Secondary education in the throes of change during the Reform: A view from Moscow

:The new situation in secondary education since the early 1990s is described through examples of schools in Moscow. The social crisis in Russia has led, at an ever faster pace, to abandoning the unified school system in favor of developing specialized schools and courses, as well as private schools with the claim of respecting student diversity. This multiplication of schools, in fact intended for a new elite of leaders and specialists who are willing to pay so that their children receive a better education and improve their chances for admission into post-secondary institutions, is intensifying social differentiation, a trend already observable in the late 1980s. It is reinforced by the fact that the state has increasingly withdrawn its financial backing from the public school system and that it has replaced the principle of equality, which it used to try to promote, with "freedom and pluralism in education". On the basis of two surveys, the increasing severity of selection procedures as applied to secondary school students is analyzed as well as students' trajectories as a function of their social and cultural backgrounds.