Socio-economic gaps in achievement among students and schools in the context of rural-urban divide

Abstract

Recent analyses indicate that educational achievement gaps based on student socio-economic status (SES) have grown over recent decades, that is, SES-achievement association has become stronger (Chmielevski, 2019; Harwell et al., 2017). Current gaps in achievement are attributed to socio-economic differences among student families rather than a lack of access to or selectivity inside the schooling systems (Chmielevski, 2019). From this perspective, student SES is considered a students’ personal background characteristic and treated as a factor that can hardly be changed or influenced by educational policies or practices (Holzberger et al., 2020; Zabulionis, 2020). However, it is also acknowledged that SES can be related to student academic achievement through the institutional level. Specifically, when considered on a cumulative level (i.e., aggregated by school or classroom), student SES becomes a characteristic of school or educational system. It is referred to in the literature as aggregate-level SES, school SES or school composition (Van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010). Aggregate-level SES is related to multiple factors and processes at school, including educational resources, school climate, instructional quantity and quality (Gustafsson et al., 2018), as well as school practices related to sorting of students (Van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010).