Indices of social position in colleges – Academy of Rennes

The Social Position Index (SPI) makes it possible to understand the social status of students from the professions and social categories of their parents. For each CSP, the numerical value of the SPI corresponds to a quantitative summary of a set of socio-economic and cultural attributes related to academic achievement. Concretely, to determine the values associated with each PCS, we considered the weighted average of characteristics such as diplomas, cultural practices, material conditions, cultural capital and parental involvement in schooling. This statistical methodology is described in Rocher’s paper (2016) and is based on a data analysis method (multiple correspondence analysis) based on the DEPP panel of students entered sixth in 2007. The IPS reference values are available for each PCS and for each crossing of PCS (mother-father), see Rocher (2016) (table of passage available as attachment below). Thus, once the parents’ CSPs have been collected, it is sufficient to apply the IPS reference values. The social level of a school is assessed by calculating the average of the IPS of the pupils attending school there. It should be borne in mind that, like any synthetic index, it is a simplified summary of reality, which alone cannot account for the complexity of the socio-economic and cultural situation of pupils in an institution. Finally, since the SPI is based on the CSPs reported by the families and registered by the institutions, it is subject to a certain margin of error: thus, it is advisable not to overinterpret differences of 3 points or less in relation to the average IPS of institutions. The social heterogeneity index of an institution corresponds to the standard deviation of its students’ social position index (SPI). The higher it is, the more diverse the social profile of students. This index has been calculated since the start of 2019, only for institutions of the second degree. Field: The file provides the average IPS within an institution as well as the standard deviation of the IPS of its students for the colleges of metropolitan France and DROM, public and private under contract, calculated from the data of the year N and for all the pupils of the school. In the file made available, each line corresponds to a college for a given school year. Reference: Rock, T. (2016). Construction of a student social position index. _Education & Training_, DEPP, 90, pp. 5-27. Dauphant F., Evain F., Guillerm M., Simon C., Rocher T. (2023), The Social Position Index (SPI): a statistical tool to describe social inequalities between institutions. _Depp. information note._