Symposium: Different Faces of Equity in Education

• Speakers: Branislava Baranović (Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia); Sinisa Subotic (University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina); Dragica Pavlović Babić (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
• Chairperson: Dragica Pavlovic Babić (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
• Discussant: Kristi Dingwall (University of Exeter, UK)
• When: 00 SES 03 A / Tuesday, 09/Sept/2025: 17:15 - 18:45
• Location: Second Hall | Kolarac | Gr. Fl

The symposium intends to reconsider the measure in which education systems are able to amortize personal, social and economic differences among students and provide them with equal opportunities to academic success. Different aspects of equity in selected educational systems in Central and Southeast Europe, comparative data on student achievement and opportunities for their improvement through policy measures will be discussed.

The simplest and the most instructive way to define equality in education would be through the role of schools and educational systems which are expected to provide equal learning opportunities to all students (Jordan, 2010). Equity does not mean that all students obtain equal education outcomes, but rather that differences in students’ outcomes are unrelated to their background or to personal and social characteristics or economic circumstances over which students have no control (OECD, 2018).

Equity in education is a major policy concern everywhere (Darling-Hammond, 2013). Consequently, there is a huge and growing empirical evidence that helps us to better understand this phenomenon, both at the national level and from the international perspective. From the international perspective, we know that in all countries and economies (for example, those who participated in OECD/PISA 2015), different characteristics of students have a large influence on students’ performance in science, reading and mathematics (OECD, 2016). However, as analysis conducted on PISA data showed, performance differences between different groups of students could be narrowed over years. This implies that equity, or the lack of it, is not an invariably characteristic of education systems. All countries can reduce the impact of personal and background inequalities on student performance (Berkowitz, Moore, Astor & Benbenishty, 2017), given the right education policies and practices (Strietholt et al, 2019). Countries and educational systems need to create and strengthen policies and programmes which enhance disadvantaged students' growth potential (Tikly & Barrett, 2011; Pavlović Babić, 2022).

As a result, during their education, students of different gender, family background and socio-economic status, should achieve similar levels of academic performance in key cognitive domains, and similar levels of social and emotional well-being. Equity has different faces, and educational systems do not support equally the students of all groups.

Within this symposium, it will be open the question what empirical data tells us to which extent this educational goal has been achieved. The discussion will be held within one group of Central and Eastern European countries. All countries remember the period of socialism that insisted on equality and social justice. However, research findings show that there is a lot of space for improvement to improve the equity from the perspective of children who need additional educational support, minority children, or those of different gender or socioeconomic status. The question is also with what educational policies and measures this improvement can be achieved.