Navigating Educational and Urban Landscapes: Middle-Class School Choice Strategies in Local Education Markets

ABSTRACT

The middle-classes use school choice as a strategy of class reproduction and comparative advantage. In this article, we show how middle-class parental school choice strategies are spatially dependent and how schooling preferences and final choices are bounded by the social and educational characteristics of the local education market of their neighborhood of residence in the city of Barcelona. Our findings reveal interesting differences relating to the search process and final decisions, which are dependent on parental preferences and risk perception in the different local education markets. Reflections on some policy implications of the analysis are considered in the conclusions.

KEYWORDS:

• Barcelona
• local education markets
• middle-classes
• school choice
• school segregation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In Spain, despite compulsory education starting at the age of six, the net rate of enrollment at three years old is 96.8%.

2. In the Boston mechanism, if a student isn’t allocated to their first-choice school A, they are only considered for their second choice, school B, after all the students who ranked B as their top choice are considered. Therefore, a student loses his priority at a school unless his family ranks it as their first choice.

3. Recent studies show that the interplay between income inequality and residential segregation is particularly dependent on the demographic change, the geography of housing and residential mobility. The three elements have combined in Europe to increase the segregation effects of income inequalities in European cities (Tammaru et al., 2021).

4. Statistical data from Barcelona City Council: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/estadistica/catala/Estadistiques_per_temes/Poblacio_i_demografia/Documents_relacionats/pobest/a2021/pdf/pobest2021.pdf

5. Data extracted from https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/barcelonaeconomia/sites/default/files/LA%20RENDA%20DE%20LES%20LLARS_2019.pdf

6. Statistical data from Barcelona City Council: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/estadistica/catala/Estadistiques_per_temes/Poblacio_i_demografia/Documents_relacionats/pobest/a2021/pdf/pobest2021.pdf

7. A recent study indicates that in Catalonia, the average monthly cost of attending a subsidized private school is €214.5. Moreover, approximately 65% of such schools charge around €270 per month, while the most expensive institution costs approximately €1000 per month. These findings establish Catalonia as the region in Spain with the highest expenses for private subsidized education (CICAE/CEAPA, 2023).

8. Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing district lines to unfairly favor politicians or political parties in elections. In education, it refers to the manipulation of school district boundaries or student assignment zones to achieve specific demographic or political outcomes.

9. In Paris, multi-school catchment areas have been defined to serve middle schools that are geographically close but have contrasting social profiles. This strategy has increased the diversity of some school districts (Grenet & Souidi, 2021).