Trends in differentiation of student achievement and learning conditions in the Czech compulsory education. Findings from TIMSS

Many studies show that one of the most important factors related to delivering equity in education is the design of education system, its differentiation, and the age at the time of the first selection. In a system in which early self-selection is constrained by the choice structure there is less educational inequality than in a system where consequential decisions about the educational career are taken at a very young age. On that account, grouping according to student performance has been one of the most controversial issues in education for more than 80 years. Its effects, particularly on student achievement, have been extensively studied over that time period, mainly in United States and Great Britain. In the Czech Republic tracking is very extensive and starts from 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 achievement and social composition of students in individual tracks. In last decade the differentiation of Czech education system at the primary and lower secondary level has been escalating. The data from the IEA TIMSS study show that the growing differentiation of educational pathways leads to the growing differentiation of student achievement and learning experience of students in various schools and tracks. The analysis, using the hierarchical linear modeling approach, is carried out on data from TIMSS 1995, TIMSS 1999 and TIMSS 2007.