In simple correlations, inequality in PISA scores in reading is also negatively correlated with government spending on education (r=–0.30) and on family and children (r=–0.21). However, when controlling for GNI per capita, neither coefficient is significant (Table 19).
PISA inequality scores are a measure of vertical inequality in outcomes. Government spending on policies concerning families’ and children’s welfare and educational progress may help some families send their children to better schools, it may help teachers and students alike to make use of better structures and educational tools, and it may even incentivise children to pursue their interests. However, while such measures reduce disparities in inequalities of opportunities, they only indirectly act on inequalities of outcomes. Higher spending alone may not ensure that outcomes will also tend to converge.
Inequality in education and learning during the pandemic
As individual data on educational outcomes are not yet available, this section investigates people’s satisfaction with the quality of online schooling and their ability to carry it out at home, based on data collected for Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, carried out in July 2020 among people aged 18+ in all EU Member States.
The analysis focuses on groups of people who
experienced difficulties in adapting to online schooling and if government policies were helpful in reducing inequalities in education. The outcome variables, all measured on a three-level ordinal scale,33 are the following:
£ parents’ satisfaction with the quality of their children’s online schooling
£ the satisfaction of tertiary education students with the quality of online education
£ whether households had sufficient equipment to carry out online schooling34
Having sufficient equipment was more important for satisfaction with online schooling than having difficulty making ends meet (Figure 35). In households that had sufficient equipment, the proportion of parents satisfied and dissatisfied with the quality of online schooling was relatively similar across households of different income levels. By contrast, in households without sufficient equipment, the majority of parents were dissatisfied with the quality of online education, regardless of whether the household could make ends meet with ease or difficulty. Regression results support this finding: the odds of parents being satisfied with the quality of online schooling for their children were almost three times as high in families that had sufficient equipment to carry out remote learning than in those that did not (Table 20). The equivalent odds were 1.46 for households that made ends meet with ease versus those that made ends meet with difficulty. This may suggest that, if governments provide sufficient equipment for online schooling, income-related inequalities in online education could be at least partially overcome.
Parents and students living in rural areas were more likely to be satisfied with the quality of online schooling or education than those in cities, which could be related to the lack of the usual commute: previous studies have shown how some children living in rural areas skipped certain classes before the pandemic if they were not compatible with the schedules of public transport (Jusiené et al, 2021).
However, respondents living in rural areas were less likely to have sufficient equipment to properly carry out online schooling. Internet access may be important in this regard, which in 2020 was, on average, 92% in cities, 90% in towns and suburbs and 86% in rural areas (Eurostat [isoc_ci_in_h]; data for France from 2019).
Furthermore, supply chain shortages during the pandemic meant that schools based in rural areas were less able to secure large orders of computers for their students because they required less equipment than schools in cities, which was less profitable for the equipment providers (Salman, 2020).
Table 20: Determinants of respondents’ satisfaction with the quality of their children’s online schooling (multilevel ordered logit model)
Notes: * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. ISCED, International Standard Classification of Education. For more details, see Table 36 in Annex IV.
Source: Authors, based on Eurofound’s Living, Working and COVID-19 e-survey, Eurostat and UNESCO Model 1: null
model Model 2:
education expenditures
Model 3: school closures
Disagree/neutral –0.361*** 0.834* –0.459*
Neutral/agree 0.645*** 1.841*** 0.541*
Government expenditures on education (2019, % of GDP) 0.182*
Weeks of school closures (30 June 2020) –0.029*
Household has sufficient equipment to carry out online schooling (reference: agree)
Disagree –1.079*** –1.080***
Neutral –0.432*** –0.427***
Respondent’s level of education (reference: high (ISCED 5–8))
Low (ISCED 0–2) 0.276 0.266
Medium (ISCED 3–4) –0.126 –0.113
Urbanisation (reference: cities)
Rural areas 0.317** 0.310**
Small and large towns 0.032 0.024
Household’s ability to make ends meet with ease (reference: with difficulty) 0.377*** 0.384***
Respondent has worked from home during the pandemic 0.343*** 0.351***
Working from home was associated with parents having higher satisfaction with online schooling, allowing them to better help their children to carry it out (Figure 36).
Among respondents who did not work from home, almost twice as many were dissatisfied (49%) than satisfied (26%), whereas the difference was much smaller among those respondents who worked from home (40% dissatisfied versus 38% satisfied). Children whose parents were absent from home during remote learning may have suffered from educational deficits because of the lack of supervision, thus widening inequalities in education and learning (Raby et al, 2021).
Among tertiary education students (Table 39 in Annex IV), older students were more likely to be satisfied with the quality of online education, possibly because
postgraduate level students are usually less involved with classes and more likely to work independently regardless of the pandemic. Students in good or very good health were also more likely to be satisfied with the quality of online education. This is perhaps because remote learning often cannot cater to the needs of disabled students, as seen in the literature review, particularly regarding physical disabilities and ADHD (Gandolfi et al, 2021; Raby et al, 2021). No differences between genders or between education levels were found after controls, although the odds of having sufficient equipment was higher among those in tertiary education.
Figure 35: Parents’ satisfaction with the quality of online schooling for their children, EU27 (%)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Makes ends meet with ease Makes ends meet with difficulty Makes ends meet with ease Makes ends meet with difficulty Household has sufficient equipment
to carry out online schooling at home
Household lacks sufficient equipment to carry out online schooling at home Dissatisfied Neutral Satisfied
Note: Values for the respondent being neutral about the household having sufficient equipment are not shown for ease of interpretation.
Source: Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey
Figure 36: Parents’ satisfaction with the quality of their children’s online schooling depending on whether they worked from home or not during the pandemic, EU27 (%)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Respondent worked from home during the pandemic
Respondent did not work from home during the
pandemic Dissatisfied Neutral Satisfied Source: Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey