Parental choice,social class and market forces: the consequences of privatization of public services in education

This paper is part of a research project into parental choice, social class and market forces carried out by a team in Zaragoza (Spain). The main objective was to evaluate parents’ choice of school and the consequences this may produce in terms of social exclusion and inequality. Additionally, our aim was to determine whether certain populations, ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged groups and immigrants, are concentrated in the same schools. The methodology was ethnographic. We studied 13 private and public schools in Zaragoza, in which 40 students carried out research for 5 months, using interviews, observations and document analysis. The interviews were fully transcribed and analysed using a Straussian methodology. We found three micro‐markets, varying according to different socio‐cultural factors, that share the patterns of an ‘old and stable’ market. This kind of market does not work strictly under the rules of the marketplace, where there is tough competition between schools. However, its outcomes are similar. This ‘old and stable’ market is a mechanism of social class reproduction. The middle and upper classes go to private schools, while ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged groups and immigrants attend the public sector. The parents’ expectations, experiences and ideology play a key role in the marketplace, as well as in the several micro‐markets. Middle class families have more chances to choose a school, due to greater resources and cultural status. Among several conclusions I emphasize that a market system is not necessary for social inequalities to take place. It will occur when the possibility of choice arises. The middle class are favoured under current circumstances, while the working class are disadvantaged. What are the prospects of disadvantaged classes if a market system is developed, with full freedom of choice being promoted and no compensatory actions carried out? Everybody would have the same rights, but would everyone enjoy the same conditions or possibilities? It is possible to predict that the struggle between a public education monopoly and a market system will produce greater differences between social classes. In fact, these policies could provoke a decline of the public school in Spain.     

When negotiation fails: private education as a disciplinary strategy

This articles deals with the question why Dutch upper‐middle‐class parents resort to fee‐paying private education, a tiny, recently developed sector of the Dutch educational system. The research is based on interviews with 37 parents and 20 students attending private schools, and on a survey among 376 parents involved in private schooling. From the data is concluded that ‘lack of discipline’ is the main reason for parents and students alike to choose a private school. Failing to succeed in secondary school lessens the chances of reproduction of parental class position. Analysis of the interviews shows that the parental style of upbringing, marked by negotiation and mutual consent, can make it difficult to acquire the discipline that is needed to follow a successful educational career. Moreover, parents criticize the regular schools for their lack of discipline on the one hand, attention to individual needs on the other. The private schools, characterized by strict rules, permanent supervision, and intense engagement with students, take over the discipline neither parents nor regular schools can provide. In that way, students are able to qualify for tertiary education, needed to ward off future downward mobility.     

White middle‐class parents,identities, educational choice and the urban comprehensive school: dilemmas,ambivalence and moral ambiguity

At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle‐class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state‐run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of ‘thinking and acting otherwise’, and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents’ perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle‐class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform ‘the good/ethical self’ while ensuring the ‘best’ for their children.     

Choices and Expectations at Primary and Secondary Stages in the State and Private Sectors

This paper examines a range of issues concerned with the process of choosing schools in the private and state sectors at the primary/pre‐preparatory stage and at the time of transfer to secondary/senior school. The findings indicate that choices about schools are made at different times and in different ways by parents who use the state and private sectors. One of the key findings is that the process of choosing a school begins earlier in the private than in the state sector; another is that quality of education is cited more frequently as one of the ‘top three’ essential factors by parents of children in the private sector. At both the primary and transfer to secondary stages, very high percentages of parents consider it essential that their child should be happy. A discussion of the different notions that private school and the state school parents may have of ‘happiness’ is offered.     

Choice without markets: homeschooling in the context of private education

Homeschooling is enjoying new‐found acceptance in North America. Drawing on a variety of secondary sources and our own data from Ontario, Canada, we find that homeschooling is growing steadily, and is becoming an increasingly legitimated form of education. To understand these changes, we review prevailing sociological explanations that focus on the rise of neo‐liberal ideology, and pressures of class reproduction and human capital requirements. We document the contributions of these theories and note their limits for understanding the rising popularity of homeschooling. We then situate homeschooling within a broader context of private education, distinguishing segments that encourage market‐consumer, class reproduction, human capital and ‘expressive’ logics. The combination of large investments of time and effort with highly uncertain outcomes makes homeschooling the most expressive form of private education, which we trace to the burgeoning culture of ‘intensive parenting.’     

