Is a chosen school the nearest one? Factors influencing school choice on the example of Czech urban area Liberec

Author(s):

Silvie Kucerova(presenting / submitting)Petr Meyer(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Poster

Session Information

14 SES 13 A, Parent-teacher Relationships and School Choice in Urban Areas

Paper/Poster Session

Time:

2016-08-26

13:30-15:00

Room:

OB-E1.17 (ALE 1)

Chair:

Rocío García Carrión

Contribution

The parental school choice issue and resulting implications for education system has been frequently discussed both in educational theory and practice in last decades.

Traditional spatial organization of education was based on the concept of a school catchment system. Particular school was ascribed a specific catchment area and the students who lived there were enrolled in the school (Bajerski 2015). Therefore, pupils used to attend the nearest school to their home. Nevertheless, uneven regional and population development contributed to destabilization of some regional educational systems and to repeated modifications of borders of catchment areas (Ribchester, Edwards 1999). Coming of neoliberalism in educational policy at the end of the 1980s in the majority of economically developed countries (Bradford 1991), provided the decentralization of school systems and delegated decision-making competencies to lower instances. It given schools opportunity to profile themselves and it enables free school choice (see e.g. Holloway, Pimlott-Wilson 2012; Kvalsund 2009; Basu 2007). Thereby, in public schools a quasi-market system with schools’ competition for pupils and pupils’ competition for schools was established (Jennings 2010). Naturally, free school competition is rather a phenomenon of urban space, where sufficient educational market occurs, which enables choice between two and more schools (Butler, Hamnett 2007; Dronkers, Felouzis, van Zanten 2010).

In response to mentioned development, the concept school choice arose in human sciences during the 1980s. It left its meaning of neutral act and modified into the concept of social process which is regarded from various perspectives (Straková, Simonová 2015). From the societal perspective, the process causes differentiation and stratification of society. This notion applies especially Bourdieu’s (1983) Theory of social and cultural reproduction to the educational settings. The mechanism of “right” school choice helps to transmit the profitable social status from parents to descendants. Second fundamental theoretical frame, regarding from economic perspective, is the Rational action theory (e.g. Breen, Goldthorpe 1997). Parents as rational actors choose from different available educational alternatives, comparing expenditures and revenues. According to the latest societal-cultural viewpoint the school choice is regarded as declaration of identity and as a symbolic act (Cucchiara, Horvat 2014; Walker, Clark 2010). Educational sciences deals with the concept either from the individual perspective, as the modification of an individual’s future life according to school choice (Jennings 2010), or from wider societal and pedagogical perspective, as a diferentiation of educational settings on entry (Straková, Simonová 2015).

Geographical perspective in connection to the concept of parental school choice, contrary to previous concept of a school catchment system, is reflected rather insufficiently (as exceptions see e.g. Ball, Vincent 2007; Bajerski 2015). Therefore, submitted poster focuses on this perspective. It may be supposed that spatial aspects of school choice are fundamental as well. For example time-spatial organization of a family members during a day could significantly mirror in school choice. What remains in motives of individuals’ behaviour from the original idea that compulsory education is organized in such way to be easy accessible for pupils in each locality? How many pupils originated from catchment area are enrolled in their nearest school? Do the individual’s motives of school choice differ according to socio-economic characteristics of particular areas in urban space?

Method

The poster is a partial output of wider research project. Therefore, methodologically is reduced predominantly on quantitative analysis of parental choice. The research design combines the method of spatial modelling in geographical information systems (GIS) with the method of questionnaire inquiry in selected schools. As a study area the city Liberec (approx. 100,000 residents) in Central European country Czechia was selected. The aim of the first phase of presented study is to create a spatial model of catchment areas of primary schools in the study area according to the criteria of the nearest school choice. In the second phase the model is compared with real pupils’ commuting and with reasons for school choice, which were declared by pupils’ parents in the questionnaire inquiry. In the first step the database of all primary schools in Liberec was created. On the basis of detail address each school was located into the map. Subsequently, with utilization of GIS software ArcGIS, the ideal catchment areas were simulated on the principle that from each locality in study area pupils commute to the nearest school from their home. The accessibility was measured by metric distance by road system with utilization of so-called network analysis. It resulted into the regionalization of Liberec to the same number of catchment areas as the number of schools is. Simultaneously, Liberec was divided into residential zones according to aerial photographs, population statistics and field research. Four zones were distinguished: build-up area of historical town, rental houses, housing estates and family houses of garden city. In each zone three primary schools were selected (twelve in total) and the questionnaire inquiry was conducted with parents of pupils from 1st and 2nd grade. The questionnaire investigates the pupils’ place of residence and factors influencing school choice. Subsidiary questions deals with time accessibility and means of transport to school. The questionnaire was distributed to particular classes and through pupils to their parents and back. Total number of questionnaire was 1,300 with 50 % of their rate of return. On the basis of answered place of residence, each questionnaire was localized into the map with utilization of GIS. The pupils’ places of residence from studied schools were compared with the above-mentioned model catchment areas to the nearest school to investigate the share of pupils really commuting to the nearest school. The shares, as well as the reasons of school choice were compared between residential zones.

