The aim of the paper is to contribute to the research on the impact of tracking in upper secondary education on the development of academic futility. The concept of academic futility was first proposed by Brookover and Schneider (1975) to identify some factors that might explain the differences in levels of achievement among schools. They generated four student factors, including ‘student-reported sense of futility’. The most important elements of this factor encompass a similar dimension to Coleman’s (Coleman et al., 1966) ‘sense of control’ variable, but explicitly address the school. As such, this measure reflects the students’ feelings about the possibility of functioning adequately in the school system. A high sense of futility indicates a feeling of having no control over success or failure in the school system. This explicit focus on education and the reference to group-based beliefs make this concept an accurate and pertinent tool to grasp what is happening in lower tracks. This makes a sense of futility a promising concept in tracking research (Van Houtte, 2016). Research in Flanders showed that technical and vocational students display higher feelings of futility than academic students do (Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008, 2010), leading to less involvement in study (Van Houtte & Stevens, 2010) and higher levels of misconduct at school (Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008). A sense of futility is more prevalent in schools with a student body with a lower mean socioeconomic status composition (Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008, 2010).

The concept of academic futility has not been studied so far in the Czech Republic, although it seems to be very promising in relation to its education system (Straková, 2015). The Czech Republic has a highly stratified education system with tracking starting at the age of 11; in Bol and Van de Werfhorst’s (2013) analysis the Czech Republic was the country with the third highest index of tracking (after Germany and Austria). Upper secondary education consists of three main tracks that provide students with a very different education: 1) the academic track provides students with four years of general education and is concluded by a school-leaving examination that entitles students to apply for tertiary education. In recent years, this track was attended by 26 per cent of upper secondary students; 2) the technical track also takes four years, prepares students for both tertiary education and the labour market, and is also concluded by the school-leaving examination. General subjects take up 55-60 per cent of the instruction time. The technical track is attended by 44 per cent of students; 3) the apprenticeship track provides students with a three-year education that leads to an apprenticeship certificate and prepares students directly for the labour market. General subjects take up 30-35 per cent of the instruction time, vocational subjects 20-30 per cent, and practical training 35-45 per cent. This track is attended by 30 per cent of Czech upper secondary students. Vocational tracks are narrowly specialised and offer almost 300 different fields altogether.

The aim of the research is to test the concept of academic futility in the Czech context and to find out how a sense of academic futility develops in students of different tracks during their upper secondary studies.

The questions on academic futility applied by Van Houtte (2008, 2010) were translated into Czech and administered to six vocational classes (200 students in total) in spring 2018. The comments of the students and teachers regarding the understandability and relevance of the questions were collected. After the application of minor adaptations the battery was used in the research that was carried out within the Czech Longitudinal Study of Education in autumn 2018 (see bellow) on 5500 students, to verify the functioning of the concept of futility in Czech secondary schools. In 2016, the Czech Longitudinal Study in Education administered a test in mathematics, reading, and Czech grammar to 4000 students in the first year of their upper secondary studies in 34 academic schools (“gymnasia”) and 52 vocational schools with 29 apprenticeship classes and 65 technical education classes. The test was accompanied by a questionnaire that collected data about students’ school marks, educational aspirations, life and school satisfaction, free time activities and socio-economic status. The same classes were approached again in their third year, in autumn 2018. In 2018, the questions on academic futility and misconduct were also administered. The data collection in grade 3 included another 40 schools with technical and apprenticeship tracks that did not participate in 2016. In these schools, the tests and questionnaires were also administered to 1500 students in 80 classes. By employing several propensity score matching algorithms on students participating in both years to eliminate the selection bias (e.g. Retelsdorf et al., 2012; Steiner et al., 2011, Stuart 2010, Dockx & De Fraine 2018), we formed parallelised samples of students in different tracks and compared their levels of futility and misconduct. The propensity score matching was based on socio-economic status, and school marks, life and school satisfaction, free time activities and test results in grade 1. The R package MatchIT was used to perform the computations.

At the time of the submission of this abstract, the data collection had been completed but only preliminary analyses had been performed. The concept of academic futility was verified on the sample of 5500 Czech upper secondary students. For propensity score matching, a set of 3200 students who participated in the survey in both 2016 and 2018 is available. We expect that, in line with the findings from other European countries, we will find that attending a vocational track leads to a higher sense of academic futility and misconduct than attending an academic track. We will also be interested in the differences between the technical and apprenticeship tracks. Next step will be to relate the feeling of academic futility to achievement of students in different tracks. The findings will be an important contribution to the recent debate about the desirable concept and representation of vocational education at the upper secondary level.

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