Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Education has been recognized as a critical avenue for social mobility in a society. However, while mobility is possible through education, the probability of this is not high. Previous studies suggest that ability-based tracking and resource allocations among schools reproduce socioeconomic advantages instead of levelling it. This study explores the mediating role of specific school variables in the relationship between parental socio-economic status (SES) and the child’s achievement using Singapore public secondary school data from the Programme for International Student Assessment in 2015 (PISA2015) (n=5684). Mediation analyses found the availability of co-curricular activities (CCAs), perceived unfair treatment by teachers and school autonomy to be partial mediators of this positive relationship, suggesting that schools do play a role in reproducing economic advantage. Class size, however, does not matter.