Murillo, F. J. y Martínez-Garrido, C. (2018). Impact of the economic crisis on school segregation in Spain. Revista de Educación, 381, 67-93. https://doi.org/10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2017-381-381
Abstract
The equity of the education system, in particular, the magnitude of school segregation has been affected by the severe economic crisis in Spain since 2008? The aim of this study is to determine the evolution across the last 15 years of the socioeconomic school segregation and immigrant school segregation in Spain and its Autonomous Communities. To achieve our aim, we conduct a special exploitation of the available PISA dataset from 2000 to 2015; we estimated four segregation indexes: Gorard index, Dissimilarity index, Hutchens index, and Isolation index. The socioeconomic school segregation considerer as a minority group the 25% of students from families with lower socioeconomic and cultural level (Q1), as well as the 25% with higher socioeconomic and cultural level (Q4). The minority group considered to estimate the immigrant school segregation was the students born abroad. According to our data, the socioeconomic school segregation in Spain has slightly decreased from 2000 to 2012, and increased strongly to 2015 (3.1% for students from Q1, and 3.6% students from Q4). Along the increases of the percentage of immigrant students from 2000 to 2009, the immigrant school segregation has decreased. From this moment, the immigrant school segregation has remained, even though the percentage of immigrant students keep growing. These results, let us confirm that there is evidence of the impact that economic crisis has into the increase of the school segregation in Spain. This impact stemming the decrease trend since 2000. A greater effort must be made by the educational administrations to terminate this state of affairs. They should strive to pursue the decreased trend that already existed before economic crisis came. The differences founded between the Autonomous Communities let us know that the public education policy can help to develop an equitable educational system, or it can serve to heighten social inequalities.