Expected Outcomes

While many factors are crucial for parents in the process of school choice (teaching and curriculum, school’s specialization, experience with school, perception of quality), the factor of location was identified as the most frequent (36 % of respondents’ answers). It covers various types of geographical relationships to the others places, which could involve place of residence, parents’ work, transport location etc. Moreover, three quarters of respondents explicitly declared that they had considered the distance of school from their place of residence during the process of school choice. Commutation to the nearest school from the place of residence is statistically varying according to the distance of school from the city center. It is higher in the schools located in less compact build-up area and at fringe of the city. On the other hand, in the central part of urban space the density of schools is higher and their mutual distance shorter. Consequently parents have more alternatives for school choice. In several aspect the results of the study are quite dissimilar to research on school choice differentiation according to socio-economical status of city dwellers (see Ball, Bow, Gewirtz 1995). It might be expected that e.g. the residents of garden city with higher status would prefer to send their children to more distant but prestigious schools. It is necessary to reflect that the results may be influenced by spatially and culturally limited study of one city in one state. Nevertheless, the findings should serve as basis for further comparison with the others (especially foreign) urban spaces. The crucial would be comparison of factors of parental choice between urban and rural space and ongoing study of differentiation in choice according to socio-economical status of particular areas to find risk socially excluded school on the one hand or exclusive educational spaces on the other hand.

References

BAJERSKI, A. (2015): Erosion of the school catchment system as local policy: The case of Poznań, Poland. KEDI Journal of Education Policy, 12(1), pp. 41–60. BASU, R. (2007): Negotiating acts of citizenship in an era of neoliberal reform: The game of school closures. International Journal of Urban a Regional Research, 31(1), pp. 109–127. BALL, S. J., BOWE, R., GEWIRTZ, S. (1995): Circuits of schooling: A sociological exploration of parental choice of school in social class contexts. Sociological Review, 43(1), pp. 52–78. BALL, S. J., VINCENT, C. (2007). Education, class fractions and the local rules of spatial relations. Urban Studies, 44(7), pp. 1175–1189. BRADFORD, M. (1991): School-performance indicators, the local residential environment, and parental choice. Environment and Planning A, 23, pp. 319–332. BREEEN, R., GOLDTHORPE, J. H. (1997): Explaining educatonal diffrentials: Towards a Formal rational action theory. Rationality and Society, 9(3), pp. 275–305. BOURDIEU, P. (1983). The Forms of Capital. In: Richardson, J. E. (ed.): Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood, New York. BUTLER, T., HAMNETT, CH. (2007). The Geography of Education: Introduction. Urban Studies. 44(7), pp. 1161–1174. CUCCHIARA, M. B., HORVAT, E. M. (2014): Choosing selves: The salience of parental identity in the school choice proces. Journal of Education Policy, 29(4), pp. 486–509. DRONKERS, J., FELOUZIS, G., VAN ZANTEN, A. (2010). Education markets and school choice. Educational Research and Evaluation, 16(2), pp. 99–105. HOLLOWAY, S. L., PIMLOTT-WILSON, H. (2012): Neoliberalism, policy localisation and idealised subjects: A case study on educational restructuring in England. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(4), pp. 639–654. JENNINGS, J. L. (2010): School choice or schools´choice? Managing in an era of accountability. Sociology of Education, 83(3), pp. 227–247. KVALSUND, R. (2009): Centralized decentralization or decentralized centralization? A review of newer Norwegian research on schools and their communities. International Journal of Educational Research, 48, pp. 89–99. RIBCHESTER, CH., EDWARDS, B. (1999): The centre and the local: Policy and practice in rural education provision. Journal of Rural Studies, 15(1), pp. 49–63. STRAKOVÁ, J., SIMONOVÁ, J. (2015): Primary school choice in the Czech Republic and related factors. Sociological Review, 51(4), pp. 587–606. (in Czech) WALKER, M., CLARK, G. (2010): Parental choice and the rural primary school: Lifestyle, locality and loyalty. Journal of Rural Studies, 26(3), pp. 241–249.

Author Information

Silvie Kucerova (presenting / submitting)

Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem, Faculty of Science

Department of Geography

Usti nad Labem

Petr Meyer (presenting)

Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Science, Czechia

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