How Do Parents Decide? Focusing School Choices in Times of Educational Change

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Success Stories in Transitions

Abstract

School choice – an important issue in an education system that is said to be selective. Selective in this context means students in education systems like those in Germany or Austria have to decide after four years of comprehensive primary school, whether to follow an academic or a vocational track. In 2009/10 Austria’s Government decided to implement a kind of comprehensive school in secondary one. One of the aims of the New Middle School is to relieve pressure on academic secondary schools. The question remains: Can the New Middle School be a “school for all” and why would students want to attend a New Middle School?
Boudon (1974), as representative of the Rational Choice Theory, focuses on selection decisions in the education system and analyzed origin-specific differences in the education decision. According to his theory of education, inequalities arise partly because of individual educational decisions that are made by parents or students in an institutional context. Children from more privileged layers are thus sent to more "challenging" schools, while children from disadvantaged backgrounds have to make great efforts in order to be recommended for academic secondary school.
The paper deals with transitions and school choice – the question to be investigated is: What are the reasons for wanting to attend either the academic secondary school or the New Middle School?


Related hypotheses:
There are differences…
…concerning the importance of school choice motives depending on the cohort of data collection.
…in school choice motives depending on the school type students attend after primary school.
…in motives for school choice depending on the school type students attend after primary school and the cohort of data collection.
Parents of students at the transition from primary school to secondary school are asked to provide information about school choice motives (cohort 1, 2, 3: N = 700, N = 694, N = 881). To investigate the research questions, the first two testing points of each cohort were used for analysis.
It can be concluded that there are no differences in school choice motives depending on the cohort we looked at. Good reachability, the reputation of the school, good impressions at the open day are important motives for choosing a school.
A logistic regression analysis revealed a positive effect of the academic self-concept in German on the transition to academic secondary school. It seems that the aspirations of “significant others” has an impact as well.
What this paper shows is that traditions cannot be changed within a few years. Although Austria’s Government wanted to implement a comprehensive school type in secondary one, it failed because of the strong pressure of parents to retain a school type for the “privileged” – but these are issues not only related to selective school systems, but to school systems with comprehensive schools as well – as long as there is a free school choice, educationally active parents will do what they can afford so as to send their children to the “better” comprehensive schools – or go private.

Author

• Tamara Katschnig, University of Vienna