Abstract:

In last years many countries have begun to pay more attention to the results of comparative international studies in education, for example, TIMSS, PIRLS, and PISA. However, in addition to international comparisons of students' outcomes, the issue of within-country differences in student results and their access to educational resources is becoming increasingly relevant. Such within-country comparisons became possible with the last data of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which came in 2019.

Russia, as a country with a large territory and great social, economic and language diversity, might become an interesting case to examine the regional differences not only in students' results in reading, mathematics, and science but also in their access to educational resources, controlling their socio-economic and school context, that is traditionally associated by researchers with higher student performance.

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the students' results and opportunities in two Russian regions – Moscow, the capital of the country, and the Tatarstan republic, which is interesting for its high concentration of language and national minorities. For this analysis, methods of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and factor analysis were used.

Thus, regional inequality in PISA results is observed in all three subject areas. Moreover, the gap in the average scores of students in the Moscow region and the Republic of Tatarstan corresponds to almost a year of study. The level of regional differences exceeds the international one (for example, the difference between the results of Russia in PISA and the average for OECD countries).

This gap in students' results may be related not only to the variety of social and economic contexts but also to differences in teaching practices and school resources. For example, small, but significant, differences between regions are observed in teachers' practices, like outlining the objectives of the upcoming lesson, making a brief summary of new material, and providing students with individual assistance. Large significant differences are observed in the school staff, the availability of certain types of resources, and school climate indicators.

In general, PISA data show significant spatial inequality in Russian education. This suggests that a serious analysis of regional contexts and features of educational systems is needed to reduce the retard of some territories and analyze the success factors of others.

Keywords:

Spatial inequality, territorial differences, academic results, access to education, reading, mathematics, science.