Territorial Review Copenhagen - Region Hovedstaden

63
Education and skills
Education outcomes in Copenhagen are comparatively weak. This can
be concluded from the OECD/Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) study of 2000, which the City of Copenhagen conducted
again in 2004 and 2007 for all public schools and for a range of private
schools. The trend for Denmark as a whole is reflected in the scores of
Copenhagen: relatively many poorly performing students in all three areas
tested: reading, science and mathematics (Egelund and Rangvid, 2005;
Egelund, 2008). Students in Copenhagen score above the national average
when results for immigrant children are excluded, except in mathematics, in
which Copenhagen falls slightly below the average. The difference among
schools in Copenhagen is significant. Four schools in Copenhagen show an
average for reading skills that is above Finland‘s national average (Finland
being the best performer in the PISA study), while 15 schools fall below
Brazil‘s national average (Brazil being the country with the worst
performance). One of the basic problems in post-compulsory education with
a vocational orientation is a lack of apprenticeships (OECD, 2006).
There are large disparities in the performance of Danish and immigrant
students. Immigrant students in Copenhagen score approximately 100 scale
points below Danish students on the PISA scale, which means that only 15%
of the Danish students are at a level that is lower than the average for
immigrant students. The performance of immigrant students is particularly
weak in science. The share of Danish students without functional reading
skills in the PISA study was 18%. In Copenhagen, the figure is 24%, with
14% of Danish students and 51% of immigrant students showing poor
reading skills. Differences in socio-economic status account for only 50% of
the ethnic test score gap. Differences between schools account for a
substantial additional portion of the ethnic gap (about 30% for reading
scores and somewhat less for mathematics and science). The performance of
immigrant students could therefore be linked to ethnic segregation at school
level. Despite comparatively low income segregation, ethnic segregation in
Copenhagen‘s schools comes close to the high segregation levels of many
US cities. Today, almost 30% of all students attend schools that can be
classified as almost all native-born Danish – and one out of five students
attends school with a majority of immigrant students. Only a minor part of
this can be explained by differences in socio-economic background
(Rangvid, 2006).
Educational segregation might have an impact on dropout rates of
immigrant students. Children of immigrants enter upper secondary
education at almost the same rate as those of Danish origin. The lower
attainment level is mainly attributable to higher dropout rates among
children of immigrants. The dropout rate of immigrants from vocational