School Segregation As a Driver of Increasing Educational Inequalities: A Global Perspective

School segregation is an emerging problem in education systems in developed countries (Bonal & Bellei, 2022). Segregation of socioeconomically disadvantaged and immigrant students is aggravated by educational policies promoting free choice (Boterman, 2019) and family strategies seeking social ‘homogeneity’, all together with –and beyond– urban segregation (Cordini, 2019), tending to intensify in the most differentiated education systems and in those with the highest degree of privatisation (Sciffer et al., 2022).

In an increasingly globalised world, education systems that receive a larger influx of immigrant students are expected to experiment a reaction among middle-class families, who would move towards more affluent (socially ‘homogeneous’) schools, while students from families with less power of choice would tend to be concentrated in highly segregated schools. The resulting school segregation is a potential factor in increasing educational inequalities, as the most disadvantaged students tend to be concentrated in some schools and not in others, placing greater demands on teachers' workloads and conditioning the educational process.

Using data from the TIMSS and PIRLS assessments over the last two decades (2001-2021), totalling more than 2 million 4th grade students, we analyse patterns of school segregation of both low-SES and first-generation immigrant students. Through multilevel structural equation models, we aim to explore both these segregation patterns over time and across countries, and their relationship with an expected increase in educational inequalities.

Our results show that school segregation of immigrant students has increased over the last two decades in most developed countries, and that the educational outcomes of the most disadvantaged –both low-SES and inmigrant– students are falling behind as segregation increases. These two processes have serious implications for the quality and equity of our education systems, implying the need for policy makers to develop policies aimed at both reducing school segregation and containing its effects on educational inequalities.