Unequal Educational Transitions in Estonia

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of social origin on the transition from basic to secondary education and from secondary to tertiary education, comparing four cohorts born between 1935 and 1984. The analysis focuses on testing four hypotheses, which are mainly derived from the theses of maximally maintained inequality, effectively maintained inequality and the changes in the Estonian education system. The analysis is based on data from the Estonian Social Survey, 2004–2005, which gathered retrospective information about the educational transitions of respondents and their social origins. The findings showed the persistent inequality in the transition to secondary education during the socialist period, despite the expansion of secondary education in the 1960s and 1970s. However, as a result of declining enrolments in the 1990s, social inequality in the transition probabilities to secondary education increased significantly. We found that social origin had a strong impact on the transition to higher education, but surprisingly this effect did not change when comparing cohorts. We can also point out that the distribution of educational opportunity is related more to the rules that govern educational selection than to the expansion of the educational system per se.