Brussels, 09/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - Governments should invest more in disadvantaged schools and students to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance, according to a new OECD report entitled “Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools”. Helping those in need would reduce school failure, boost economic growth and contribute to a fairer society, OECD states.
At a time when the European Union is concerned about not attaining the education objectives set out in the EUROPE 2020 strategy (Ed.: reducing the rate of school failure and increasing the number of students gaining higher education diplomas, a subject that will be on the agenda of ministerial discussions at the Education Council on 10 February), the OECD reaches the same conclusion. It maintains that school failure remains difficult to bring under control and mainly affects children from disadvantaged backgrounds. According to the report, many students do not achieve elementary proficiency and one pupil out of five on average, within the OECD, drops out of school before finishing secondary school. The drop-out rate ranges from 2% in Korea to 58% in Turkey for people now aged 25-34 years of age. In the European Union, the lowest drop-out rates are to be found (in order) in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and Finland (rates below 10%), but are higher for Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal (above 20%, and even 50% for Portugal). The report gives five recommendations for improving equity in educational systems in order to help disadvantaged students: 1) Elimination of grade repetition, which is costly and ineffective. In Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, the direct costs of grade repetition account for nearly 10% of the annual spending on primary and secondary education. 2) Early streaming should be avoided as this can be detrimental for students moved to lower streams, without raising student performance as a whole. 3) School choice should be managed to avoid segregation. Over the past 25 years, more than two-thirds of OECD countries have increased parental school choice, particularly via government-dependent private schools. Financial incentives could encourage the best schools to take disadvantaged students. 4) Funding must be allocated according to student needs, with investment in early stages. Most OECD countries under-spend on early childhood education and care, investing nearly 2.5 times more in tertiary education. In addition to targeting spending on disadvantaged students and schools, giving schools more autonomy coupled with accountability can play a part. 5) Students must be encouraged to complete their studies by improving the quality of secondary-level vocational training courses, including work-based training, and by making the different secondary pathways equivalent. (IL/transl.jl)