School and social inequality – PISA 2006

Matjaž Poljanšek

Summary:  Despite the conviction of democracy and open school systems, we can still witness considerable class conditionality of individual’s possibilities in education. The article represents the meaning of particular sorts of the capital as a factor for disposing people in the social environment, the course of family transmission of this capital and their meaning for school success. The analysis of the results of the international research on natural science, mathematical and reading literacy PISA 2006 indicates that the socioeconomic status still has an important role in schooling of children from different social classes. However, this effect is not the same in all countries, showing that the social origin can be compensated to a certain extent with a proper school policy. The important conclusion is also that the countries, from which students tested for natural science literacy achieved the best results, are at the same time the countries with the least influence of the socioeconomic status on success, having the largest share of students who achieved the highest level of literacy. All this leads to the conclusion that justness and efficiency are not necessarily alternatives.