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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (134)
This report examines the evolution in attitudes towards migrants and migration in Europe. Concretely, the report investigates and discusses the changes in the perception of migrants and attitudes towards migration between 2002-2018 using the European Social Survey data. Both the evolution of migration perceptions within countries and the cross-nati...
You have to integrate to belong here!": Acculturation and exclusion among Turkish and Belgian descent students on a university campus
While substantial attention has been given to the integration processes of ethnic minority groups across Western Europe, few studies have focused on how students in higher education engage with and make sense of th...
Does equity funding lead towards more equal
educational opportunities? An evaluation of the
effectiveness of the equity funding scheme in the
Flemish community
The Act on Equal Educational Opportunities (EEO) has been
introduced in the Flemish community in 2002. The EEO
policy aims to provide optimal opportunities to all children
to learn and devel...
Education is a key instrument to strengthen social cohesion, overcome social disadvantage and facilitate upward social mobility. Nevertheless, still today, millions of children are not given full opportunities to develop their abilities and to maximise their educational success. As children should not be held accountable for unequal opportunities t...
De Vlaamse overheid heeft de voorbije decennia heel wat bijkomende financiële
middelen ingezet met het oog op meer gelijke onderwijskansen in scholen met veel
kansarme leerlingen. Sinds 2002 werden alle tijdelijke projecten geïntegreerd
in het gelijke-onderwijskansenbeleid. Met dat beleid wil men ervoor zorgen
dat de schooluitkomsten van leerlingen...
In this report, we present the system-level indicators – regarding both the general socio-economic and education-related characteristics of the country – that may have an impact on educational equity in the country. Differences in these macro-level characteristics across countries could explain why some countries succeed better in promoting equal e...
In de voorbije dertig jaar is een hele reeks maatregelen getroffen om de gelijke kansen in
het Vlaamse onderwijs te bevorderen: het onderwijsvoorrangsbeleid, de zorgverbreding,
het onthaalonderwijs voor anderstalige nieuwkomers, schooltoelagen vanaf het
kleuteronderwijs, het kleuterparticipatieplan, en meer recentelijk het actieplan tegen
vroegtijd...
Het is goed om eens enkele decennia achterom te kijken, al is het om te herontdekken wat we vergeten waren. Tot dertig jaar geleden was de onderwijssituatie van kansarme jongeren nog in een dichte mist gehuld. Slechts een paar algemeenheden over sociale ongelijkheid in het onderwijs waren bekend. Na de euforie over de democratisering van het secund...
This study explores the relationship between ECEC participation for young children (0-2-year-olds) and ECEC policies using multilevel Tobit modelling. At the micro-level, the socio-ecological model is employed to control for the individual- and family-related circumstances, using the EU-SILC data from 2014; and at the macro-level, policy measures r...
Students of Turkish descent suffer various forms of institutional and interpersonal discrimination in education in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). Nevertheless, few studies have documented how these discrimination experiences are situated within structures of ethnic inequality across different educational settings. Adopting a critical race...
M‐quantile random‐effects regression represents an interesting approach for modelling multilevel data when the researcher is focused on conditional quantiles. When data are obtained from complex survey designs, sampling weights must be incorporated in the analysis. A robust pseudolikelihood approach for accommodating sampling weights in M‐quantile...
There is a growing recognition that trust attitudes towards national and European institutions are systematically related. Despite substantial research interest, the exact nature of this relationship remains unclear. We argue that a person-centered approach with its focus on identifying groups of individuals with similar attitudinal profiles provid...
This article analyses whether the extent of public welfare provision influences the speed at which (quasi-)jobless households get (back) into employment. (Quasi-)joblessness is one of the key criteria defining the risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU. Moreover, the perceived tension between the main functions of social benefits (protectin...
Citizens’ preferences regarding who should provide and finance childcare and whether these preferences are linked to the current policies in place have been understudied. Two sets of multilevel analyses are conducted to determine whether the current governmental involvement in childcare provision and financing is supported by the citizens in Europe...
Our knowledge of how ethnic minority students explain and make sense of their friendship preferences in a university setting remains limited, despite the significance of friendships in the adaptation of students to higher education. Drawing on findings from qualitative interviews, this article explores the friendship preferences of 20 Turkish-Belgi...
