Performance differences between students of different social and ethnic backgrounds are an
important factor for generating inequality in educational attainment. However, not only
individual and family characteristics contribute to these achievement gaps, but also the
composition of pupils in the class room. Pupils in classes with a high share of classmates
with low socio economic background, with an overall lower achievement level and with a
different ethnic (and linguistic) background usually achieve poorer than their counterparts in
more advanced settings. However, the interplay between a high share of students with lowsocioeconomic
background, low achievement level and high proportions of immigrant
children often makes it difficult to disentangle separate effects of these compositional factors
on achievement inequalities, because these are often closely intertwined.
We aim to contribute theoretically and empirically to this debate by using data of the Children
of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU). In this survey, 14
year old pupils with and without an immigrant background were interviewed in more than 800
school classes in England, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden. By using this comparative
data, we are also able to address questions concerning the impact of the educational system
on these compositional effects: Do composition effects vary between more integrated (like
Sweden and England) and more differentiated educational systems (like Germany and the
Netherlands)?
Furthermore, we aim at targeting some of the relevant mechanisms contributing to these
contextual effects. Is it really the overall composition of the school class that affects the
individual achievement, or are the friends in the classes more influential – naturally with
higher chances of having poor achieving friends with an overall lower socioeconomic or an
immigrant background in such more disadvantaged contexts. By using Social Network
Analysis, we try to single out the effects of the relevant peers in the classrooms from the
overall classroom effects on the individual achievement.
