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Student Segregation Across and Within Schools. The Case of the Portuguese Public School System
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
We provide the most comprehensive description of student segregation in the Portuguese public school system to date, a system that
exhibits interesting institutional features potentially linked with the student segregation issue (e.g. school catchment areas, course
tracking, and almost no central regulations regarding class composition). The analysis uses the entire regular student population enrolled
in all public schools of continental Portugal (grades 1 to 12, from 2006/07 to 2016/17). Looking at three segregation dimensions –
economic, academic, and immigrant – at both between and within-school levels, and using a novel dissimilarity index recently proposed
in the literature aimed at better capturing systematic segregation, we find that segregation, on median, is mild, across time, grades, and
regions. The most important exception is the case of within-school academic segregation. During upper-secondary schooling, in
particular, when students are divided across classes according to own course-tracking decisions, it doubles. Moreover, within-school
academic segregation estimates have the largest interquartile ranges, within a given year, grade, or region, pointing to heterogeneity in
the way different schools set up classes internally in terms of students’ academic characteristics. Academic and economic segregation
are positively associated, at both between and within school levels. The Portuguese segregation insights are also compared to those
from other geographies.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Segregation Dissimilarity index Municipalities Schools Classes
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Firmino, João, Nunes, Luís Catela, Almeida, Sílvia de and Batista, Susana, Student Segregation Across and Within Schools. The Case of the Portuguese Public School System (March 16, 2020). FEUNL Working Paper Series No. 633