The school performance of the russian-speaking minority in linguistically divided educational systems: A comparison of Estonia and Latvia

It is often supposed that the lower educational performance of ethnic minority students is related with language difficulties. The linguistically divided school systems in Estonia and Latvia enable to research the achievement of minority children who are studying in their mother tongue and explore how mathematical performance is related with individual social background, achievement motives and school context in such educational systems. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data is used to analyse mathematical performance of Russian-speaking and majority students. The results of multilevel analysis indicate that linguistically divided school systems in Estonia and Latvia have rather different outcomes. Latvian case shows that minority students experience no significant disadvantages irrespective of whether they attend Russian-medium or Latvianmedium schools. In Estonia, students who attend Russian-medium schools have lower performance than other students. This is partly explained by socio-economic composition of Russian-medium schools, indicating that children undergo difficulties due to their parental disadvantages. Additional reasons might be related to learning environments in these schools. However, Russian-speaking students in Estonian-medium schools also seem to lag behind majority students. Thus, the opportunity to study in the mother tongue might have only minor influence on educational achievement, while the school or learning context seem to be decisive factors.