How Do School Systems Manage Pupils’ Heterogeneity?

School systems worldwide respond in particular ways to students’ academic heterogeneity, and different countries have developed different strategies to manage such heterogeneity. Whereas some countries separate children according to distinctive educational routes (or tracks) at early ages, others rely on intensive use of grade retention, while others more commonly use individualized teaching or tutoring. Previous studies have investigated the influence of such forms of differentiation on students’ performance and trajectories and have compared the consequences of selective school systems (corresponding to early tracking) and those of comprehensive school systems. This stream of research has shown that school systems based on an early tracking process are characterized by a stronger relationship between students’ performance and sociocultural background. In this article, we base our comparison on the more complex classification proposed by Nathalie Mons (2007), which considers how school systems rely on a configuration of institutional parameters (i.e., tracking, ability grouping, grade retention, and individualized teaching) to manage pupils’ heterogeneity. Using data from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) database, we use this typology to assess differences between four heterogeneity management models concerning the weakest students’ (1) academic routes, (2) educational environments, and (3) level of achievement and social inequality within school systems. Previous Research