Milan (Italy), 24-26March 2025
On 25 March 2025, the LINEup project was presented at the RC28 Spring Meeting in Milan (Italy), an international conference focused on social stratification and inequality.
As part of the session “Education, markets, and families: the dynamics of social stratification and inequalities”, Panagiotis Kampylis (University of Piraeus) and Veronica Mobilio (Fondazione per la Scuola) introduced the conceptual model developed within LINEup to map the variables that shape educational inequalities in primary and secondary education. This model is grounded in a systematic review of 157 academic and grey literature sources and draws from 77 identified datasets across 16 European countries.
While several theoretical and empirical frameworks exist, few are able to visually represent the interconnections among variables, limiting their capacity to fully capture the complex and evolving nature of educational inequalities.
Existing models often emphasise student and family factors, but underrepresent the roles of teachers, schools, and systemic structures – including curriculum design, tracking mechanisms, and broader education policies.
The LINEup conceptual model addresses this gap. It maps 70 key variables across four interrelated clusters – student, family, teacher, and system – and provides a visual, multi-level, evidence-informed, and evolving framework for understanding how inequalities emerge, accumulate, and persist over time.
In fact, educational inequalities are not static. They result from interdependent factors spanning individual, institutional, and systemic levels. The LINEup model is designed to:
- Be grounded in longitudinal empirical evidence
- Support data-informed decision-making
- Enable policymakers and educators to design targeted, equity-focused interventions
The RC28 conference provided a valuable opportunity to receive feedback from international scholars, which will be integrated into the model’s next iteration. This peer engagement is essential as LINEup continues to build a robust, actionable framework for addressing disparities in education.
