Beyond expectations: how much does the structure of european education systems affects students performance?

The European education system, during the reform processes of the 1990s, advocated for the standardization of educational pathways and qualifications (Novoa and Dejong-Lambert, 2003; Ertl, 2006). Specifically, isomorphization primarily targeted decentralization policies and evaluative measures. Subsequently, this process extended to tertiary education, addressing the comparability of qualifications and levels of education, while leaving the organization of lower educational levels to the member states. The outcome is the fragmentation in the organizational structures of European education systems, resulting in varying levels of selectivity towards students (Benadusi and Giancola, 2014). In countries with more selective systems, early tracking practices enhance the influence of social backgrounds on educational choices. This sustains stronger homogeneity in terms of social background and academic performance within each school (Duru-Bellat and Suchaut, 2005). The price for this internal homogeneity appears to be large school segregation, with greater disparities between schools in terms of social composition and average student performance (Sciffer et al., 2022). Mechanisms of micro-level interactions intervene in individual actions by providing access to information, and influencing beliefs and desires (Hedstrom, 2005; Collins, 2005), while operating within the bounds defined by structural-level variables (Coleman, 1994). In matters of equity of educational outcomes the importance of primary effects (Boudon, 1974) is confirmed by the OECD (2023), which indicates socioeconomic status (SES) as the best predictor of achievement on standardized tests, regardless of the educational system. The mix of micro and structural effects implies a reinforcement of segregation processes, pointing towards the existence of deep inequalities that tend to concentrate less fortunate students within disadvantaged schools. This phenomenon contributes to the perpetuation of educational disparities and, consequently, leads to divergent life outcomes (Dämmrich and Triventi, 2018). Aware of the dependency of performances on SES and accounting for the structure of the educational system, the work aims to study the ability of national school systems to ‘produce’ students who perform better and worse than what would be expected of them based on their social background. Using OECD PISA 2022 data and other international sources a database will be created storing data on educational systems both at the individual and country level for selected European countries. Educational systems will be evaluated in terms of the degree of selectivity defined by their structures (Benadusi, Giancola, 2014; European Commission, 2023). Secondly, primary effects are introduced through the residue distribution of a model that predicts mathematic performances (the main focus of the 2022 round of PISA) from SES. A model fitted on the overall sample will be used to identify the thresholds that will define at what point one deviates from the expectations. These thresholds will be then used on the residues from the same model, fitted on the data at the single country level. This will allow us to observe how many students in each country fall behind or beyond what could be generally expected. Finally, it will be observed whether the selectivity of educational systems affects the ability to ‘produce’ these students who deviate from expectations.