Tackling the remaining attainment gap between students with and without immigrant background: an investigation into the equivalence of SES constructs

Abstract

In England, students with immigrant background exhibit lower educational attainment than those without immigrant background. Family socioeconomic status (SES) helps explain differences in educational attainment, but a gap remains that differs in size for students with different immigrant backgrounds. While the explanatory repertoire for the remaining gap is broad, it has been neglected to comprehensively investigate whether family SES constructs are equivalent across students with different immigrant backgrounds. Using data from the first wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) for England (n = 4,315), the paper applies exploratory structural equation modelling (ESEM) to evaluate measurement invariance of family background constructs across students without and with immigrant background, specifically Pakistani/Bangladeshi immigrant background. Results suggest differences in the structure of family SES indicators across groups and in their association with educational attainment. Complementary variables are suggested to enhance family SES indicators. Findings are relevant to researchers investigating educational inequalities related to immigrant background.

Keywords:

• educational attainment gap
• immigrant background
• family SES
• construct equivalence
• ESEM

Acknowledgements

This publication arises from research funded by the John Fell Oxford University Press (OUP) Research Fund and the NORFACE research programme on Migration in Europe – Social, Economic, Cultural and Policy Dynamics.

Notes on contributors

Jenny Lenkeit is a Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment (OUCEA), Department of Education, University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Education from the University of Hamburg and a Master's degree in Empirical Educational Research and Comparative Education from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research interests are focused on educational inequalities, cross-cultural comparisons, methodological approaches in effectiveness research, and the impact of international large-scale assessments on educational policies.

Daniel H. Caro is a Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment (OUCEA), Department of Education, University of Oxford. He completed a PhD in Education at the Freie Universität Berlin and a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of New Brunswick. He is alumnus of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE). His research interests include education inequality, international large-scale student assessments, ethnicity gaps in education, mixed models in cross-sectional and longitudinal settings, and causal inference with observational data.

Steve Strand is Professor of Education at the University of Oxford. His research interests are in educational equality (particularly ethnicity, social class, and gender) in a range of educational outcomes (achievement and progress, special education, attendance and exclusion). He is particularly interested in the interface between school effectiveness and equity. For details, see: http://www.education.ox.ac.uk/about-us/directory/professor-steve-strand/

Notes

1. For the sake of consistency, we refer to students with immigrant background as being either first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants throughout the paper, unless otherwise stated.

2. Heuristically, values of TLI and CFI greater than 0.90 and 0.95, respectively, reflect acceptable and excellent fit to the data, while for the RMSEA, values less than 0.05 and 0.08 reflect a close fit and a reasonable fit to the data (Marsh, Hau, & Wen, 2004).