Whereas official poverty rates and related indicators based on EU-SILC are now widely used in national and EU-level policy documents, some of the most vulnerable groups are de facto excluded from such panels. This chapter reports the findings of a pilot of ‘satellite surveys’ to EU-SILC among homeless people, undocumented immigrants and travellers...
Introduction
European antipoverty policies are monitored to a large extent by means of harmonised household panels in all member states, such as the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Whereas official poverty rates and related indicators based on EU-SILC are now widely used in national and EU-level policy documents, some of the (p...
This article tackles the relationship between Turkish-Belgian families with the Flemish society, within the specific context of their experiences with early childhood education and care (ECEC) system in Flanders. Our findings are based on a focus group with mothers in the town of Beringen. The intercultural dimension of the relationships between th...
This study investigates Belgian-descent university students' perceptions of contact with Belgian-Muslim ethnic minorities and the ways they reflect on their own intergroup contact experiences. The results of the study demonstrate that many Belgian-descent students appear to perceive barriers when contacting Muslim students. Their accounts of contac...
There is a growing recognition of the importance of testing for measurement equivalence when comparing latent constructs—such as political trust—across countries and over time. Indeed, equivalence of measurements across countries and time points is a precondition for making meaningful and valid comparisons of means, scores, and relationships betwee...
Perceptions of users regarding the accessibility of childcare services have been under-researched. The present study addresses this gap by looking into the effect of systemic level characteristics of the ECEC system on the perceived accessibility of childcare at the individual level. Perceived accessibility is composed of perceived affordability, a...
Earlier research showed that obtaining a vocational instead of a general qualification has contrasting effects on employment and earnings over the life course. Relying on two international datasets (ESJS and PIAAC) and focussing on upper-secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary qualifications, we find similar contrasting effects in terms of educat...
In het kader van de 'Visie 2050'-strategie van de Vlaamse Regering kregen het Steunpunt Werk en het Steunpunt voor Onderwijsonderzoek (SONO) de opdracht het transitieproject 'Levenslang leren en de dynamische levensloopbaan’ mee te ondersteunen en begeleiden. In de eerste fase van het project werkten Sels, Vansteenkiste en Knipprath (2017) een rapp...
https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?advSearchKey=ESPNhc_2018&mode=advancedSubmit&catId=22&policyArea=0&policyAreaSub=0&country=0&year=0
The extensive literature on political trust has long suggested a link between macroeconomic conditions and public trust in political institutions. However, empirical evidence regarding this relationship remains ambiguous. Conflicting results appear to be related to differences in research design: while cross-sectional studies tend not to find evide...
M-quantile random-effects regression represents an interesting approach for modelling multilevel data when the interest of researchers is focused on the conditional quantiles. When data are based on complex survey designs, sampling weights have to be incorporate in the analysis. A pseudo-likelihood approach for accommodating sampling weights in the...
The rising levels of employment in Belgium in recent years have not resulted in better income poverty outcomes. Three explanations combine to help understand the paradox: most new jobs have been absorbed by non-poor households; some of the new jobs are of insufficient quality to lift workers out of poverty; and the unemployed have seen their povert...
An important issue in the design of secondary-level education is the balance between conveying general and occupation-specific (vocational) skills. On the one hand, vocationally oriented programmes, providing occupation-specific skills with immediate labour market relevance, have repeatedly been shown to secure safe pathways into employment. On the...
Comparative research has often emphasized the importance of external barriers (e.g. enrolment costs) to explain inequalities in lifelong learning participation. However, individuals, in particular the low educated, are often not only prevented from participation by external barriers, but also by negative psychological dispositions about learning. I...
This article considers how countries differ in the opinions that citizens hold about the fairness of the social and educational system. From the literature, we derive a typology of four educational "regimes", based on differences in educational system, labour market and welfare state design. We then use data from the ISSP (2009) to investigate how...
One of the important differences between educational systems from different countries is the age at which students are placed into separate tracks. We examined the effects of the age at which tracking occurred on student achievement in a comparative perspective, making use of recent waves of three internationally standardized student assessments (P...
