What do families take into account when choosing their children’s school? Factors in choosing and ruling out schools in the city of Barcelona

Résumé

This article explores the motivations that lead families to choose a P3 school in the city of
Barcelona. It has been elaborated from the empirical information produced by a study carried out
by the authors between 2008 and 2009. According to the quantitative data presented here,
educational-specific motivations (school educational project) and pragmatic-specific criteria
(home-school proximity and siblings already at the school) are salient amongst positive school
choice factors. In contrast, beyond these same factors, other reasons such us school composition
and the quality of teachers become significant amongst negative school choices (discarded
decisions). A typological operation permits to identify four family groups using distinct logics of
school choice. Such findings are interpreted also on the basis of the interviews carried out. In
particular, “selective families” (group 1) and “instrumental families” (group 2), with varying
degrees of intensity, orient their choices towards maximizing their children opportunities of
academic success. Among “expressive families” (group 3), the concern is more on the value
orientation side of schools rather than on their instrumental dimension. “Delegative families”
(group 4), in general, are less demanding, and tend to prioritize only the criteria of school-home
proximity. Finally, significant alignments between social inequalities and choice groups are
observed; more specifically, the average level of education is markedly higher among “selective
families” than among “delegative families”. In consequence, we conclude that the liberalization of
school choice that comes along with education quasi-markets, far from opening the real margin of
choice to all families, tends to favor the objectives, capacities and resources of certain groups of
families.