Abstrakt
Many studies show that one of the most important factors related to delivering equity in education is the design of the education system, its differentiation, and children's ages at the time of the first selection for school. In the Czech Republic tracking is widespread and starts from a very young age.
In all international comparative studies of student achievement, the Czech Republic exhibits a relatively strong relationship between student achievement and family background. National analyses show high differences between the achievement and social composition of students in individual tracks.
The most controversial component of the Czech education system with regard to equity is the multi-year gymnasium. Multi-year gymnasia were introduced into the system after 1989, following a prewar tradition, and currently are attended by approximately 10 percent of lower secondary students.
An attempt to abolish tracking at the lower secondary level at the beginning of this decade met strong opposition from politicians and Czech elites. They argued that early tracking gave talented children an opportunity to accelerate their cognitive development and was thus crucial for the constitution of Czech elites.
Since then tracking at the compulsory level became even more prominent. The paper intends to refute shared beliefs about the role multi-year gymnasia play in the system.
It seeks answers to the following questions: (1) Are entrance procedures able to select the best students, do multi-year gymnasia really serve the most able students? (2) Do multi-year gymnasia really accelerate student cognitive development? Do students in multi-year gymnasia learn more than students in other tracks? The analyses, using hierarchical linear modeling, use data from PISA 2000, PISA 2003, PISA 2006, and from an additional survey of students in grade 12 in 2000.