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Serrão, A. & Carlos Pinto-Ferreira (2014). Equity and Grade Repetition – a Challenge for Education. In Conference Proceedings - The Future of Education. Florença: libreriauniversitaria.

A. B. Serrão and C. A. Pinto-Ferreira,  "Equity and Grade Repetition – a Challenge for Education", in Conf. Proc. - The Future of Education, Florença, libreriauniversitaria, 2014

@inproceedings{serrão2014_1713950556699,
	author = "Serrão, A. and Carlos Pinto-Ferreira",
	title = "Equity and Grade Repetition – a Challenge for Education",
	booktitle = "Conference Proceedings - The Future of Education",
	year = "2014",
	editor = "",
	volume = "",
	publisher = "libreriauniversitaria",
	address = "Florença",
	organization = "PIXEL",
	url = "http://conference.pixel-online.net/FOE/files/foe/ed0004/FP/0869-SOE552-FP-FOE4.pdf"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Equity and Grade Repetition – a Challenge for Education
T2  - Conference Proceedings - The Future of Education
AU  - Serrão, A.
AU  - Carlos Pinto-Ferreira
PY  - 2014
CY  - Florença
UR  - http://conference.pixel-online.net/FOE/files/foe/ed0004/FP/0869-SOE552-FP-FOE4.pdf
AB  - Education systems are facing the enormous challenge of meeting high quality standards while ensuring that
every student completes successfully nine (or more) years of schooling. The concern for equity underlies the
education for all paradigm which is now universally accepted as a key policy to promote sustainable
socioeconomic development.
An important source of inequity in some education systems is the strategy of compelling students to repeat a grade when they do not meet predefined curriculum objectives. According to OECD, grade repetition is
particularly frequent in France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Luxembourg, very infrequent in Finland, Iceland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom, and a non-existing phenomenon in Japan, Korea and Norway [1].
(In certain countries there are no limits to the application of this mechanism so it is conceivable – and, in some cases, frequent – to find 15 year old students in primary schools).
Considering the vast impact of grade repetition in terms of education system cost, on the one hand, and
student distress, discouragement, and dropout, on the other, and taking into account the recognized
inefficacy of this strategy, it seems useful to study this phenomenon and to monitor its evolution along time.
To objectively measure grade repetition inequity, a modified Gini index (MGI), using the method developed
by Vinod Thomas, Yan Wang, and Xibo Fan [2], specifically aimed at assessing inequality in education is
suggested. (The Gini index has been applied in the macroeconomics context – since the beginning of the
20th century – to assess inequality in country's population income distribution).
The proposed application of the modified Gini index to measure grade repetition inequity is base on a
methodology comprising, (i) the estimation of the PISA scores in mathematics (math plausible values) for
each school grade (7th to 11th), to OECD countries, together with (ii) the computation of the percentage of
students belonging to each one of the mentioned grades. After the calculation of the MGI for the chosen set of countries, with the time frame 2003-2012 – corresponding to two major math evaluations of the PISA programme – a preliminary analysis of the index evolution is presented.
Albeit being a helpful analytical approach, the mere utilization of a scalar quantity (MI) to characterize such a complex phenomenon cannot explain the whole picture. A first candidate to explore is the relationship
between the PISA ESCS (index of Economic, Social and Cultural Status) and the MGI. The results obtained
from this analysis indicate that other dimensions should be considered within or outside the framework of grade repetition.
ER  -