Territorial Differences in Student Performance in Portugal: The Role of Family Characteristics and School Composition

• Alcino Pinto Couto ^[1] ; Patrícia Costa ^[2] ; Maria Eugénia Ferrao ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade da Beira Interior

     Universidade da Beira Interior

     Covilhã (Conceição), Portugal

     
  2. [2] Centro de Matemática Aplicada à Previsão e Decisão Económica (CEMAPRE), European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Human Capital and Employment Unit
• Localización: Revista portuguesa de estudos regionais, ISSN-e 1645-586X, Nº. 57, 2021, págs. 89-103
• Idioma: portugués
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Diferenças Territoriais no Desempenho dos Alunos em Portugal: O Papel das Características Familiares e da Composição Escolar
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • English

    This research represents an early attempt to disentangle the role of families, schools and regions characteristics in student performance in order to support the design of educational-related policies. Multilevel statistical models applied to PISA 2015 Portuguese data are used.

    The findings reveal the predictive power of socioeconomic variables operating through family background and the school composition. The regional variance explained by individual or school composition concerning the socioeconomic status ranges from 20% to 24%. The impact relies mainly on variability across schools.

    The variation explained due to region differences is smaller than 5%. After controlling for socioeconomic status, some regions present lower regional variance than the metropolitan region of Lisboa, showing that their students tend to achieve higher scores. Some research and policy implications are discussed. The regional dimension allows expanding the avenues to examchannels through which educational resources exert their impact on student performance. In turn, the decentralisation of educational policies seems to be required to pursuit suited local educational governance structures to address the effects of disadvantaged backgrounds

  • English

    Esta pesquisa representa uma tentativa inicial de dissociar o papel das características das famílias, escolas e regiões no desempenho dos alunos, com vista a apoiar a formulação de políticas educacionais. São utilizados modelos estatísticos multinível para os dados portugueses do PISA 2015. Os resultados revelam o poder preditivo das variáveis socioeconómicas que influenciam o desempenho dos alunos associadas ao contexto familiar e à composição escolar. A variância regional explicada pela composição individual ou escolar em relação ao nível socioeconómico varia de 20% a 24%. O impacto depende principalmente da variabilidade entre as escolas.

    A variação explicada devido às diferenças regionais é menor que 5%. Controlado o nível socioeconómico, algumas regiões apresentam menor variância regional do que a região metropolitana de Lisboa, mostrando que os seus alunos tendem a obter pontuações mais elevadas. São discutidas algumas implicações de investigação e de politicas. A dimensão regional permite ampliar as formas de examinar quais os recursos educacionais que influenciam o desempenho dos alunos. Por sua vez, a descentralização das políticas educacionais parece ser necessária na busca de estruturas adequadas à governação educacional local para lidar com os efeitos em grupos desfavorecidos

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