Tracking and educational inequality: a longitudinal analysis of two school reforms in Switzerland

Abstract This paper examines the effects of different forms of tracking on learning inequalities in compulsory education. We use longitudinal monitoring of four cohorts of students over a four-year period, from their entry into secondary 1 education until they enter secondary 2 education. Our data include 18,706 students. We use multilevel regression analyses to test the effects of different forms of tracking after controlling for students’ sociodemographic and academic characteristics, and for contextual factors. Our results suggest not only that the effect of tracking is a composition effect or a peer effect, but that tracking per se explains a significant part of the variance in learning in the two educational contexts in our study. Our results confirm that educational policies and institutions play a pivotal role in the construction of learning inequalities and social reproduction through school in contemporary societies.