Parent preferences and parent choices: the public–private decision about school choice

School choice survey data from the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, a large county‐wide school district, is analysed to examine the characteristics of parents who consider choosing private schools for their children and those who do not. We examine differences in background, including race, educational attainment and socioeconomic status, as well as differences in parent satisfaction with their child’s previous school, parent involvement in school, parents’ priorities in school choice, as well as parents’ social networks. After controlling for background characteristics, we find that parent satisfaction with their child’s previous school was not a predictor of considering a private school. Rather, parent involvement seems to be a more important indicator of whether or not a parent would consider sending their child to a private school. In this case, parents are not ‘pushed’ away from public schools, contrary to much public rhetoric that suggests private schools are somehow inherently ‘better’ than public schools and parents who are dissatisfied with their public schools will opt for private schools. Instead, these findings suggest a ‘pull’ towards private schools. Parents may perceive that parent involvement and parent communication are more easily facilitated and valued in private schools.     

Languages discourses in Australian middle-class schools: parent and student perspectives

Much of the literature on social class and language study in schools argues that for middle-class parents and their children, languages are chosen for their capacity to offer forms of distinction that provide an edge in the global labour market. In this paper, we draw on data collected from interviews with parents and children in middle-class schools in Australia to demonstrate how a complex amalgam of elite, cultural identity and/or trade language discourses came into play to explain the choice (or not) to study a language and the choice of specific languages. For many of the parents languages provided a limited form of ‘civic multiculturalism’, as a means of better understanding and respecting the ‘other’. We argue that the value attributed to high status languages via this discourse, means their continued presence in schools hoping to attract middle-class parents, but their relative absence in schools with largely working-class populations, where more ‘practical’ concerns dominate.     

Regarding art and regarding future teachers regarding art

The 2011 Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector presented Ireland with an opportunity to rethink the issue of patronage in Irish primary schools, as well as to consider how ‘religious education’ might be approached in such schools in the future. This paper suggests that, for the first time since 1831, Ireland had an opportunity to provide ‘state schooling’ for all children, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. The paper proposes educating all children in the state in non-denominational secular settings, leaving faith formation to the private domain of parents and communities. Although the concept of ‘secularism’ has negative connotations for those who belong to a religious community, this paper suggests that it provides a framework for inclusive and egalitarian education, offering children and young people the opportunity to learn alongside their peers, irrespective of religious backgrounds.     

Privatization and sponsorship: the re‐agenting of the school system in England 1

In this article I use the concept of ‘re‐agenting’ to explore and explain the role of non‐state agencies, principally private companies and business entrepreneurs, as key instruments in the government’s transformation of the school system in England. Their role takes both for‐profit and not‐for‐profit forms. The outsourcing to private companies of the implementation of government education policies and the delivery of educational services to schools and local authorities has created a profitable market. Equally significant is the growing involvement of the private sector in schools through the sponsorship of specialist schools and Academies on a non‐profit basis.     

A Panic about School Choice

It is now widely recognised that Britain's comprehensive system was never truly comprehensive. Families with sufficient financial capital were always able to ensure the entry of their children to particularly prestigious ‘comprehensive’ schools by purchasing a home within the appropriate catchment areas. According to government rhetoric, recent legislation established a market of schools, removed catchment areas and gave parents greater choice of school. This case‐study examines the workings of the local quasi‐market of schools within a prosperous town (Sutton Coldfield, England) which is part of the larger metropolitan area of the West Midlands. Because of a change in the age of entry to secondary education, Sutton Coldfield was first plunged into the market in 1992. This case‐study shows that the new situation initially caused confusion and anger. Some Sutton Coldfield residents were denied places for their children within the town and were instead offered places for their children in Birmingham working‐class estate schools. The article describes the formation and activities of a local pressure group which opposed these changes, and reports the results of a small‐scale study of a sample of parents’ choice‐making processes in 1993. It is shown that access to financial and cultural capital had become more, rather than less, important in the process of allocating children to secondary schools.     

