In Europe, segregation in the field of basic education causes concern as growing differences in learning results, available resources, and student backgrounds between schools are associated with exacerbated inequities and negative impacts on students attending lower tracks and more disadvantaged schools (c.f. OECD, 2012). School status has been found relevant, among other things, to student outcomes (e.g. OECD, 2010; Sirin, 2005), students’ academic self-concepts (Huguet et al., 2009), and future expectations (Montt, 2012). In this paper, school status refers mainly to the socio-economic background of the student population but it is connected also to other factors, such as the share of students with immigrant background, school location, and the reputation of the school. The degree of differentation between school statuses varies between countries depending to a large extent on the organisation of schooling, regulation of educational trajectories (Tikkanen, Bledowski, & Felczac, 2015), and implementation of market-oriented neoliberal education reforms – especially free school choice policy, which has been shown to intensify societal and ethnic segregation (e.g. Reay & Lucey, 2003; Seppänen, Kalalahti, Rinne, & Simola, 2015).

In international comparison, Finland is an interesting case as it differs from most of the other countries that have implemented the free school choice policy in that the policy was introduced into an exclusively publicly funded, comprehensive school system (Seppänen & Rinne, 2015). As a result of the Finnish free school choice policy, which contributes to the polarisation of youth by increasing selection within school levels (Kosunen, 2014; Seppänen et al., 2015),  there is systematic growth in the differences between schools in learning results and socio-economic compositions, especially in urban areas (e.g. Kuusela, 2012). Hence, even though the Finnish education system is widely referred to as highly equal, often as an aftermath of its frequent PISA success, the process of stratification of comprehensive schools has also started in Finland.

The aim of this paper is to analyse if and how the status of child’s lower secondary school is related to parents’ satisfaction with different aspects of school and schooling in urban Finland. Parental satisfaction offers a perspective to the extent to which the segregation of basic education affects the everyday school life and wellbeing of lower secondary school students. Friedman, Bobrowski, and Geraci (2006) have proposed a conceptual model of parental satisfaction with schools, which includes a number of factors, such as school safety, budget, teacher effectiveness, quality of curriculum, facility, communication with parents, and student achievement. In this study, using the model by Friedman et al. as a theoretical backdrop, three dimensions of parental satisfaction, the overall quality of the educational environment, co-operation between school and home, and child’s wellbeing and progress at school, are analysed across affluent, average, and disadvantaged lower secondary schools.

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