Social origin and access to upper secondary education in Switzerland: a comparison of company-based apprenticeship and exclusively school-based programmes

When making the transition from compulsory school to upper secondary education and training, young people in Switzerland have two main options: company-based apprenticeships or exclusively school-based programmes. Based on Bourdieu, we assume that schools and training firms each have their own particular selection procedures. We expect these different procedures to change the patterns of the influence of social origin on transition – even when controlling school achievement. We test our assumptions by applying event history analyses to Switzerland’s first nationwide longitudinal survey of young people (TREE). As expected, cultural capital of the family of origin is highly relevant for access to school-based programmes, whereas economic capital favours the entry into apprenticeships

How do different pathways to higher education foster social mobility for males and females: A comparison of different tracks to higher education in Switzerland and France

International audienceOver the past decades, educational policy implementations in France and Switzerland have increased the eligibility of those completing (upper or post compulsory) secondary education to access higher or tertiary education, by introducing vocationally orientated programs on the upper secondary level that offer access to higher education. Such policies should help to reduce some of the well-known inequalities in the educational system by improving educational achievement of disadvantaged groups such as students with an immigrant background or those coming from low socioeconomic and cultural households. In this paper we wish to clarify not only if, but also how - through which institutional settings - higher education is accessed by male and female students of lower cultural capital (i.e. non HE parental education or "First generation" students (the first of their family to access HE)). We are primarily interested in the possible social mobility for these men and women arising from the aforementioned country-specific educational policies designed to increase the enrolment in tertiary education

Pathways to higher education in France and Switzerland: the aspirations of first and second generation immigrants and the permeability of educational tracks

Using panel data from France (DEPP) and Switzerland (TREE) the pathways to higher education in the two countries were analysed, looking specifically at the accessibly of higher education through different educational tracks while taking into account different characteristics of the students, i.e. gender and different immigrant backgrounds. How the institutional settings in both countries influence access to higher education with a special interest in the integrative function of vocational baccalaureate certificates. If the educational characteristics of the North African youths in France and those of students with Turkish or former Yugoslavian background in Switzerland were similar to those of the native students, the former would have at least the same odds of obtaining a baccalaureate diploma and access to tertiary education

Upper-secondary educational trajectories and young men’s and women’s self-esteem development in Switzerland

Adolescents’ self-esteem is an important indicator of their successful development and their well-being. This paper investigates the impact of educational trajectories on the development of women’s and men’s self-esteem from mid to late adolescence in Switzerland. We posit that cooling-out processes after educational failure, leading to a decrease in self-esteem, are more frequent among women than men attributable to particular institutional characteristics of the stratified educational system in Switzerland and gender differences in the salience of social comparison. Analyses are based on the middle cohort of the Swiss Survey of Children and Youth (COCON). The first three survey waves (2006–2009) were conducted when the respondents were 15, 16 and 18 years old. Self-esteem development was examined by using latent growth-curve models. Analyses show a boost of self-esteem both at the mean-level and the intra-individual level for all adolescents. However, the impact of educational success or failure in the years following the transition to post-compulsory education differs by gender. The evidence suggests that women’s self-esteem development is more affected by educational attainment than men’s