Opportunity to learn in reading comprehension: insights from PIRLS 2021 results

For several years, the question of equity within education systems has been the subject of debate. From this perspective, it is essential to question how all students, regardless of their personal characteristics or level of competence, receive (or do not receive) the same chances to develop their skills. This refers directly to the concept of opportunities to learn (OTL), defined in terms of curricular coverage, but also of teaching practices. This article focuses on the content emphasis dimension of the OTL concept as measured through the PIRLS 2021 survey in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Through 16 items of this survey, we investigated whether teaching practices differ according to the average level of students within classes. The analyses carried out show that, in lower-level classes, teachers modify their teaching practices, exposing students less frequently to long, resistant texts and inviting them less often to engage in complex tasks or tasks that work on high-level cognitive processes. These differences in terms of OTL according to the level of the pupils do not enable the weakest among them to develop their reading skills in the best possible way, and run counter to the compensatory justice perspective that is so popular in education systems (as provided).