OSI Symposium at the World Congress of Comparative Education Societies

Although a divide in the learning achievement of students based on their family backgrounds is apparent in Central and Eastern European countries, there is an important role for schools to play in both reducing this gap and raising the level of learning for all students. This is one of the major conclusions of a symposium jointly organized by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI-ESP).

The symposium was held during the XIII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies in September 2007 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It featured the presentation of research papers on eight countries from the Balkans to the Baltics: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia. Working together with international experts through a series of workshops organized by the UIS and supported by the OSI-ESP in 2004 and 2005, researchers from these countries used advanced statistical methods to analyse data from the 2003 TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) and the 2003 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) in order to understand the status of quality and equity of students’ learning outcomes. The research teams adopted a framework of socio-economic gradient or “learning bar” – the relationship between learning achievement and socio-economic status (SES) for students in a classroom, school, school district, region or larger jurisdiction – to study how student outcomes are distributed within a school system and explore what kinds of interventions might improve student outcomes and reduce inequalities.

According to the research results, raising and leveling the learning bar – improving the overall quality of learning while reducing SES-related gaps – remains a serious challenge in most of the countries, after more than a decade of drastic political, economic and social changes in the region. Aside from less-than-desirable overall levels of quality, there exist disparities among schools and regions in learning achievement in reading, mathematics and sciences of secondary school students. The research revealed that much of these achievement disparities are associated with student SES.

According to research in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, allocating students to differentiated schools or programs was an important source of disparities among schools. In Bulgaria, Slovakia and Serbia, selection into different schools or programmes is strongly related to student family background. Due to the differences in resource levels, expectations of student success and curricular focus, selecting students into different schools and programmes means exposing students to different learning opportunities. Thus efforts to raise disparities in learning achievement should focus on strengthening the learning opportunity for all students, particularly those from vulnerable backgrounds.

These findings provide an up-to-date picture of the new realities of educational quality and inequity in the region. By focusing on school organization, school and classroom policies and practices and their link to the SES-achievement relationship, the findings also highlight the role that schools can play in both raising the overall level of achievement and reducing the SES-related inequities in learning achievement.

The papers were published in Prospects, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4:

Overall Introduction

Willms, J. D., Smith, T.M., Zhang, Y and Tramonte, L. Raising and leveling the learning bar in Central and Eastern Europe.

Country Case Studies

Bankov, K., Mikova, D. and Smith, T.M. "Assessing between-school variation in educational resources and mathematics and science achievement in Bulgaria."

Baucal, A., Pavlovic-Babic, D. and Willms, J.D. "Differential selection into secondary schools in Serbia."

Geske, A., Grinfelds, A., Dedze, I., and Zhang, Y. "Family background, school quality and rural-urban disparities in student learning achievement in Latvia."

Horn, D., Balázsi, I., Takács, S. and Zhang, Y. "Tracking and inequality of learning outcomes in Hungarian secondary schools."

Mere, K., Reiska, P. and Smith, T.M. "Impact of SES on Estonian students’ science achievement across different cognitive domains."

Olimpius Istrate, O., Noveanu, G. and Smith, T.M. "Exploring sources of variation in Romanian science achievement."

Straková, J., Tomášek, V., and Willms, J.D. "Educational inequalities in the Czech Republic."

Zelmanova, O., Korsnakova, P., Tramonte, L. and Willms, J.D. "Education inequality in Slovakia: The effects of early selection."