Impact of socioeconomic variables on Enem performance: a spatial and sociologic analysis

Abstract

This study aims to identify variables with the highest impact on students’ performance in the National Exam of High School (Enem), per municipality. The research adopted the educational sociology perspective and used spatial statistics to analyze the dynamics of territorial influence. We analyzed Enem 2018, measuring the degree of importance of each category of variables for the average and variance of students’ grades in the exam - which is separated in an essay and an objective test - and used statistical modeling and geospatial analysis, such as linear and spatial regressions. The results indicate that, for the objective test, variables like percentage of students with scholarship, income, race, schooling, and education level of students’ mothers are relevant to students’ performance and dispersion of grades in each municipality. For the essay, variables were similar to the objective test but with less impact on the average and variance of the grades. This explicative factor increases when a spatial component is introduced in the model for the essay grades, indicating that there are other regional factors, besides socioeconomics, impacting the performance and dispersion per municipality. The results reinforce the sociological studies on education since the socioeconomic disparities reflected in the students’ performance stand out, which are also pointed out by Bourdieu (1998, 2008, 2009) in his studies of the fundamentals of school productivity of inequalities. Studies with this integrated perspective are relevant to understand the influence of municipalities’ location, evidencing specific gaps and, consequently, directing and influencing public actions to overcome inequalities.

Keywords:
Enem; sociology; educational performance; statistical analysis; spatial regression