A detailed review of the education sector in Australia as in the data provided by the 2006 edition of the OECD's annual publication, 'Education at a Glance' is presented. While the data has shown that in almost all OECD countries educational attainment levels are on the rise, with countries showing impressive gains in university qualifications, it also reveals that a large of share of young people still do not complete secondary school, which remains a baseline for successful entry into the labour market.

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Education at a Glance

The book Inequality by Christopher Jencks is in one sense an arid waste of somewhat confusing and misleading statistics between chapter one and chapter nine, and, in another sense, a destructive, unscientific critique of American education and families. Jencks' interpretation comes down hard on his basic feeling that "The crucial problem today is that relatively few people view income inequality as a serious problem; indeed the Nixon administration apparently convinced itself that income was too equally distributed in 1968 and that the rich needed additional incentives to get even richer . The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were only marginally better. Neither made any explicit effort to equalize incomes; the subject was hardly discussed. Instead reformers focused on equalizing opportunity." This view is probably correct but it is no excuse for an unscholarly, unscientific polemic against far from "peripheral institutions," which is Jencks' evaluation of the American schools. This book states

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America.

This study seeks to reorient our understanding of the early educational determinants of social stratification outcomes. It focuses on the process and consequences of unequal cognitive skill attainment for ethnic and poverty groups within our nation's cities. It draws, theoretically, on the notion that experiences at home and school create a feedback loop by which the "cultural capital" of the students (their toolkit of skills, habits, and styles with which they construct strategies of action) evolves over time and largely determines differential success in mastering the teacher-assigned homework.

Human Capital or Cultural Capital?: Ethnicity and Poverty Groups in an Urban School District (Social Institutions and Social Change Series)

The intersection of educational attainment and social class is well studied, but often from either a descriptive stance (yes, there is inequality by class) or from a single perspective (students from the working class do not attain the same levels of education as students from the middle and upper classes). Determined to Succeed? however, not only identifies the sweeping phenomenon of educational inequality by class, it also seeks to untangle the combined factors of (1) academic performance and (2) educational choice on the inequality of educational opportunity in an effort to speak directly to the need for focused and refreshed educational intervention should countries wish to see decreasing levels of inequality in the future. To say that I could keep track of every methodological nuance introduced in Michelle Jackson’s book would be wishful thinking, but to say that it is a clear, well organized, and insightful volume is nothing less than the truth. If only to use as an abridged explanation of the public school systems across Europe and the United States, this book is a worthwhile investment. The edited volume offers a chapter on each of the following eight countries: Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, England, and the United States. After valiant attempts to explain the ins and outs of each country’s public educational system, each chapter takes on the momentous task of deconstructing contributing factors to socioeconomic inequality in the educational attainment of a particular country. Though results are mixed, the message is clear: (1) academic performance and (2) educational choices, both strongly related to class, are each vital components of ongoing educational inequality. Further, the authors agree that educational policy and intervention must happen early in students’ educational careers if we are to hope for any substantial change to the current state of inequality. In each of the eight studied countries, the authors quantitatively model the impact of ‘‘primary effects’’ (academic performance) and ‘‘secondary effects’’ (educational choice) on educational stratification. The skillful editing of Jackson is evident in the consistency of language, variables, and structure across the chapters. This consistency allows for ease of comparison among countries and outcomes which is quite a feat considering the complexity and variety of educational structures addressed. Although the relative impact of secondary effects varies from country to country, the importance of both primary and secondary effects is well noted in each chapter. The whole of this book makes a compelling argument for future scholars’ more sophisticated approaches to the study of educational inequality along class lines. After a compelling introduction of the setting of the Inequality of Educational Opportunity [IEO] and a methodological chapter that has a place in any class on advanced statistics, the book offers stand-alone studies on each country. Each of these chapters differs from the others in large part as a result of the accessibility of data in each of the countries. In the concluding chapter, Jackson and Jan Jonsson offer a consolidated explanation for the differences in data among the countries. However, the great variety of data—in terms of sources, numbers, dates, and collection method—compromises the extent to which the findings are comparable across countries. For instance, Anders Holm and Mads Jaeger rely on panel data on cohorts from the 1950s and 1980s to analyze educational inequality in Denmark while Martin Neugebauer, David Reimer, Steffen Schindler and Volker Stocké use cross-sectional data on cohorts from the 1990s to analyze the German situation. Given this, I believe that the book should be taken as a wonderful introduction to the interrelated issues of primary and secondary effects, not as a final say on European and American educational inequality. Perhaps the most impressive chapter is the one in which Frida Rudolphi investigates the state of educational inequality in Sweden. This is, in no small part, due to the fact that 848 Reviews

