School Segregation by Socioeconomic Level in Primary Education in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

This research has the twin aims of estimating the magnitude of school segregation by socioeconomic level in primary education in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and contextualizing these results in the international arena. To achieve our aims, we conducted an exploitation of the ERCE 2019 microdata promoted by UNESCO/OREALC. The final sample is made up of 157,115 students from 7,214 schools enrolled in 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has been used the five most common indices to estimate school segregation. The results have also been compared with those obtained by PISA 2019 in terms of contextualization. The results show a great variability in the levels of school segregation between countries, but with very high levels of school segregation, as well as large differences between disadvantaged and more advantaged students. The juxtaposition with the results of PISA 2019 finds that Latin America and the Caribbean is the Region of the world with the highest school segregation by socioeconomic level. These results make it urgent to prioritize the fight against school segregation in the public educational policies of the Region, as well as to promote research on this subject.