School tracking, social segregation and educational opportunity: evidence from Belgium

J. HINDRIKS, M. VERSCHELDE, G. RAYP, K. SCHOORS
Educational tracking is a very controversial issue in education. The tracking debate is about the virtues of uniformity and vertical differentiation in the curriculum and teaching. The pro- tracking group claims that curriculum and teaching better aimed at children's varied interest and skills will foster learning efficacy. The anti-tracking group claims that tracking systems are ineffcient and unfair because they hinder learning and distribute learning inequitably. In this paper we provide a detailed within-country analysis of a specific educational system with a long history of early educational tracking between schools, namely the Flemish secondary school system in Belgium. .... Combining evidence from the PISA 2006 data set at the student and school level with recent statistical methods, we show first the dramatic impact of tracking on social segregation; and then, the impact of social segregation on equality of educational opportunity (adequately measured). It is shown that tracking, via social segregation, has a major effect on inequality of opportunity...

Social Segregation in Irish Schools

Social segregation in schools refers to the uneven distribution across schools of children from different socio-economic backgrounds. Why should we care? One simple reason is that not all schools are as good as others so if particular groups are concentrated in "good schools" (however that is measured) that has implications for inequality. Of course if low socio-economic status (SES) children were concentrated in the best schools then this would tend to mitigate inequality but in reality the opposite is likely to be the case and hence education could act to exacerbate inequalities with well-off children's advantage increasing, or at least being maintained, as a result of their schooling. It has also been argued that high levels of social segregation are bad for social cohesion.
A recent paper provides valuable evidence on this for a wide range of countries including Ireland. They calculate two measures of social segregation, a dissimiliarity index D and Hutchens H index. Each ranges between 0 (no social segregation with each school's distribution of SES the same as that of the country) and 1 (where each school consists of children with the same SES). The H index has the advantage that it is additively decomposable: the index can be written as a weighted average of the score for sub-groups (e.g. private vs. public schools).
Of the 27 countries (using PISA 2000,2003), by far the highest level of segregation is in Hungary. Japan and Sweden have the lowest levels of segregation. In general countries with "tracking", separate academic and vocational school systems, have high levels of segregation. Ireland actually does pretty well, having the 7th lowest level of social segregation. Northern Ireland, by contrast, has the 11th highest level of segregation.

Social segregation in secondary schools:how does England compare with other countries?
Stephen P. Jenkins, John Micklewright and Sylke V. Schnepf
Oxford Review of Education , 34(1) February 2008, 21–37