**5.3 Factors affecting student enrolment in differential programs**

In a meritocratic education system, students should be assigned to differential programs based on their abilities and efforts, if at all. No role should be played by factors such as gender, race, ethnicity or social background. Research demonstrates that educational achievement is, in line with the main idea of differentiation, a fundamental factor of student enrolment in programs. However, research also clearly demonstrates that factors like gender, race and socioeconomic status play important roles in education tracking as well.

Studies on the role of gender in education tracking have usually found that girls are somewhat advantaged, compared to boys (Gamoran & Mare, 1989). This is because girls usually get better grades and their school behavior is perceived more positively. Nevertheless, the gender factor is quite small, compared to others. The roles of socioeconomic status and parents' education are especially important in education tracking, even for children with similar educational achievement (Hallinan, 1992) and when controlled for observed abilities (Jones et al., 1995; Lucas, 1999). Hallinan (1996) even demonstrated that the level of mobility between different education tracks is determined by parents' SES, race and gender. Alexander et al. (1978) demonstrated the effects of SES, race and gender as well, even when controlled for academic ability. However, they found that the effect of those factors was rather indirect, through schools' and parents' expectations from children. However, other studies demonstrated that parents of higher social strata take a more active part in and try to influence school decisions about assigning students to different tracks (Useem, 1992).

Each individual school has an influence as well. For instance, it has been demonstrated that the number and extent of education programs is not always in line with the needs of a given school's students (Hallinan, 1992). Thus, different schools may assign students with the same abilities to different programs, thus launching them on different education tracks.
