This open-access book focuses on trends in educational inequality using twenty years of grade 8 student data collected from 13 education systems by the IEAs Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) between 1995 and 2015. While the overall positive association between family socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement is well documented in the literature, the magnitude of this relationship is contingent on social contexts and is expected to vary by education system. Research on how such associations differ across societies and how the strength of these relationships has changed over time is limited. This study, therefore, addresses an important research and policy question by examining changes in the inequality of educational outcomes due to SES over this 20-year period, and also examines the extent to which the performance of students from disadvantaged backgrounds has improved over time in each education system. Education systems generally aim to narrow the achievement gap between low- and high-SES students and to improve the performance of disadvantaged students. However, the lack of quantifiable and comprehensible measures makes it difficult to assess and monitor the effect of such efforts. In this study, a novel measure of SES that is consistent across all TIMSS cycles allows students to be categorized into different socioeconomic groups. This measure of SES may also contribute to future research using TIMSS trend data. Readers will gain new insight into how educational inequality has changed in the education systems studied and how such change may relate to the more complex picture of macroeconomic changes in those societies.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.”—The New York Times Book Review In 1988, Jonathan Kozol set off to spend time with children in the American public education system. For two years, he visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. . . . Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. . . . Everyone should read this important book.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today “Kozol has written a book that must be read by anyone interested in education.”—Elizabeth Duff, Philadelphia Inquirer “The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful voice. . . . Kozol has written a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system and the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in cities.”—Emily Mitchell, Time “Easily the most passionate, and certain to be the most passionately debated, book about American education in several years . . . A classic American muckraker with an eloquent prose style, Kozol offers . . . an old-fashioned brand of moral outrage that will affect every reader whose heart has not yet turned to stone.”—Entertainment Weekly

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. How do education systems shape educational inequalities and differences in educational outcomes? And how do advantages and disadvantages in educational attainment translate into privileges and shortcomings in labour market and general life chances? Education systems and inequalities compares different education systems and their impact on creating and sustaining social inequalities. The book considers key questions such as how education systems impact educational inequalities along such variables as social origin, gender, ethnicity, migration background or ability and what social mechanisms are behind the links between education system and educational inequalities and provides vital evidence to inform debates in policy and reform.

While there is considerable literature on social inequality and education, there is little recent work which explores notions of difference and diversity in relation to "race," class and gender. This edited text aims to bring together researchers in the field of education located across many international contexts such as the UK, Australia, USA, New Zealand and Europe. Contributors investigate the ways in which dominant perspectives on "difference," intersectionality and institutional structures underpin and reinforce educational inequality in schools and higher education. They emphasize the importance of international perspectives and innovative methodological approaches to examining these areas, and seek to locate the dimensions of difference within recent theoretical discourses, with an emphasis on "race," class and gender as key categories of analysis.

Education, Inequality and Social Class provides a comprehensive discussion of the empirical evidence for persistent inequality in educational attainment. It explores the most important theoretical perspectives that have been developed to understand class-based inequality and frame further research. With clear explanations of essential concepts, this book draws on empirical data from the UK and other countries to illustrate the nature and scale of inequalities according to social background, discussing the interactions of class-based inequalities with those according to race and gender. The book relates aspects of inequality to the features of educational systems, showing how policy choices impact on the life chances of children from different class backgrounds. The relationship between education and social mobility is also explored, using the concepts of social closure, positionality and social congestion. The book also provides detailed discussions of the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein, two important theorists whose contributions have generated thriving research traditions much used in contemporary educational research. Education, Inequality and Social Class will be essential reading for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students engaged in the study of education, childhood studies and sociology. It will also be of great interest to academics, researchers and teachers in training.

EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. How do education systems shape educational inequalities and differences in educational outcomes? And how do advantages and disadvantages in educational attainment translate into privileges and shortcomings in labour market and general life chances? Education systems and inequalities compares different education systems and their impact on creating and sustaining social inequalities. The book considers key questions such as how education systems impact educational inequalities along such variables as social origin, gender, ethnicity, migration background or ability and what social mechanisms are behind the links between education system and educational inequalities and provides vital evidence to inform debates in policy and reform.

This book posits that national education systems are enhancing socioeconomic inequalities in political engagement. While the democratic ideal is social equality in political engagement, the authors demonstrate that the English education system is recreating and enhancing entrenched democratic inequalities. In Europe, the UK has the strongest correlation between social background and voting behaviours. Examining the role of the school and the education system in the potential reproduction of these inequalities, the authors draw upon the theories of Bourdieu and Bernstein and compare the English school system to other European countries to analyse barriers that are put along the way to political engagement. In times of political disaffection, frustration and polarisation, it is particularly important to uncover why young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to engage politically, and to help inspire future generations to use their voice. This timely book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational inequality and political engagement.