A LVA R O G O N Z Á L E Z T O R R E S

THE CASE FOR AN INCLUSIVE SCHOOL SYSTEM IN CHILE

Encuentros ChileGlobal Rotterdam 2015 Developing Sustainable Futures   Education Session Schools in Chile: Segregation or social inclusion?

agonzalez01@ioe.ac.uk @alvargonzalezt

THE QUESTION

Would it be possible to sustain and to project a primary and secondary educational system that meets high quality standards, without relying so much on existing measurement and selection processes?

MEASUREMENT

•  Many systems have some form of compulsory, standardised measurement with different purposes; bureaucratic accountability, targeting and focalisation, information, etc. •  Finland: Matriculation Examination at the end of

upper secondary. •  Ontario: primary division, junior division (EQAO) and

grade 10 (OSSLT) •  Alberta in grades 3, 6 and 9 (PAT, changing to SLA)

SELECTION

•  Many systems allow some degree of selectivity in schools, usually under the guise of ‘academic differentiation’ •  Academic differentiation varies from early ability grouping

in primary years to the more common setting, streaming and/or placing students in ability groups in upper secondary

•  Some systems separate students into different types of institution while others teach subjects separately to more/less able students. Most systems do this at upper secondary level (grade 9 or 10)

SINGAPORE DIFFERENTIATION (MATHEMATICS)

We are looking at only two pieces of a much larger puzzle, which is the school system

Associated characteristics of effective school systems are

part of a complex framework of intertwined elements, wrapped up in social and political struggles that are

idiosyncratic of a given context.

In other words, we cannot see the forest for the trees.

CHILE AND ITS EDUCATION

We require of course, in our modern society, more interconnection between the world of education and the world of business, because education serves a dual purpose. It is a commodity, this implies to know more, understand better, have more culture (...) but education also has a component of investment, which is to improve our capacities to contribute to the productive process, for our benefit and our own families, but also for the benefit of the country

CHILE AND ITS EDUCATION

I have never seen education only as an instrument, but also as an end in itself. It is an instrument to enhance our abilities and productive skills, and it is an end in itself to enable us to achieve full and better realisation as individuals. This is a holistic concept of the value education in a free and democratic society such as ours

Public education and the right to education have sorely deteriorated (…) massive access [to schooling] does not mean better educational opportunities for the majority of Chilean students, because neoliberal policies have only increased the quantity of students, not the quality of education, and they have intensified social inequalities in education at every level (elementary, secondary, and higher education)

Cabalín, 2012 (p. 220)

School choice, especially within urban education systems, has become [for middle classes] a new form of ‘‘social closure’’, permitting access to new social positions and limiting competition from members of the working classes.

(…) strategies concerning recruitment and selection procedures as well as educational

provision have a significant impact on the internal organization of schools.

Dronkers, Felouzis and Van Zanten, 2010 (p. 100)

SYSTEM STRATEGIES WHAT DOES THE EVIDENCE SAYS?

•  Access and Opportunities •  How parents get their children into schooling, and how

good is the educational experiences offered to those schools

•  Selection processes play an important role in this strategy, in conjunction with the dynamics of parental choice

•  Pathways and Gatekeepers •  How students move throughout the system and progress to

higher educational levels, and what are the barriers that they need to overcome

•  Measurement processes are key for this strategy, as transitions to higher educational levels depend largely on students’ performance in standardised tests

ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Both oversubscribed and undersubscribed primary schools apply selection methods prohibited by law, with a mock “play session” being the most common mechanism to assess children’s abilities. Moreover, schools with higher socioeconomic status, with private administration and better SIMCE scores are more likely to use selection methods. Finally, the authors found that this results in a higher level of socioeconomic and academic homogeneity in schools Flores, Bogolasky, Gutierrez, San Martin and Carrasco, 2014

ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITIES

What emerges from the study is that segregation would respond not only to the attributes of a demand subsidy system where private-subsidised schools select among students that apply to such schools, but rather to the choice strategies and guidelines deployed by families rooted in their position within the social structure and the cultural capital they posses. In this sense, families that have more information, economic means and educational aspirations for their children are the ones that look for distancing themselves from schools were students with lifestyles that they consider “inadequate” for their children attend, strongly valuing, in fact, the student selection strategies of the schools that they chose. Raczynski, Hernandez, Kegevic and Roco, 2010

Results show that an important number of schools with poor performance do not have alternatives of better quality nearby or, in cases where better classified schools can be found, these do not have the necessary capacity to attend the potential demand from the closure of poor performing schools. In concrete terms, 28.4% of the available alternatives are not of better quality as they are either “In Recovery” schools or these are school for which there is no enough information to judge their quality. Such scarcity mostly impacts on rural schools and those from lower socioeconomic level, which means that the possibility of school closure could imply costly consequences for parents. Elacqua, Santos, Urbina and Martinez, 2011

ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITIES

PATHWAYS AND GATEKEEPERS

The PSU has been defined as a test that assesses general cognitive skills associated in the minimum curricular contents of secondary education (DEMRE, 2006). As a screening test, it is intended to sort high school graduates according to the measured skills as a way for traditional universities to enrol students with better predicted academic performance. To analyse the results of the PSU and its determinants, therefore, represents a way of assessing the equity of the results of the Chilean educational system in two ways: in terms of its ability to ensure student learning regardless of their social origin, and in terms of its capacity to ensure equal opportunities in access to higher education. Contreras, Corbalán and Redondo, 2007

PATHWAYS AND GATEKEEPERS

•  Contreras, Corbalán y Redondo concluded that: •  Academic achievement obtained in primary education for

all groups is a strong predictor, but it is inversely related to family income level

•  The importance of the gender variable on the PSU performance cuts across all income groups, where females obtain lower scores than males

•  In the lowest income group, the next most important variable is the educational mode of secondary education; academic or vocational.

THE CASE FOR AN INCLUSIVE SCHOOL SYSTEM

•  Consider how system strategies of access, opportunities, pathways and gatekeepers could contribute to promote a more socially just school system •  Problem: Chile is introducing more control and

sanctions over schools for failing to achieve quality standards, rather than supporting schools and redesigning the entire accountability model to help them reduce social segregation and inequality •  We need to stop thinking about “good” or “bad”

schools, and we should think of them in terms of disadvantage.

THE CASE FOR AN INCLUSIVE SCHOOL SYSTEM

Disadvantaged schools tend to reinforce students’ socio-economic inequalities (…) consider the hypothetical case of two students in any of these countries with an average family socio-economic background. One student attends an advantaged school, where most of this student’s peers come from families that are more affluent. The other student attends a more socio-economically disadvantaged school. The analysis indicates that the first student would be expected to show, on average across the OECD countries, a 32 score point higher reading performance than the second student, and this difference would be expected to exceed 50 score points in several countries. OECD, 2012 (p. 107)