In dit nummer schetsen we de oorsprong van het sociale investeringsdiscours. We beginnen bij het Europese beleid. In de volgende nummers zoomen we in op Vlaanderen, en zullen respectievelijk de vóór- en vroegschoolse educatie, het onderwijs, jeugdgaranties, huisvesting en ‘actief ouder worden’ de revue passeren.
Reducing the number of early school leavers, those who quit education without at least a high school degree, is a key objective of educational policy throughout Europe. Previous research has shown that in particular youngsters from disadvantaged families face relatively high risks of school dropout. In this paper we use data from the 2009 ad hoc mo...
One of the major imperatives behind the comprehensivisation of secondary education was the belief that postponing the age at which students are tracked in different educational routes would mitigate the effect of social background on educational outcomes. Comparative investigations of large-scale international student achievement tests in secondary...
Background: There has been relatively little analysis of school context including a large number of elements from the broader social, political and economic influences. However, primary schools in Flanders (Belgium) are supposed to consider their school context when implementing the Flemish policy on equal opportunities in education.
Purpose: In or...
In Chile, the influence of the socioeconomic make-up of classrooms on achievement has been extensively studied in mathematics and language, but less in currently important non-traditional subjects such as civic knowledge. This paper analyses the effects of the socioeconomic composition of classrooms on students’ civic knowledge achievement in Chile...
Waarom veel kleuren in één klas een rijkdom zijn. Onze scholen worden bevolkt door kinderen met een enorme variatie aan achtergronden. Voor iedere onderwijsinstelling is het dan ook een uitdaging om dat samenleven op een positieve manier vorm te geven. In Kleur in mijn klas werpen de auteurs op basis van de verhalen van leerlingen een nieuw licht o...
Waarom veel kleuren in één klas een rijkdom zijn. Onze scholen worden bevolkt door kinderen met een enorme variatie aan achtergronden. Voor iedere onderwijsinstelling is het dan ook een uitdaging om dat samenleven op een positieve manier vorm te geven. In Kleur in mijn klas werpen de auteurs op basis van de verhalen van leerlingen een nieuw licht o...
Waarom veel kleuren in één klas een rijkdom zijn. Onze scholen worden bevolkt door kinderen met een enorme variatie aan achtergronden. Voor iedere onderwijsinstelling is het dan ook een uitdaging om dat samenleven op een positieve manier vorm te geven. In Kleur in mijn klas werpen de auteurs op basis van de verhalen van leerlingen een nieuw licht o...
Waarom veel kleuren in één klas een rijkdom zijn. Onze scholen worden bevolkt door kinderen met een enorme variatie aan achtergronden. Voor iedere onderwijsinstelling is het dan ook een uitdaging om dat samenleven op een positieve manier vorm te geven. In Kleur in mijn klas werpen de auteurs op basis van de verhalen van leerlingen een nieuw licht o...
In general, educational research has concluded that early tracking does not lead to a better average performance. However, a cross-country comparison by Rindermann and Ceci (2009) did find a positive effect of early tracking on performance. How can we understand this contradiction? In this paper we show that Rindermann and Ceci did not adequately c...
During the 1960s, thousands of migrants with an Islamic background from Turkey and Morocco arrived as ‘guest workers’ in Belgium (Flanders). Their settlement changed the Belgian educational landscape that had been dominated by Catholic and secular movements since its inception. Islam was recognized as a faith group in 1974; from 1978, Muslims were...
Introduction
According to EU policy documents, lifelong learning serves the following four purposes: enhancing or maintaining employability, promoting personal development, fostering social cohesion and developing active citizenship (European Commission, 2010). It is generally believed that – nowadays and in contrast to the humanistic approach of t...
Whereas in 2000 the EU had heralded the knowledge‐based society with as its motto ‘with more and better jobs and stronger social cohesion’, the past decade has led to greater inequality and (at best) a status‐quo in poverty. EU2020 seems to acknowledge this failure and aims to reconnect social inclusion with the knowledge‐based strategy. This artic...
Nowadays, participation in adult education is considered as in individual responsibility. However, participation is the result of a complex bounded agency between individuals, educational institutions and regulating governments (Boeren et al 2010). This paper explores the motivation of 12,000 European adult learners in formal adult education in 12...
