance in primary education, using COOL 2008 data for The Netherlands. We make an important distinction between the proportion of migrant children and the diversity with regard to the different ethnic groups in a school class. Due to the strong correlation between these 2 variables, we employ a residualized score of diversity on the proportion of migrants. The diversity indicator, which indicates the level of diversity given a particular share of migrant children, is negatively related to reading comprehension in Grade 8. For other grade years, we find little support for negative effects of diversity net of the share of migrants in a class.

Keywords:

• academic achievement
• ethnic composition
• ethnic diversity
• multicollinearity

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank all reviewers for their helpful comments. Gert-Jan M. Veerman received support from the Doctoral Grant for Teachers funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research [grant number 023.001.120].

Notes on contributors

Gert-Jan M. Veerman was a teacher at primary schools in The Netherlands for more than 10 years. He is currently lecturer Education at the Ede Christian University of Applied Sciences and PhD student at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2011, he received the Doctoral Grant for Teachers from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). He holds a MSc in sociology and a MSc in education from the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include ethnicity and school performances.

Herman G. van de Werfhorst is professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and is director of the Amsterdam Centre for Inequality Studies (AMCIS). His prime research interests are in the comparison of educational systems with regard to social and ethnic selection, labour market outcomes, and civic engagement. His work has appeared in many academic journals, including Sociology of Education, the European Sociological Review, the British Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Education and Work, the British Journal of Sociology, the British Journal of Sociology of Education, and Demography.

Jaap Dronkers studied sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He worked at the Catholic University Brabant as associate professor and from 1990 at the University of Amsterdam, first as professor in the educational sciences, later as professor of empirical sociology. From 2001 until 2009, he was Professor of Social Stratification and Inequality at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. From December 2009, he holds the chair international comparative research on educational performance and social inequality at the Maastricht University. He has published on the causes and consequences of unequal educational and occupational attainment, changes in educational opportunities, effect differences between public and religious schools, the educational and occupational achievement of migrants from different origins and in various countries of destination, the linkages between school and the labour market, the effects of parental divorce on children, cross-national differences in causes of divorce, education of Dutch elites, and European nobility. He also participates in public debates on topics related to his research.

Notes

^aOnly reported for students with valid scores on the mathematics test. Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: ^aFor Grade 2, the reading comprehension test is not available. We used the Cito language score of Grade 2 instead. Because the language score contains both oral communication and early literacy, the results of Grade 2 are not directly comparable to those of Grades 5 and 8. Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

1Van Houtte and Stevens (2009) also focused on the distinction between ethnic share and ethnic diversity; however, they measured the effect on the sense of belonging in school.

2Although earlier research consequently uses the concept ethnicity, we prefer the concept origin country (Hutchinson & Smith, 1996). Our data contain, for example, for pupils with parents of Turkish origin only information about their origin country. However, these parents could have, for example, a Turkish, a Kurdish, or an Armenian ethnicity.

3NWO grant numbers 411.20.411 and 411.20.412.

4Dutch pupils enrol in Grade 1 at the day they turn 4 years old. Grades 1–2 are comparable to Kindergarten in many other systems, and the final Grade 8 of primary school thus equates to Grade 6 in many other systems.

5In Grade 5, schools could use two different versions of the Cito math test. The two versions were made comparable using conversion tables made by Cito.

6

7VIF statistics are possible using OLS; nevertheless, VIF's are not available in multilevel analysis due to the lack of R². Because we have different levels in the other models, VIF's are not available for the other models. Due to the low correlation of the other variables, we know that multicollinearity is only somewhat stronger in the multilevel models with more variables.

8We also tested the effect of origin diversity residuals and of the number of origin groups residuals for the students on reading vocabulary in Grades 5 and 8. The results show also a significant negative effect for the number of origin groups residuals for natives in Grade 8. However, the results show no significant effects for origin diversity residuals and the number of origin groups residuals in the other grades for both natives and migrants. Therefore, we also reject the teaching hypothesis for the natives in Grade 8 for reading vocabulary. Results available on request.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.

Notes: Standard errors between brackets. Significance: **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05.

Source: COOL 2008, own computation.