Social segregation and the institutional framework of the school: an

This article presents a comparative analysis performed at international level of the effects of school process and composition on the inequalities in student academic achievement. We use multilevel regression models to identify the factors which contribute to explain the variability of student academic achievement, and which, therefore, provide hints for establishing the causes of inequality situations in education systems. The analysis includes data from 32 education systems in the OECD; 23 are national units and 9 sub-national. The main source of information used to construct the variables was PISA2006. The results corroborate the significant effect of the school’s social composition. The significance of these factors does not vary greatly when the variables related to the institutional framework and the pedagogical processes are controlled. On the other hand, although school process has a lower impact on scores, the practices that contribute the most to explaining the disparity in the results between schools correspond to practices that, to some extent, apply quasi-market principles.