This article explores satisfactory learning experiences of adult learners in Flemish formal adult education. Satisfaction is an important issue in motivational psychology. We used the Comprehensive Lifelong Learning Participation Model of Boeren, Nicaise and Baert and explored whether satisfactory experiences relate to characteristics of the indivi...
An important feature of the Belgian context is the ‘communautarisation’1 of education policies. Since 1989 teaching has fallen within the competence of the communities, whereas until then it came under the Federal state. It is the three language-based communities (the French-, Flemish- and Germanspeaking communities) that manage similar but complet...
In the paper we present a dynamic micro-simulation model to examine short and long term mobility in and out of poverty in a context of educational deprivation and work opportunities. Using eight waves of the Belgian Household Panel Study transformed into monthly data, we estimate a dynamic selection model for poverty, conditional on educational att...
I. NICAISE (with help from I. SCHRYVERS, I. RUBBRECHT AND V. HEYLEN), The impact of the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001 on the Belgian labour market, paper prepared for the SYSDEM network, Leuven, HIVA, 2002, 30p.
The diagnosis of European social policy presented in this article in general, and the inclusion policy in particular, hardly
paints a rosy picture. Poverty has not reduced in the first decade of the Lisbon Strategy. One explanation for this is undoubtedly
that the major choices in EU policy (the enlargement to take in Central and Eastern Europe, th...
We present a nonparametric approach for (1) efficiency and (2) equity evaluation in education. Firstly, we use a nonparametric (Data Envelopment Analysis) model that is specially tailored to assess educational efficiency at the pupil level. The model accounts for the fact that typically minimal prior structure is available for the behavior (objecti...
The European Union has set a goal that by 2010, 12.5% of the working age population should be taking part in lifelong learning. This participation rate has not yet been achieved in many countries. A partial explanation is the fact that the decision to participate depends on a variety of factors at three levels: the individual; the educational provi...
2010 is in many ways a turning point in the fight against poverty. The European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion aims to raise public awareness, to give voice to the concerns of those experiencing poverty and to renew political commitment of the EU and its Member States. The fact that poverty has not decreased in the past decade nece...
It is a well-established fact that the mobility into and out of poverty is rather high. Bane and Elwood (1986), for instance, report that “60% of those persons just beginning a spell of poverty will exit within two years“. Some of the consequences of this observation are that the fraction of persistent poor is smaller and the fraction of people tha...
Even though the OMC is by no means ‘shaking’ domestic social inclusion policymaking, it seems that it has become an increasingly important tool in the domestic policymaking toolkit. Research has identified two sets of effects which can be attributed to OMC. First of all, the OMC-SI has caused procedural changes in social inclusion policies in Belgi...
Ces dernières années, la réglementation des marchés de produits dans les pays de l’OCDE est globalement devenue moins restrictive pour la concurrence. Cela a entraîné une certaine convergence des politiques de réglementationþ; cependant, dans le même temps, la disparité des performances des pays de l’OCDE en termes de productivité s’est accrue. En...
We present a nonparametric approach for the equity and efficiency evaluation of (private and public) primary schools in Flanders. First, we use a nonparametric (Data Envelopment Analysis) model that is specially tailored to assess educational efficiency at the pupil level. The model accounts for the fact that minimal prior structure typically avail...
Ce chapitre examine plusieurs initiatives de relèvement des compétences en Flandre, région de la partie nord de la Belgique fédérale. Le chapitre débute avec une analyse du marché du travail flamand et des principaux dispositifs dans le domaine du relèvement des compétences pour les salariés en poste. Des études de cas dans trois localités différen...
This chapter examines a series of skills upgrading initiatives in Flanders, the northern region of Belgium. It begins with an analysis of the Flemish labour market, the policy options and the main existing measures in the field of skills upgrading for incumbent workers.
In this paper we model employment and poverty states as a discrete first-order Markov process, taking into account the endogeneity of schooling and of the initial states. Using this model, we asses the impact of different policies on the poverty dynamics by ex-post microsimulation. Each policy evaluated in this paper can be considered an exemplar o...
This study integrates insights from three theories into a single model explaining the simultaneous distribution of employment and wages. Human capital theory is taken as the general framework, whereas search theory and the more recent "crowding" or "job competition" hypothesis are used to explain selectivity in employment and the resulting bias in...