Three Steps to ‘Heaven'? The family and school choice

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses some of the results from a study of school choice in Wales, funded by an ESRC training grant. The study uses a mixture of methods for data collection and analysis, assessing the views of parents and children, in all types of schools, both before and after making the selection of a new school. The process of choosing a school is found to have three major components. The first of these, which may be a decision by default, is the selection of a type of school(s) for further consideration. The second component is the selection of a number of schools of the chosen type, or ‘choice set’, and the third is the decision itself. The role of the parents and child vary typically at each step. Each of the steps can be approached by families in very different ways and, although previous writers have suggested a simple dichotomy between those who are and those who are not willing/able to engage in an education market, such a model is not sufficient to explain the diversity found in this study. The paper starts with a brief account of the methods used and then provides evidence from the survey and from more detailed narratives of the existence of three steps in the choice process. Finally, the stories of five families are used to illustrate different approaches to each step.