The discussion on elite education, the selection of top performers and advancement of excellence is a revisited subject in the contemporary public and academic debate in Europe as well as in other countries.  While Processes like Bologna and other European educational Reforms mostly focus on mass education and mobility, the terms of elite education in Germany became a more prominent topic through the state funded excellence initiative. The main themes in the German context especially centre on chosen institutions in the environment of schools and universities. That institutions design specific means of recruitment and access procedures, based on their reputation as exclusive education places. Through special school profiles and programs, they raise the claim of educating tomorrow’s elite. This development in the educational sector led to a renewed discussion on social exclusion and inequality in Europe and especially Germany. Thus, a dilemma was raised – the dilemma of socio-economic barriers and the pursuit of genuine academic meritocracy. This is quite similar to international debates and European studies e.g. in the PISA findings.

Within the public discourse on the school system in Germany, the relation between gate keeping excellence and preparing ‘anyone’ is hardly discussed. In the field of education some important changes took place. Firstly, almost half of the students attend schools, that allow higher education certificates and that prepare pupils for advanced academic studies. Secondly, there are new developments in view of the governance of the school system, the strengthening of school autonomy in relation to the formation of ‘educational quasi-markets’ and market-formed structures. These developments led to secondary schools in urban regions of education advancing into a tension field between cooperation and competition.

Our research project focuses on exclusive schools in relation to the public discourses on elite formation: of processes of school choice, selection, distinction and coherence. The analysis refers to the institutional side, and especially to mechanisms of selection, coherence and institutional distinction. The aim of the project is to obtain new knowledge on habitus creation in the context of the differentiation of the education landscape. Therefore, we combine the institutional analysis of chosen exclusive secondary schools and contrasting secondary schools (non-exclusive) with a longitudinal survey for chosen, contrasting students. Mainly from a micro-sociological perspective – and especially referring to Bourdieu's theory of habitus – we focus on analysing school as institution, micro processes of selection, distinction and coherence, and the analysis of habitus in “prestigious” and less “prestigious” secondary schools.

Specialized schools have the opportunity to foster those with the best marks and potential and select matching pupils. Thus generating a homogenous clientele with the potential to distinguish themselves positively, the schools gain the possibility to differentiate themselves from other schools through their profile from other specialized schools.

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