Profiling policy in education and social inequality

The paper analyzes historical, normative and organizational aspects of the profiling policy. The author emphasizes the problem of the gap between the declared goals of profiling (ensuring the growth of the quality of vocational education) and the negative consequences of the relevant policy. Based on the data of longitudinal studies, the paper shows that educational profiling is, among other things, one of the mechanisms of reproduction and translation of the parameters of social inequality. The conclusion is substantiated, according to which the postponement of diagnostics and forks of educational tracking to later stages of training, as a rule, has positive consequences, since it reduces the «noise» (cumulative) effect of profiling, which consists in encapsulating inequality.