Schools as Differential Environments for Students’ Development: How Tracking and School Composition Affect Students’ Transition After the End of Compulsory Education

Katja Scharenberg; Wolfram Rollett

doi:10.2478/sjs-2023-0016

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Schools as Differential Environments for Students’ Development: How Tracking and School Composition Affect Students’ Transition After the End of Compulsory Education

Swiss Journal of Sociology

Volume 49 (2023): Issue 2 (July 2023)

By: Katja Scharenberg and Wolfram Rollett

Open Access

|Aug 2023

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Abstract

Tracking leads to differential developmental environments resulting in educational inequalities. We investigated whether tracking and school composition affect students’ transition to post-compulsory education. Based on data of two Swiss school-leavers’ cohorts (2000/2016), multilevel analyses show that the social and achievement-related school composition and track affiliation predict transitions beyond students’ individual characteristics. Compositional effects were in part differentially predictive depending on students’ track affiliation.

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