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What wise parents want for their children is what the government should want for all children. Children from wealthier families will find many open doors to a successful life. But children from poor families often have just one chance in life, and that is a good school that gives them an opportunity to develop their potential. Those who miss that boat rarely catch up; in fact, this report provides compelling data on how subsequent education opportunities tend to reinforce social disparities that appear early in life.
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Equity in education means that schools and education systems provide equal learning opportunities to all students. As a result, during their education, students of different socio-economic status, gender or immigrant and family background achieve similar levels of academic performance in key cognitive domains, such as reading, mathematics and science, and similar levels of social and emotional well-being in areas such as life satisfaction, self-confidence and social integration. Equity does not mean that all students obtain equal education outcomes, but rather that differences in students’ outcomes are unrelated to their background or to economic and social circumstances over which students have no control.
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This chapter examines trends in equity in education. It focuses on three areas: cognitive achievement, socio-emotional well-being and educational attainment. The chapter discusses disparities in student performance related to socio-economic status and how those differences evolve over time. It also explores students’ sense of belonging at school, their beliefs about their own academic abilities, and their expectations for their future. The chapter considers how educational attainment in countries has changed over recent decades and what that means for social (educational) mobility across generations.
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This chapter examines resilience among socio-economically disadvantaged students. It focuses on two kinds of student resilience: academic and socio-emotional. In the first part of the chapter, academic resilience is examined using international, national and “core-skills” perspectives. Student-, school- and system-level characteristics associated with academic resilience are considered. The second part of the chapter examines the incidence of social and emotional resilience across countries, and the relationship between academic and socio-emotional resilience.
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This chapter examines the socio-economic segregation of disadvantaged students across schools and changes in this segregation over the past decade. It quantifies the disparities in student performance due to the socio-economic profile of the schools that disadvantaged students attend. The chapter identifies certain school policies and practices, and student behaviours that may mediate the relationship between the socio-economic profile of schools and student performance. It concludes by analysing the relationship between socio-economic diversity in schools and student performance.
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This chapter uses longitudinal data from five countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Switzerland and the United States) to examine the relationship between cognitive competencies at age 15 and educational attainment and early labour market outcomes at age 25. It also explores different sources of disadvantage, related to a student’s home, school and social environment, which contribute to skills gaps during compulsory education and reduce the upward social mobility of children from less-educated families.
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