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Abstract
Although freedom of parental school choice has expanded to the Finnish education system, the government has maintained the principle of neighbourhood school allocation. Moreover, the Finnish education system has recently undergone a reform of its special needs education; all pupils are entitled to receive support in three categories of general, intensified or special. The focus of this article is to examine parental positions on school choices in relation to the parents’ social class and their children’s support needs in basic education. The results of the study are based on a quantitative questionnaire, which collected responses from 208 participants drawn primarily from four different municipalities in Finland. The study found that the category of a child’s support, rather than the socio-economic class of the parents, determined the child’s school allocations. Furthermore, the more support the parents felt their children needed, the more importance they placed on special education practices and less on the neighbourhood school allocation. In addition, the parents’ opinions were found to differ based on social class, rather than category of support. In conclusion, we argue that the social segregation of students with special educational needs can be avoided, if the principle of neighbourhood school allocation is preserved.
Notes
1. The focus of support in Finnish basic education is on providing the earliest possible support in order to prevent the emergence and development of problems. Support is grouped into three categories, such that students first get general support, then intensified support and, finally, if still more extensive support is needed, special support. This last category of support requires an official pedagogical statement of the need for special support (FNBE Citation2015).
2. Most children in Finland attend first grade at the age of seven. Primary school comprises grades one to six, and lower secondary school comprises grades seven to nine.