Children’s life opportunities are strongly affected by the quality of education systems they participate in (OECD, 2012). Although within own family and through interaction with peers child learns significant lessons of life, school itself teaches that same child knowledge, skills and competences important for its development and transition to other life stages. However providing all children with a strong and equal start in life through education is a challenge in many economies (Field, Kutzera & Pont, 2007; OECD 2012). At the same time highest performing countries are those that combine high quality with high equity, meaning students irrespective of their socio-economic background have the same opportunity to accomplish high level skills and knowledge (Education at glance, 2014).

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial survey, which assesses student performance in reading, mathematics, science and problem-solving. The focus of PISA is not on whether students can repeat what they have learned in school, but rather if they can deduct from what they have learned and use that very knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and out of school. This very approach mirrors the fact that modern societies reward individuals not for what they know, but for what they can do with what they know and how they utilize that knowledge on an everyday basis. If we look closely at mathematics, which is already perceived as one of core areas needed, mathematical competence can be understood as one’s capability to reason mathematically and use mathematical concepts, procedures, facts and tools to describe, explain and predict phenomena.

As different economies take part in the PISA study over a decade now this allows for a closer examination of various aspects of education systems across world in various time points. In this paper we focus on equity of Serbian education system taking into account contributions of socio-economic status (SES) on students’ achievement in mathematics for period 2003-2012. Such an analysis allows for a closer examination of so called less vs. more successful schools, taking into account possible secondary effect SES may have on students’ educational aspirations.

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