School Choice In German Primary Schools - Differences Between Choosers And Non-choosers
Author(s):
Sabine Gruehn (submitting) Judith Schwarz (presenting)
Corinna Habeck (presenting) Tanja Mayer Thomas Koinzer
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

14 SES 07 A, Home-school-community Links: relationships, choice & participation

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-24
17:15-18:45
Room:
OB-E1.17 (ALE 1)
Chair:
Raquel-Amaya Martínez-González

Contribution

A new phenomenon being established over the last 20 years as a tool for school administrative control and (organisational and educational) development has changed Germany’s school system: the active choice of a school by parents and students (Riedel 2011; Leschinsky 1994). Thereby, parents’ reasons of choosing a certain school are diverse: Often they are related to aspects of school quality like the school profile, school atmosphere or the performance level. Besides, more pragmatic reasons can be crucial such as accessibility or supplies of child care services (Suter 2013; Bosetti 2004).

An active choice can only be made if school alternatives differ from each other in important characteristics. PISA results have been shown that schools differ not only between the different school types but also within educational programs in terms of their social, ethical and performance composition (Baumert, Trautwein, Artelt 2003). In search of information and the evaluation of different school alternatives as well as in the actual decision making process, school choice processes are influenced by various socio-cultural and socio-economic characteristics of the family and can be considered as a rational choice (Hirsch 1994). Parents choose the respective school for their child that has (subjectively) the best fit between the characteristics of the school and their wishes and preferences (Goldthorpe 1996; Cortina, Trommer 2003). The parents’ aim is to achieve the best possible education for their child which is related to increased job opportunities and higher income (Suter 2013). Since not all parents choose their child’s school actively, choice is closely linked to social segregation tendencies (Kristen 2005).

Different research approaches have identified qualitatively different forms of school choice decisions (Ball/Gerwitz 1997). One difference represents the distinction between choosers and non-choosers: They differ in the search for information and in the decision-making process due to their socio-economic status. Choosers are primarily associated with the middle class; their decision can be understood as rational choice. Non-choosers are more likely to be part of the working class. They base their decision on little search effort and confine it to one or two schools located nearby home (Gerwitz/Ball/Bowe 1995).

Education research in Germany has hardly paid any attention to the process and associated segregation effects of school choice at the primary level. The reason might be the existence of school districts, assigning a particular school to all school-age children living in a defined area. However, school choice is not as limited as it seems: Parents have the opportunity to submit an application on sending their child to a different school by presenting a compelling argument like the request for a particular school programme or childcare options due to parental occupation. The application may be considered if there are vacancies (Riedel et al 2010).

Within current research on school choice there are different shortcomings that we will focus at: Firstly, research mainly analyses decision making processes at the level of secondary schooling (Clausen 2006; Jurczok, Lauterbach 2014) without paying much attention to primary education, although recent studies refer to the relevance of early education and its high outcomes (Cunha et al 2006; Spieß 2013). Secondly, instead of surveying solely parents that choose a particular school actively we will compare them to parents who do not.

We intent to compare the chooser and non-chooser with regard to socioeconomic status, their approach of school choice and motives concerning aspects of school quality, pragmatic aspects and other factors.

Thus, the following research questions arise:

1) Which parents choose a particular school and which do not?

2) How do parents choose a particular school, i.e. what information do they use?

3) Why do parents choose a particular school?

Method

To examine the research questions mentioned above, the project “School choice and socio-cultural matching” promoted by the German Research Association (DFG) conducted a survey from May to September 2015 of around 1,000 first-former of public and private primary schools in Berlin, Germany. Berlin, as an urban area with a large and differentiated range of primary schools (476), supports school choice opportunities and is therefore suitable for our research questions. The survey was carried out anonymously by standardised questionnaires with various sequences referring to well tested scales and established theoretical constructs of school choice and school quality research (Clausen 2006; Jurczok, Lauterbach 2014). In order to reach parents with migration background, the questionnaire was translated into English and Turkish. Moreover, two questions were applied to identify the choosers and the non-choosers: 1) Is your child attending the school which was assigned to you by the Office of Education? and 2) Did you ever consider sending your child to another school than the one which was assigned to you by the Office of Education? To reconstruct the school choice process parents were asked whether they gathered information about one or more schools in advance of the school enrollment or not. Furthermore, they were asked to select from 10 different items sources of information they applied for their school choice. These items were tested in a pre-test. The question on school choice motives is based on established scales of research: Besides an open-ended question, well-tested instruments using close-ended questions that differentiate between aspects of school quality (e.g. school profile, school atmosphere, school’s reputation, performance level, equipment, or social environment) and pragmatic aspects (e.g. accessibility, supply of child care services, child's request or sibling attends / attended the school) are applied as well. The combination of an open-ended and a close-ended question gives us the opportunity to bring the different motives in a sequence that reflects the relevance respondents give them. Furthermore conventional socio-demographic data (e.g. sex, marital status, education, occupation, household income) was asked. The scales are tested by factorial and reliability analyses. Group comparisons of choosers and non-choosers are made on the basis of variance analysis and logistic regression analysis.

