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Education and equity issues in life-course transitions in Russia

Tue, March 7, 11:45am to 1:15pm, Sheraton Atlanta, Floor: 1, Georgia 12 (South Tower)

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

Every country aims at developing a more equitable education system.  Russia belongs to a group of countries with very high income inequality, but with high participation in higher education. Little is known about how inequalities are reproduced in education system and outside, and about the effect of merit, social class, gender and location on life course transitions and individual outcomes. 
The panel answers the questions about how schools and social contexts affect students’ choices in education and the way individuals with different levels of education manage their biographies, as well as how this relates to the later life outcomes (e.g., in well-being). To approach these questions, the panel will gather three interrelated studies. The first paper studies school administration and teachers discourse - in schools with different students' social-economic status  and educational outcomes. School staff views on school effectiveness and the role of school for students’ educational career and social mobility are in focus. The second paper describes the role of academic ability and students’ social class in allocating students to different educational tracks. The final paper estimates the relationship between education and individual agency on the one hand, and individual outcomes in the labor market on the other hand.
Previous work on Russia has shown significant social background inequalities at all levels of education, with evidence of change in the extent of such inequalities during the transition (Gerber and Hout 1995; Gerber 2000; Gerber 2007). However, other studies show that social inequality is a result of labor market segmentation and territorial differences, and social inequities are not reproduced within the system of education. In addressing this, our work is based on the analysis of the recent cohorts.  
For the first two presented studies we use unique data from Trajectories in Education and Careers Study (TREC - https://trec.hse.ru/en). This is a unique study as it includes TIMSS 2011 and PISA 2012 as its own waves. We also held a series of in-depth interviews with principals, their assistants and teachers in 30 schools that took part in TREC. To estimate the relationship of education and agency with individual success at the labor market we used data of Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS – https://www.hse.ru/rlms/)
On the basis of our analyses we will argue that social context largely defines how the school administration and teachers see their role as educators and how they formulate what makes optimal students’ choices. Social class of parents defines the student’s choice of either vocational or academic track, especially in high school. It is also expected that better educated adults are also more capable agents in the labor market, able to manage their careers, and this helps them to achieve higher levels of well-being in work.

References 
Gerber, T.P.  2000.  “Educational Stratification in Contemporary Russia: Stability and Change in the Face of Economic and Institutional Crisis.”  Sociology of Education 73: 219-246.
Gerber, T.P.  2007.  “Russia: Stratification in Postsecondary Education Since the Second World War.”  Pp. 294-321 in Stratification in Higher Education: A Comparative Study, edited by Y. Shavit, R. Arum and A. Gamoran. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Gerber, T.P., and M. Hout.  1995.  “Educational Stratification in Russia During the Soviet Period.”  American Journal of Sociology 101: 611-660.

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