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Hidden Ethnic Inequalities. a Possible Global Educational Exploration Using PISA
The international educational evaluation programme PISA analysis the variances of school achievement of different countries. In several PISA reports there are described the criteria of successful schools, and the ways the social backgrounds can be overcame. In the PISA framework educational opportunities are distributed equitably if the student’s educational success is independent of their own family background. Based on PISA reports one can have a detailed picture about the school integration of migrants, the factors which have impact on their educational outcomes.
It is important to underline at the same time that based on PISA results there is no detailed analysis of non-migrant or native national minorities. In some countries the results are presented following the (regional) minority language of test (e.g. Belgium, Spain, Canada), however a comprehensive analysis of native national minorities is failed.
Using PISA databases one can gain some relevant information about national minorities’ school outcomes (in at least 20 countries). By a crosstabulation of the language spoken at home and of the language of test (state language or minority language) one can distinguish at least three main students groups: minority students who learn in their mother tongue (language spoken at home: minority language, language of test: minority language), minority students who learn in state language, and majority students (who learn in majority language, of course).
Having these students subgroups one can test two basic research questions: 1. rather the mother tongue education or the mainstream language education outperform among minority students? 2. rather the native national minority or majority students outperform? These comparison could tend us to interpret the variance in student performance in linguistic/ethnics terms. Moreover if after accounting for socio-economic background these variances still remain we can assume that exists hidden, ethnic-linguistics inequalities among students.