The inequalities in school choice in Spain in accordance to PISA data

Abstract

In Spain as in other European countries, policies on school choice have been implemented in tandem with the channelling of public resources into private education. Given the application of public money to private schooling, the primary objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which Spanish families enjoy equality in their ability to exercise school choice. To do so, the analysis focuses on the factors that affect school choice in Spain using data from the 2003 and 2006 PISA evaluations. Specifically, the influence of personal, family, geographic, motivational and educational policy factors are all considered in the context of deciding whether to attend a public or private school. The results reveal a broad similarity across the factors driving the selection of private schools which either receive some public funding (known as ‘concerted’) or independent, showing a greater proportion of families from better socioeconomic, educational and cultural backgrounds in these types of schools. In addition, the geographic distribution of schools has an effect on school selection. Given that concerted schools form part of the public educational offering (because of the state funding they receive), the state has the ability to take a wide range of actions to promote greater equality of choice in the case of public and concerted schools. In this respect, a series of measures are set out regarding student selection, the distribution of information and the geographic distribution of schools.

Keywords:

• school choice
• public–private decision
• Spain
• multinomial logit