Abstract:

Over the past 60 years, the topic of social inequality has been one of the key to educational research. Since the 90-s years of the last century, thanks to the advent of international monitoring, the main focus is on comparisons of different countries in terms of educational opportunities, as well as academic and social segregation in schools. At the same time, it is known that even within countries, especially those with a great geographical extent, differences in access to educational resources and in learning outcomes can be very large.

Our work complements the existing discussion on spatial inequality in education. In this paper we are trying to analyze the hierarchical structure of the educational system in countries with a moderate level of centralization when access to resources can vary at three levels: between schools in a municipality, between municipalities in regions and between regions. We also analyze the relationship between different types of resources (financial, material and personnel) with the results of training after two educational levels (after grade 9 and grade 11) and with the choice of the educational track (moving to secondary vocational colleges or high school after the 9th grade).

For these aims, we collected a unique dataset of nearly 50 000 Russian schools, that provide information about their financial and economic activities, material and technical equipment, personnel, as well as educational trajectories of students after 9th grade and the academic results of graduates. Based on this data, we are trying to answer the following questions:
1. To what extent at different levels (school-municipality-region) is the dispersion of indicators of access to resources, learning outcomes and choice of trajectories explained?
2. How is access to different resources interconnected?
3. How different types of educational resources are associated with learning outcomes after grades 9 and 11 and with the choice of trajectories after grade 9.

To answer these questions, descriptive statistics methods, correlation analysis, and multilevel regression analysis are used.

Our results show the existing gap between Russian schools, municipalities, and regions in access to educational resources and educational results. The level of spatial inequality of educational opportunities in Russia as a whole is comparable to that in other countries, for example, the USA. The uneven distribution of resources between territories is confirmed, which creates a situation of “double penalty” or “double bonus” for students. The relationship between the resources of schools, the transition of students in grades 10-11, as well as the results after grades 9 and 11, is revealed. The relationship with the results after grade 11 is evaluated by the example of secondary exam scores in schools in different subjects.

Keywords:

Spatial inequality, educational trajectories, access to educational resources, high stakes testing, learning outcomes, high school, vocational education.