How do students perceive fairness and inequality in the education system and in society? And how do they react? This is what the “PerFair” project at the University of Konstanz is investigating as part of the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”. Its co-spokesperson, Prof. Dr. Claudia Diehl, presented the first results in her LIfBi Lecture at the beginning of June. The subjectively perceived unfair allocation of pupils to a particular type of school was examined.

For the first time, the PerFair data provides a detailed insight into the extent to which pupils perceive their treatment in everyday school life as unfair. At the age of 12, in grade 7, most students are satisfied with the type of school to which they have been assigned. However, many children and young people from minority groups or with a migrant background feel differently. They often experience a so-called “track mismatch” - they feel they have been assigned to the wrong type of school due to unfair treatment. Many believe that they actually belong at a higher type of school such as a grammar school.

Tests to measure cognitive skills do not support this perception. The results show that among children with a migration background, it is primarily those with below-average cognitive performance who feel unfairly assigned - and not those with above-average performance. To explain this finding, Claudia Diehl draws on findings from migration research. She points to the possible influence of “immigrant optimism” - the positive educational beliefs of migrants - and to the phenomenon of ex-post rationalization of failure with perceived discrimination in the school system.

During her stay in Bamberg, Claudia Diehl also offered a one-and-a-half-day workshop together with Prof. Dr. Steffen Schindler (University of Bamberg) and Prof. Dr. Corinna Kleinert, in which LIfBi staff and researchers from the Universities of Bamberg and Constance took part. They presented and discussed current research projects based on data from Perfair, the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and ReGES (Regugees in the German Educational System) under the overarching theme of “Students in secondary education: inequalities, attitudes, perspectives”. These included studies on the links between social inequalities and young people's political participation, perceived ethnic discrimination and young people's educational and career aspirations.

More about PerFair

More about Claudia Diehl

ReGES data

NEPS data