Relation between student achievement and social status in oecd and post-Yugoslav countrie

Abstract

In the contemporary global context of economic crisis, it is important to explore what effect social position has on educational practices and to investigate educational inequalities. Having in mind that post-Yugoslav societies have a shared past of being part of the same socialist country and that they all experienced the process of post-socialist transformation, we wanted to compare the significance of social status for student achievement on the PISA testing between post-Yugoslav countries and OECD countries. Besides, bearing in mind that post-Yugoslav countries have had different paths and dynamics in the process of post-socialist transformation, our goal is to compare them on the same relationship between student achievement on external testing and socioeconomic variables. Since we tend to use a comparative approach, we utilise the data of PISA testing on 15-years old students. In order to observe the tendencies, we use the data from two waves of study (2012 and 2018). For the analysis of student achievement, we rely on students’ reading performance scores, while the PISA Index of economic, social and cultural status is used as a proxy for social status. The results reveal a stronger correlation between social status and student achievements in OECD countries than in post-Yugoslav ones. This finding might suggest that the socialist legacy is still protecting against an increase in educational inequalities. Furthermore, the results show differences in the correlation between the examined variables among post-Yugoslav countries, reflecting influences of the post-socialist transformation dynamic as well as of previous legacy.