Parental Reasons for School Choice in Elementary School: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACT

The quantitative literature on parental reasons of school choice for their elementary school children was systematically reviewed using all major databases. The quality of the studies was assessed through a modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. Among 3982 references reviewed, 26 studies were included from 14 countries. Although large heterogeneity in the data precluded a formal meta-analysis, our findings document that school academic quality was the only reason reported in more than 50% of the studies. In studies from low-income countries or composed predominantly of families from low SES, logistic reasons assume relevance aside teacher quality. The methodological quality of the literature in this area is poor. Although the literature is not of enough quality to confidently define what the most important factors are, our findings provide an overview of the reasons parents gave for selecting elementary schools for their children worldwide. In addition, we present the needed data for constructing an instrument to assess parent reasons for elementary school choice, something not yet available in the literature.

KEYWORDS:

• School choice
• parent
• education
• elementary school

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the following authors that answered our request for additional data on their studies: Dr. Drew Catt, Dr. Paul Di Perna, Prof. Rinelle Evans, Prof. David Fleming, Prof. Ellen Goldring, Prof. Cornelia Kristen, Prof. Maria Alice Nogueira, Prof. Benjamin Scafidi, and Prof. Paul Teske.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.