Socio-economic status (SES) of a student’s family is strongly related to their academic results, particularly to school achievements. Nevertheless there is a group of children which achieve a high level of academic outcomes despite coming from a family with disadvantaged background. The ability of children from families with low levels of economic, cultural and educational resources to show high academic achievements is called ‘academic resiliency’ (OECD 2010; 2011; 2012).

The objective of this research is to identify the possible relations between school characteristics and the possibility of students from disadvantaged families to achieve high level of educational outcomes. In particular we paid attention to the topic of resilient schools which were able to show relatively high academic results despite of unfavourable social composition of its contingent. It is important to study the phenomenon of academic resiliency and factors which affect it on teacher and school level, as it allows us to work out new levers for the implementation of social policy to overcome social inequality.

Individual characteristics such as autonomy, self-efficacy (Polk 1997; Jacelon 1997; Werner & Smith 1992), social and communication skills (Luthar & Zilger, 1991; Werner & Smith 1992), and cognitive abilities (Rutter 1987) are some of the most significant factors contributing to individual resiliency as well as favorable environment. A ssignificant body of the research is devoted to positive school experience on academic results (Rutter 1987; Werner & Smith 1992) and is relative to Russian reality (Pinskaya, Kosaretsky, Frumin, 2012). Social and cultural components of the school climate were picked out by Anderson are important factors for this research (Tagiuri, 1988; Anderson, 1982). Save school environment (Want et al. 1995), involvement in academic activities and school life (Benard 1991, Braddock Royster Winfield Hawkins 1991, Finn & Rock 1997) positive expectations (Benard, 1991, Rutter 1987) affect the students’ achievements. Research of teachers’ expectations proves they affect the communication process between teacher and students  and, thus, affects the educational outcomes (Brophy & Good 1974; Wubbels & Brekelmans 2012; Korthagen, Attema-Noordewier & Zwart 2014).

The research is mainly focused on the analyses of the relationships between academic resiliency and students’ perceptions of their teacher expectations. We supposed that students’ confidence in their teacher has a high estimation of their cognitive abilities increasing their chances of academic resilience. So far the Russian system of education is a part of European context and Russia is a permanent member international research in education, we can consider TIMSS and PISA data as evidence of academic resilience.

If a student thinks that his/her teacher has great expectation from him/her, it makes a student more involved in the subject and raise his/her test results. The importance of the social composition of school and peer-effect are also important. There is a higher concentration of resilient students in schools where there is a great share of pupils from disadvantaged family.

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