Determined to Succeed?: Performance versus Choice in Educational Attainment:

To what extent has the learning progress of school-aged children slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic? A growing number of studies address this question, but findings vary depending on context. Here we conduct a pre-registered systematic review, quality appraisal and meta-analysis of 42 studies across 15 countries to assess the magnitude of learning deficits during the pandemic. We find a substantial overall learning deficit (Cohen’s d = −0.14, 95% confidence interval −0.17 to −0.10), which arose early in the pandemic and persists over time. Learning deficits are particularly large among children from low socio-economic backgrounds. They are also larger in maths than in reading and in middle-income countries relative to high-income countries. There is a lack of evidence on learning progress during the pandemic in low-income countries. Future research should address this evidence gap and avoid the common risks of bias that we identify. This meta-analysis of 42 studies finds that learning progress has slowed during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, particularly among children from low socio-economic backgrounds and in poorer countries. Reported learning deficits were larger in maths than in reading. 

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A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

\n Although children of immigrant origin in many European countries are observed to choose higher levels of education than native-origin peers at similar levels of academic performance, little is known about the outcomes of these high-aspiring choices. Using administrative register data covering all children born in 1994–1995 in Denmark, I examine whether the high-aspiring educational choices of children of immigrants convert into educational success or, conversely, into low grades and increased dropout rates. I find that, compared with children of Danish origin, children of immigrants are not only more likely to enrol in academic upper secondary education but also make more ambitious track and subject choices at this educational level. These ethnic choice effects are particularly pronounced at low levels of academic performance. Applying a counterfactual re-weighting approach, I show that, although ethnic choice effects reduce the ethnic gap in overall attainment of academic upper secondary education, they also widen ethnic gaps in dropout rates and achievement. My findings indicate that high aspirations among ethnic minorities operate as a double-edged sword as they help close the educational gap between them and their native-origin peers but at the cost of inducing academically weaker students to embark on less feasible educational trajectories.

Aiming High and Missing the Mark? Educational Choice, Dropout Risk, and Achievement in Upper Secondary Education among Children of Immigrants in Denmark

Education as a mediator of the association between origins and destinations: The role of early skills

Long-term labor market returns to upper secondary school track choice: Leveraging idiosyncratic variation in peers’ choices

We study the relationship among family background, placements in upper secondary school tracks and labour market outcomes in the comprehensive welfare state of Denmark. We base our study on high-quality data from Danish administrative registers with a focus on the 1986 birth cohort, which allows us to examine very fine-grained measures of track placement in upper secondary schools. Our analyses show three results. First, upper secondary track placement is consequential for labour market outcomes, even after we control for the selection into tracks on pre-track academic performance and family background characteristics. Second, upper secondary track placement appears to affect labour market outcomes even net of higher education attainment. Third, educational tracking appears to play a role in intergenerational social reproduction net of family background-based skill gaps, suggesting that track choice help maintain inequalities across generations. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on educational tracking.

Jesper Fels Birkelund

Papers

Aiming High and Missing the Mark? Educational Choice, Dropout Risk, and Achievement in Upper Secondary Education among Children of Immigrants in Denmark

Education as a mediator of the association between origins and destinations: The role of early skills

Long-term labor market returns to upper secondary school track choice: Leveraging idiosyncratic variation in peers’ choices

Upper secondary school tracking, labour market outcomes and intergenerational inequality in Denmark

Sources of change in the primary and secondary effects of social class origin on educational decisions: evidence from Denmark, 2002–2016