School results in Belgium are still very much determined by socio-economic and migration background
The school results of students in Belgium are still very much determined by their socio-economic and migration background. This is the key conclusion of the new analysis of the PISA figures on the educational performance of young people in Belgium.
The King Baudouin Foundation commissioned an analysis report of the results of the triennal OECD survey Programme of International student assessment (PISA).
The report compares the results of young people in Belgium with and without roots in a foreign country. It simultaneously measures the effectiveness and the degree of equality of education in the linguistic Communities in Belgium and in the Federation Wallonia-Brussels.
The Belgian education system scores quite poorly on this measure in an international context. The difference in performance between the strongest and weakest students corresponds to the equivalent of six years of school education.
There are still wide gaps in performance in both Communities between students from immigrant families and other students, although they do seem to be closing in the Federation Wallonia-Brussels. Even though a large part of this gap can be explained by family socio- economic levels or the language spoken at home, these reasons cannot be the only ones. Education is failing to bring students from immigrant backgrounds up to the same level of performance as that of other students.
Read more here (in French) and here (in Dutch).
The report is available in French and in Dutch. A summary is available in English.