Expected Outcomes

First analysis of the data demonstrates that 71% of the sample are parents who had actively chosen a school for their child, only 29% of the parents are non-choosers and sent their child to the assigned school without considering another school. Due to a likely sampling bias it could not be presumed that school choice in an area with school districts is more the rule than the exception. Concerning educational background there are no significant differences between the groups. Overall, the proportion of educationally advantaged families is overrepresented. With regard to migration background, the data points out unexpected tendencies: Within the group of parents that choose a particular school, those with migration background are slightly overrepresented. This is a result that needs to be analysed. The reconstruction of the school choice process shows that non-choosers are less likely to inform themselves about schools. But only 12,1% of them have not informed themselves at all, the other non-choosers at least about the child's school. With two expectations choosers and non-choosers use the sources of information similar: Non-choosers make less use of the possibility of open days and information leaflets. The question about school choice motives gives the impression that pragmatic aspects such as accessibility are more relevant to non-choosers, whereas choosers somewhat emphasize school quality motives. Yet, this result has to be aligned with the open-ended question. The results show that non-choosers tend to be more pragmatically and send their child to the assigned school. They are not indifferent in school choice, but they inform themselves less. The possibility of an open day seems to be more interesting for those parents who have not decided yet. For non-choosers going to an open day is a bigger obstacle or rather they are not interested in because the decision has already been made.

References

Ball, S.J./Gerwitz, S. (1997). Is research possible? A rejoinder to Tooley's 'On school choice and social class'. In: British Journal of Sociology of Education 18(4). 575-586. Baumert, J./Trautwein, U./Artelt, C. (2003). Schulumwelten - institutionelle Bedingungen des Lehren uns Lernens. In: Deutsches PISA-Konsortium (Eds.) (2003). PISA 2000 - Ein differenzierter Blick auf die Länder der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Opladen: Leske & Budrich. 259-330. Bosetti, L. (2004). Determinants of School Choice: Understanding How Parents Choose Elementary Schools in Alberta. Journal of Education Policy, 19(4), 387-405. Cunha, F./Heckman, J.J./Lochner, L./Masterov, D.V. (2006). Interpreting the Evidence on Life Cycle Skill Formation. In: Hanushek, E.A., Welch, F. (Eds.) (2006). Handbook of the Economics of Education (1). Amsterdam: Elsevier. 697-812. Clausen, M. (2006). Warum wählen Sie genau diese Schule? Eine inhaltsanalytische Untersuchung elterlicher Begründungen der Wahl der Einzelschule innerhalb eines Bildungsgangs. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 52(1), 69-90. Gewirtz, S./Ball, S./Bowe, R. (1995): Markets, choice and equity in education. Buckingham: Open University Press. Goldthorpe, J. (1996). Class analysis and the reorientation of class theory: the case of persisting differentials in educational attainment. In: British Journal of Sociology, 47(3), 481–505. Hirsch, D. (1994). School: A Matter of Choice. OECD Publishing. Jurczok, A./Lauterbach, W. (2014). Schulwahl von Eltern: Zur Geografie von Bildungschancen in benachteiligten städtischen Bildungsräumen. In: Berger, P. A., Keller, C., Klärner, A., Neef, R. (Eds.) (2014). Urbane Ungleichheiten. Neue Entwicklungen zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie. Wiesbaden: Springer. 135-157. Kristen, C. (2005). School Choice and Ethnic School Segregation. Primary School Selection in Germany. In: Internationale Hochschulschriften 437. Münster: Waxmann. Leschinsky, A. (1994). Freie Schulwahl und staatliche Steuerung. Neue Regelungen des Übergangs an weiterführende Schulen. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 40(6), 963-981. Riedel, A. (2011). Schulwahl in der Primarstufe: Eine empirische Analyse der regionalen sozioökonomischen Bedingungen am Beispiel der NRW-Städte Wuppertal und Solingen. Lohmar: Josef Eul. Riedel, A./Schneider, K./Schuchart, C./Weishaupt, H. (2010). School Choice in German Primary Schools: How Binding are School Districts? In: Journal for Educational Research Online, 2(1), 94-120. Spieß, K. C. (2013): Investments in Education: The Early Years Offer Great Potential. In: DIW Economic Bulletin, 3(10), 3-10. Suter, P. (2013). Determinanten der Schulwahl: Elterliche Motive für oder gegen Privatschulen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Author Information

Sabine Gruehn (submitting)
University of Münster, Germany
Judith Schwarz (presenting)
University of Münster, Germany
Corinna Habeck (presenting)
University of Münster, Germany
Tanja Mayer
Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
Thomas Koinzer
Humboldt University Berlin, Germany

Update Modus of this Database

The current conference programme can be browsed in the conference management system (conftool) and, closer to the conference, in the conference app.
This database will be updated with the conference data after ECER. 

Search the ECER Programme

  • Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
  • Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
  • Search for authors and in the respective field.
  • For planning your conference attendance, please use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference and the conference agenda provided in conftool.
  • If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.