A good education: girls' extracurricular pursuits and school choice

This paper draws on the case studies of six girls between the ages of 10 and 13 and considers their transition to secondary school and involvement in extracurricular sports. Within it, I explore how the girls' understandings of ‘a good education’ affects both their academic and extracurricular/sporting choices. Despite government educational targets which seem to value ‘performative’ academic results, I argue that ideas about a ‘well‐rounded student’ continue to hold particular resonance for middle‐class parents and students. Conversely, I suggest that models of excellence and achievement within education are increasingly echoed in students' sporting participation and that this has specific consequences for working‐class and middle‐class students. I draw particular attention to the girls' experiences of these systems with a view to their ability to convert physical capital accrued in physical activity into other forms of social or cultural capital.     

Anglo-Western international school teachers as global middle class: portraits of three families

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study on the global middle class (GMC) examines three representative experiences of the tens of thousands of Anglo-Western international schoolteachers (ISTs), who teach in private, K-12, English-immersion international schools for extended periods of time. The notion of GMC provokes consideration of social class making and forms of belonging of professional and managerial service workers who are ‘middling actors’ in the flows of transnational migration. We ground our analysis by examining three IST families as a unique group within the GMC. We find that ISTs, oriented by pre-sojourn middle-class histories, differentially (re)fashion their social class locations in the more elite transnational milieu of the international schools. These families accumulate and exchange economic, cultural and social capital under their transnational routes, connections and returns. Their children’s access to an elite international education as a condition of their international employment represents a unique form of school choice.     

Gifted,talented and high ability: selection for education in a one‐dimensional world

This article attempts to explain why it is that in England, despite twentieth‐century moves towards egalitarianism in education, the selection and segregation of those regarded as being gifted, talented, or of higher ability in better resourced schools and programmes is now increasingly acceptable. Explanations for moves away from attempts to offer a common curriculum in equally well‐resourced comprehensive schools centre round the hegemonic view that in a world of global economic competitiveness, national economies need to nurture high levels of knowledge and skills. Unsurprisingly, selective policies benefit the upper socio‐economic groups with some concessions made to selecting out the able poor. The latest set of selective policies adopted by the English government centre round programmes for the ‘Gifted and Talented’. The article uses work from the Frankfurt school of critical theorists, notably Herbert Marcuse’s notion of ‘One‐Dimensional Man’ to suggest that there is an irrational one‐dimensional view of the world economy which leads to a competitive scramble to acquire élite qualifications, abandoning notions of equality and meritocracy, and deploying ruthless strategies which require economic, cultural and social capital. Parents and students in this one‐dimensional world are subject to a permanent oppressive educational competition. The article concludes that many middle‐class parents may come to feel dispossessed as promises held out for education and employment fail to materialise, and success in a competitive global economy proves to be a one‐dimensional mirage.     

Artwashing Education?

Education increasingly operates in neoliberal terms; privatisation, marketisation and competition have become key drivers for schools in England. This article explores the findings from an ethnography that points to how arts education practices are being used to ‘art‐wash’ schools resulting in parents with the requisite economic, social and cultural capitals ensuring that their children benefit the most from a creative education. Whilst most of the narratives on artwashing have so far focused on arts institutions and global capital, this article questions how some of the specific processes of gentrification may be extended to the current education system in England and ask if schools and arts organisations may increasingly be ‘art‐washing education’.     

Book reviews

Whilst there is now clearly an expectation upon parents to become more involved in schools and to take a greater part in their children's education, there is still little attempt to address the constraints upon achieving such aims. These constraints have been shown to include social class factors, gender relations, ethnicity and power relationships. This paper will take the analysis of some of these constraints further and, in particular, will focus on the views of working‐class parents on their relationships with, and role in relation to, their children's secondary school. The paper will explore the reasons for the orientation by working‐class parents which would seem to differ markedly from that of middle‐class parents. It will be shown that working‐class parents are committed to their children achieving educational success, and that they perceive their own role as supportive in a variety of ways. However, their position in relation to schools is to view the school as separate from their everyday social and cultural world and that the parent‐teacher role comprises a division of labour. It will be argued that teachers tend to adopt the same strategies for promoting parental involvement irrespective of class, parental needs, individual circumstances, and so on. Hence, because they take no account of differences, and because their strategies are constructed essentially from a logocentric position, then they serve to reinforce the parents’ perception of teachers as the professional ‘who knows best’: as the powerful knower which thus reinforces working‐class parents’ fatalistic view of schooling and their role as passive. The paper draws on data from a three‐year research project into the parents’ relationship with their children's secondary school. The data set which formed the basis of the analysis presented here comprises interviews with 58 parents from one of the case‐study schools which will be known as Acre Lane, and 15 of the school's teachers.     

