Profiles of school segregation by socioeconomic status in Spain and its Autonomous Communities

Abstract

The research that estimate the magnitude of school segregation by socioeconomic status that has been done until now shown an overly simplistic image of the phenomenon that is not capable of reflecting his highly complex reality. This paper presents an alternative approach of analysis and interpretation of school segregation. Specifically, the aim of this research is to determine the profile of school segregation by socioeconomic status of Spain and its Autonomous Communities, and to establish models of segregation of the Communities. A special exploitation of the PISA 2015 data is conducted. We use the socioeconomic and cultural status of the families (NSEC) as a main variable. The analysis of the data is carried out in two phases: on the one hand, it is estimated the Gorard index using 19 minority groups; on the other hand, it is identified the segregation models and their characteristics using the analysis by clusters and k-means. The results show the existence of 17 different profiles of school segregation by socioeconomic status, one for each of the Autonomous Communities studied, and identify five behavior models of school segregation in Spain. This research shows how little is the knowledge about school segregation in Spain, and presents a more accurate alternative to estimate the magnitude of school segregation by socioeconomic status considering it, not as a point, but as a profile