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Segregation of Indigenous Students in the Chilean School System

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Intercultural Education in Chile

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Abstract

School segregation, especially on the basis of socioeconomic, ethnic, or racial characteristics, is one of the fields of greatest interest for the design of public policies in countries with high levels of inequality in educational opportunities and low social mobility, such as Chile (Núñez and Miranda, Estudios De Economía 38:195–221, 2011; OECD. (2010). PISA 2009 Results: What Students Know and Can Do - Student Performance in Reading, Mathematics and Science (Vol. 1): OECD.). This trend has been accentuated in a global context of educational reforms aimed at improving academic performance through standards-based quality assurance systems (often built on the results of standardized national tests) and strengthening the links between productive development and the quality of education (ECLAC. (2010). La hora de la igualdad. Brechas por cerrar, caminos por abrir. Santiago: CEPAL.). The evidence gathered at the international level conclusively shows the direct negative short-, medium-, and long-term effects of school segregation on these objectives (Gorard and Fitz, Research Papers in Education 15:115–132, 2000; Harker, The effects of Student Composition on School Outcomes, Massey University, New Zealand. College of Education, 2004).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These schools represent about 7% of the country’s total school enrollment.

  2. 2.

    Methodological details regarding this are outlined in the “Method” section.

  3. 3.

    Unlike other Latin American countries, in Chile the assignment of a student to an ethnic group is done through cultural self-identification, and not on the basis of knowledge (or not) of a specific language (McEwan, 2004, 2007).

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Acknowledgements

Ernesto Treviño would like to offer his gratitude for the support from the CONICYT PIA 160007 Project and FONDECYT N°1150261. Juan Pablo Valenzuela would like to thank the CONICYT PIA Basal Project FB0003 and FONDECYT N°1150603.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Ernesto Treviño

  2. Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Juan Pablo Valenzuela

  3. Center for the Study of Educational Policies and Practices, CEPPE UC, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Cristóbal Villalobos

Authors
  1. Ernesto Treviño
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  2. Juan Pablo Valenzuela
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  3. Cristóbal Villalobos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ernesto Treviño .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Research on Educational Justice, Faculty of Education, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Ernesto Treviño

  2. Center for Advanced Research in Education, CIAE, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Liliana Morawietz

  3. Center for the Study of Educational Policies and Practices, CEPPE UC, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Cristóbal Villalobos

  4. State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

    Esteban Villalobos

Annexes

Annexes

See Tables 5.6, 5.7, 5.8 and 5.9.

Table 5.6 Distribution of indigenous and non-indigenous students by region for fourth grade, eighth grade and 10th grade
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Table 5.7 Duncan index, number of indigenous children and number of non-indigenous children. Metropolitan Region (fourth grade 2011)
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Table 5.8 Duncan index, number of indigenous children and number of non-indigenous children. La Araucanía Region (fourth grade 2011)
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Table 5.9 Duncan index, number of indigenous children and number of non-indigenous children. La Araucanía Region (fourth grade 2011), only for urban schools where there are more than five schools per district
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Treviño, E., Valenzuela, J.P., Villalobos, C. (2023). Segregation of Indigenous Students in the Chilean School System. In: Treviño, E., Morawietz, L., Villalobos, C., Villalobos, E. (eds) Intercultural Education in Chile. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10680-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10680-4_5

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