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

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.