Markets in education: the impact of school choice policies in one market context in New Zealand

The publication of Trading in Futures and When Schools Compete helped give empirical support to the view that choice policies increased differences between schools. However, dispute about this research and changes in policy mean that our understanding of the impact of school choice policies in New Zealand remains partial. This paper aims to address continued uncertainty about the impact of school choice policies in New Zealand. It presents the results of a study that drew upon qualitative data gathered in interviews with school principals and on administrative data on the enrolment patterns in the same competition space explored by the Trading in Futures research. The data show that periods of greatest instability in enrolments occurred around the time of change in regulations.