The Evolution of Educational Inequalities in the Czech Republic after 1989

Abstract

This article deals with the evolution of inequalities in access to tertiary education in the Czech Republic since 1989. Following the 'velvet revolution' in 1989, the demand for both secondary school education (with a secondary school diploma) and post-secondary education has grown considerably. The opening hypothesis of this article is that there has been an increase in educational inequalities in the Czech Republic since 1989 resulting from the unequal development of the secondary and tertiary sectors of the educational system. The author starts with the findings of Gerber and Hout (1995) and Gerber (2000), that the pressure caused by an excess of applicants between these two levels of education disadvantages the lower social strata. Using logistic regression, the author models the influence of social origin on the likelihood of a successful transition from secondary school to post-secondary school in the period 1948-99. The hypothesis of the growing influence of social origin on success in the transition between secondary and post-secondary schools in the 1990s was not, however, confirmed. On the contrary, the trend after 1989 testifies rather to a decrease in inequalities in access to post-secondary education|spagf|ro|epagf|.