Planeando el futuroun estudio sobre desigualdad en la construcción de expectativas formativas

Resum

In this work, I analyse the evolution of educational expectations between 2003 and 2018 in Spain, and the mechanisms and strategies that generate inequality by social origin in those expectations. To do that, I employ data from the 2003 and 2018 waves of the Programme for the International Student Assessment (PISA), where students were questioned about their expectation of enrolment in all post-compulsory alternatives. Drawing on that information, I study the vertical expectation of enrolment in Upper Secondary Education, the horizontal expectation of enrolment in Baccalaureate among those who expect to access Upper Secondary Education, the vertical expectation of enrolment in Tertiary Education, and the horizontal expectation of enrolment in the university among those who expect to access Tertiary Education. Using binary logistic regression models, it has been observed that the educational ambition of Spanish students has increased between 2003 and 2018, i.e. the proportion of students who expect to enrol in Upper Secondary Education and, especially, in Tertiary Education has increased. Through a counterfactual simulation procedure, it has been observed that the change in the social and educational structure of the country only marginally contributes to this evolution. The growth in the expectations of Spanish students is mainly due to the greater educational ambition of students from low social backgrounds and low academic performance, which has made performance a worse predictor of expectations (reducing the primary effects of social origin) and has equalised the expectations of students from different social backgrounds, but with the same performance (reducing the secondary effects of social origin). The ultimate result of all this is a decrease in vertical inequality in the educational plans of Spanish students...