State gymnasiums widen learning gap with other Latvian schools

Latvia’s latest PISA results show a widening performance gap between students at state gymnasiums, which select pupils for admission, and those at other schools, LSM reported Thursday.

In the 2022 PISA data, the difference between state gymnasium students and those at secondary schools was between 40 and 50 points. The gap has now grown to nearly 90 points in science and reading, while gymnasium students outperform their peers in mathematics by almost 76 points.

Rita Kiseļova, who leads the PISA study in Latvia, said the results showed that school segregation was becoming increasingly important.

“If a child has not been admitted to a gymnasium, they are, in a sense, destined for the level they can achieve later while studying at a secondary school, because it now really matters which school the child enters,” Kiseļova said.

She said teachers at gymnasiums could devote more time to educating talented students, while other schools had to spend more time on discipline and supporting pupils who faced difficulties in their studies. As a result, students’ performance was also often influenced by their classmates.

Rolands Ozols, deputy state secretary at the Ministry of Education and Science, said certain educational institutions were allowed to select students, which likely contributed to their stronger results.

However, he said this did not necessarily mean that the selection process itself amounted to segregation, adding that the issue was whether schools focused primarily on talented children should be maintained.

State gymnasiums select the strongest graduates from other schools after the sixth and ninth grades. In regions where there are fewer students to choose from, state gymnasiums achieve lower results than those in Riga.

Ozols said student progress was more important than the results themselves because it showed how much a school contributed to a pupil’s development.