The privatization of education in Argentina

This paper intends to analyse the empirical and historical evidence, gathered by recent research, on the privatization process of the argentine educational system. In the 1960s, two main changes occurred: an increase in the private sector enrolment and an increasing deregulation of private schools along with a hyper-regulation of public schools. Additionally, a significant mutation of the demand profile served by the private and public sector can be observed. Such a mutation is closely related to the socio-economic characteristics of the families sending their children to either sector. The article suggests that the process of privatization of the argentine education meant a switch from a state quasi-monopoly system to a dual public/private system, where the social sectors with higher purchasing power are able to choose to ‘exit’ from the public sector to the private and, by doing so, consolidating an educational environment of their own.     

‘We raised it with the Head’: the educational practices of minority ethnic,middle‐class families

This paper discusses findings from a small‐scale empirical exploration of the views, experiences and educational practices of middle‐class minority ethnic families in the United Kingdom. It draws on semi‐structured interviews conducted with 36 parents, pupils and ‘young professionals’. Analyses consider to what extent generic class resources, as identified by the US work of Lareau, are evident within the educational practices of British middle‐class, minority ethnic families. It is argued that generic class resources and practices were evident to the extent that parents expressed a desire for personalised education, felt comfortable voicing their opinions and concerns to schools, and were willing to climb the ladder of authority to get their voices heard. However, it is also argued that ‘race’ plays a significant and complicating role that calls for a qualification (but not a negation) of Lareau’s theorisation.     

British South Asians and pathways into selective schooling: social class,culture and ethnicity

This article is a theoretical and empirical study of the ways in which different South Asian groups, Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani, achieve entry into the selective education system, taking into consideration the factors of social class, ethnicity and culture. In‐depth interviews with 42 South Asian school pupils from three single‐sex selective schools (one independent and two grammar), 47 South Asian school pupils from three secondary modern schools, and 25 South Asian parents are used to interpret perceptions, attitudes towards, and experiences of selective school entry. It is found that that certain working‐class South Asian parents possess strong middle‐class attitudes towards selective education, irrespective of their ability to facilitate it as a function of their financial, cultural, or social capital. Middle‐class South Asians were not only highly motivated but also possessed the economic, social and cultural capital to ensure successful selective school entry. In general, social class status was the strongest factor in the likelihood of gaining entry into selective schools. This research contributes to the literature on selective education as well as on the intricacies of the British South Asian educational experience.     

Making ‘right’ choices? An ethnographic account of creativity,performativity and personalised learning policy,concepts and practices

This article uses ethnographic research from two Year 8 classes in two middle‐sized secondary schools about a kilometre apart in a Swedish west‐coast town to examine how new policies for personalised learning have developed in practice, in the performative cultures of modern schools in a commodity society. One school stands in a predominantly middle‐class area of privately owned ‘low‐rise’ houses. The other is in an area of ‘high‐rise’ rented accommodation, where the first language of many homes is not Swedish. The differences are important. According to the article, personalised learning mobilises material and social resources in these schools that support new forms of individualistic, selfish and private accumulations of education goods from public provision and a valorisation of self‐interest and private value as the common basis for educational culture. The article describes this cultural production in school and links it to processes of cultural and social reproduction.     

The politics of school choice in two countries with large private‐dependent sectors (Spain and Chile): family strategies,collective action and lobbying

In many countries choice of school is an increasing concern for families and governments. In Spain and Chile, it is also associated with a long‐standing political cleavage on the regulation of large sectors of private‐dependent schools. This article analyses both the micro‐ and the macro‐politics of choice in these two countries, where low‐status 15‐year‐old students record a significant segregation. At the micro level, some evidence is provided that not only middle‐class skilful choosers but also the political representatives of private‐dependent schools manage to pursue their interests drawing on economic, social and cultural capital. At the macro level, evidence also shows that the lobbies defending private‐dependent schools can use and maintain these power resources. However, in some episodes collective action is an effective power resource for those who campaign in favour of a stricter regulation of these schools, but its influence is much difficult to maintain for longer periods.