Natalie Simonová

Educational inequalities and educational mobility under socialism in the Czech Republic

The sociology of education on the Czech Republic has focused almost entirely on relative measures of inequality (based on odds ratio data) than to trends in educational mobility (based on mobility tables). Therefore, there is a significant gap in our knowledge of how the Czech education system has evolved in the long term. Although the periods before and after the onset of socialism appear to have had very specific mobility patterns, we know relatively little about their differences. Therefore, this article attempts 1) to verify the findings to date about the character and extent of educational inequalities in the Czech half of socialist Czechoslovakia, and 2) to update these findings with a new mobility analysis. In this context the article poses two key questions: In what ways are the two mobility systems (pre-socialist and socialist) different? Was the Czech education system becoming more or less open? Using the mobility perspective and log-linear modelling, the analysis identifies some specific structural contexts and shows that the level of intergenerational educational reproduction that existed between 1906 and 1938 gradually diminished thereafter, except among women, who experienced a re-strengthening after 1948. Although after the Prague Spring in 1968 the association between the education of parents and their children began to strengthen, the mother-daughter association in educational reproduction weakened at the end of socialism.

Impact of primary and secondary social origin factors on the transition to university in the Czech Republic

The main objective of this paper is to show to what extent and why students with the same academic aptitude but different social backgrounds have different odds of entering university. For our analysis, we separated primary and secondary factors of social origin in the formation of educational inequalities. The results show that the primary and secondary factors have approximately the same influence on the transition to university. Czech schools do not affect the process of forming educational aspirations and transition to university, and merely ‘classify’ children according to their social origin. This situation emerged during the socialist era and has remained unchanged after the fall of communism (in 1989). However, the mechanism of the social origin effect has changed – while cultural capital with a ‘direct’ impact had a major role to play during the socialist era, at present there is a rather ‘indirect’ influence through economic capital.

Trends in Educational Fluidity after the Fall of Socialism in the Czech Republic

The aim of this paper is to identify the trends in educational fluidity after the fall of socialism in 1989 in the Czech Republic. The data are based on 27 sample surveys carried out from 1990 to 2009, including information on the child’s and his father’s education. The trends in educational fluidity are analysed both in view of the years and with respect to the birth cohorts, i.e. on the grounds of two effects: unequal educational odds (according to the socio-economic origin) and the “differentiation” effect. Unequal educational odds are related to the expansion of the Czech education system while the differentiation effect is given by social homogeneity of educational groups. The findings show that despite expansion of educational opportunities the fluidity in education has not been increasing in Czech society. The period between 1990 and 2005 saw even a decline in educational odds depending on the respondents’ educational origin. Only from 2006, this tendency started to fall. In our view, the development of educational fluidity was caused primarily by socio-political transition of Czech society rather than by cohort replacement.

Další vzdělávání dospělých v České republice – kdo se ho účastní a s jakými důsledky?

The article focuses on adult education in the Czech Republic. It begins by defining the institutional context of adult education in the country. Three institutional characteristics are of particular interest in this respect: returns to education, the current level of education of the adult population (and the related demand for adult education), and institutions offering adult education. Using the LFS and AES surveys, the authors find that it is primarily young and educated persons who pursue adult education. With respect to the returns to adult education, the results show that adult education does not protect against downward mobility but does increase the odds of upward mobility. The positive effect of adult education on upward mobility is more pronounced among women than men.