Educational Equality of Opportunity in Poland
Educational Equality of Opportunity in Poland

Summary/Abstract: Education is considered one of the best means in improving equality of opportunity. Based on the PISA 2003 database we evaluate educational equality of opportunity in Poland. Equality of opportunity holds if with given effort (learning time) it is impossible to rank distributions of outcomes (performance in mathematics) according to circumstances (parental education level). We find that the opposite is true, clear ranking obtains for almost all effort levels. However, with higher effort levels the distributions come closer together indicating that although there is no change in the ranking itself there is a change in the degree of inequality of opportunity, namely, the higher effort the higher equality of opportunity. By trying harder children with disadvantaged background may reduce the adverse impact of their endowment on performance. This pattern emerges also with alternative measures of effort and circumstances.

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