Masaryk University
Faculty of Social StudiesFaculty of Social Studies
The dual role of secondary school re-entry in socialist
countries
Martin Kreidl
Masaryk University, Brno
www.fss.muni.cz
Masaryk University, Brno
Presented at the RC28 meeting in Hong Kong, May 10-13, 2012.
Educational stratification in the 4th
generation
• Increasing attention to institutional design of
education systems and institutional context
– From a sequential logit model (Mare 1980, 1981)
to a multinomial transition model (Breen,
Jonsson 2000) or to even more complicatedJonsson 2000) or to even more complicated
representations (see chapters in Shavit, Arum,
Gamoran 2007)
• Interest in changes in the institutional
arrangements (differentiation vs.
simplification)
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Example
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Education systems of former socialist
countries
• Tracking at the secondary level
– Vocational schools (3 years), no university entry.
direct labor market entry – qualified manual labor
– Professional schools (4 years), formally qualified– Professional schools (4 years), formally qualified
for university entry (but uncommon)
– Academic schools (4 years), college preparatory
track
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But…
• People’s behavior may not conform to the
(implicit) assumptions of the institutional
setting
– Deviations in sequencing and timing of transitions
• Attention to educational trajectories• Attention to educational trajectories
(pathways)
• Example: almost 20 % of vocational school
graduates in former socialist countries
re-entered secondary schools (mostly
professional secondary schools)
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Research question
• Who were vocational school graduates
re-entering secondary education in former
socialist countries?
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Theory
• Sponsored mobility: they were selected on political
criteria to become working class cadres
– Membership in the communist party predicts re-entry
– More frequent in part-time/evening education
• Compensatory mobility: they were children who were
initially denied access to more prestigious secondary
schools
– High parental SES and political persecution predict re-entry
– More frequent at institutions with regular instruction
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Data
• Treiman & Szelényi: “Social stratification in EE
after 1989” survey
• Retrospective life-history (education,
employment, political activity) dataemployment, political activity) data
• I use 4 countries: Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary,
Poland
• I take individuals who graduated from
vocational schools after 1948
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Method
• Discrete-time event-history model with
competing risks
– No re-entry vs. regular (full-time) instruction vs.
evening (part-time) classes
– People come at risk when they graduate from– People come at risk when they graduate from
vocational school
– Right-censoring after 20 years or in 1989
– 6509 individuals, 22% re-entering (6 % full-time
instruction)
– 80692 person-years
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Failure rate6810
Failurerate-percentre-entring
101214161820
Failurerate-percentre-entring
10
024
Failurerate-percentre-entring
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Years after completing vocational training
0246810
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Years after completing vocational training
Czech Republic Hungary
Poland Slovakia
Failurerate-percentre-entring
Failure rate by type of instruction
6810
Failurerate-percentre-entring
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024
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Years after completing vocational training
Regular instruction Evening classes
Failurerate-percentre-entring
Independent variables Full-time vs. no re-entry Part-time vs. no re-entry
Male 0.482*** -0.030
Parental education 0.065** 0.061***
Parental ISEI 0.016** 0.020***
# of siblings -0.040 -0.034
Parents CP members 0.037 0.011
Respondent CP member 0.506 1.219***
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Any property confiscated? 0.304** 0.232***
Cohort (1948-59, ref. cat)
1960-69 -0.310 0.831***
1970-79 0.026 0.919***
1980-89 -0.443** 0.632***
Constant -7.674*** -6.352***
Country dummies & time variables not shown
Which effects differ across
equations?
• Male – stronger (positive) in regular education
• Respondent’s CP membership – stronger
(positive) in evening education
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Are there any interactions?
• Yes
– Respondent’s CP membership*cohort
• Significant effect (on entry into regular education) in
the 1948-59 cohort
– Parental CP membership*cohort
• Effect on entry to evening education increases over
successive cohorts
– No change in the education/ISEI effects across
cohorts
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Conclusions
• School re-entry played a dual role among
vocational school graduates
– Some were selected on political criteria
– Some had been banned from directly entering
more prestigious secondary schools directly andmore prestigious secondary schools directly and
re-entry was the second chance
• Evening and special classes were more prone
to serving political goals
– More so in the later cohorts
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Thank you for your attention!
• Email: kreidlm@fss.muni.cz
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