Trends on educational inequalities over time and successful interventions that contribute to reverse them

ongoing

Research through the decades has demonstrated the existence and persistence of educational inequalities. These inequalities particularly affect vulnerable groups of students such as those with low socioeconomic status or a migratory history, who more frequently show high rates of early school leaving and low school performance. However, there is increasing scientific literature which identifies educational interventions that are effective in compensating for these inequalities, overcoming deterministic analyses in the understanding of the educational trajectories of vulnerable children and youth. Taking this into account, this project will have a double approach. On the one hand, the project will exploit the large volume of existing educational data at the national and regional levels to map and analyse educational inequalities from a longitudinal perspective, identifying key features and trends. For the analysis, retrospective cohort studies will be conducted to understand how educational inequalities have evolved in recent years and how they relate to characteristics of the education received. On the other hand, the existing interventions that compensate for these inequalities will be studied in depth. Longitudinal analysis (quantitative and qualitative) will be performed of the educational trajectories of children and youth who have participated in successful educational interventions already identified by scientific research, to better understand how and to what extent they contribute to improve learning outcomes. With these analyses, this project aims to facilitate that effective interventions can be translated into policies and replicated to advance into more inclusive educational systems with better learning outcomes for all. Additionally, the project will allow a better knowledge of the type of data to collect and how to collect them, to be able to make informed decisions towards overcoming educational inequalities in the short, medium, and long term.