IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bri/cmpowp/09-224.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Parental choice of primary school in England: what ‘type’ of school do parents choose?

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Burgess
  • Ellen Greaves
  • Anna Vignoles
  • Deborah Wilson

Abstract

We investigate the central premise of the theory of markets in education, namely that parents value academic standards. We ask what parents really want from schools and whether different types of parents have similar preferences. We examine parents’ stated preferences and revealed preferences for schools (their actual choice of school as opposed to what they say they value in a school). More educated and higher socio-economic status (SES) parents are more likely to cite academic standards, whilst less educated and lower SES parents are more likely to cite proximity. More advantaged parents choose better performing schools, particularly in areas with many schools and therefore a lot of potential school choice. More advantaged parents also choose schools with much lower proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, relative to other schools available to them. Hence whilst parents do not admit to choosing schools on the basis of their social composition, this happens in practice. Most parents get their first choice of school (94%) and this holds both for more and less advantaged parents, though this is partially because poorer parents make more ‘realistic’, i.e. less ambitious, choices. If, in areas where there is a lot of potential competition between schools, more advantaged families have a higher chance of achieving their more ambitious choices that do poorer parents, this could tend to exacerbate social segregation in our schools.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Burgess & Ellen Greaves & Anna Vignoles & Deborah Wilson, 2009. "Parental choice of primary school in England: what ‘type’ of school do parents choose?," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 09/224, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
  • Handle: RePEc:bri:cmpowp:09/224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2009/wp224.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gregory R. Weiher & Kent L. Tedin, 2002. "Does choice lead to racially distinctive schools? Charter schools and household preferences," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 79-92.
    2. Mark Schneider & Gregory Elacqua & Jack Buckley, 2006. "School choice in Chile: Is it class or the classroom?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 577-601.
    3. Hastings, Justine S. & Kane, Thomas J. & Staiger, Douglas O., 2005. "Parental Preferences and School Competition: Evidence from a Public School Choice Program," Working Papers 10, Yale University, Department of Economics.
    4. Simon Burgess & Ellen Greaves & Anna Vignoles & Deborah Wilson, 2015. "What Parents Want: School Preferences and School Choice," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(587), pages 1262-1289, September.
    5. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2007. "What Do Parents Value in Education? An Empirical Investigation of Parents' Revealed Preferences for Teachers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(4), pages 1603-1637.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Piergiacomo Sibiano & Giuseppe Catalano, 2010. "Investigating school autonomy: a comparison between England and Italy," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 5, in: María Jesús Mancebón-Torrubia & Domingo P. Ximénez-de-Embún & José María Gómez-Sancho & Gregorio Gim (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 5, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 8, pages 155-184, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    2. Calsamiglia, Caterina & Güell, Maia, 2014. "The Illusion of School Choice: Empirical Evidence from Barcelona," IZA Discussion Papers 8202, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Rebecca Allen & Simon Burgess & Tomas Key, 2010. "Choosing secondary school by moving house: school quality and the formation of neighbourhoods," DoQSS Working Papers 10-21, Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London.
    4. Caterina Calsamiglia & Chao Fu & Maia Güell, 2014. "Structural Estimation of a Model of School Choices: the Boston Mechanism vs. Its Alternatives," Working Papers 2014-21, FEDEA.
    5. Allen, Rebecca & Burgess, Simon, 2013. "Evaluating the provision of school performance information for school choice," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 175-190.
    6. Stephen Gibbons & Sandra McNally & Martina Viarengo, 2018. "Does Additional Spending Help Urban Schools? An Evaluation Using Boundary Discontinuities," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(5), pages 1618-1668.
    7. Sylvia Y. He & Genevieve Giuliano, 2018. "School choice: understanding the trade-off between travel distance and school quality," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(5), pages 1475-1498, September.
    8. Elisa Facchetti & Lorenzo Neri & Marco Ovidi, 2021. "Should you Meet The Parents? The impact of information on non-test score attributes on school choice," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def113, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    9. Stephen Machin & Sandra McNally, 2012. "The Evaluation of English Education Policies," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 219(1), pages 15-25, January.
    10. Machin, Stephen & Wyness, Gill & McNally, Sandra, 2013. "Education in a devolved Scotland: a quantitative analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 57971, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Darmody, Merike & Smyth, Emer & McCoy, Selina, 2012. "School Sector Variation among Primary Schools in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT221, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lai, Fang & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & de Janvry, Alain, 2009. "The adverse effects of parents' school selection errors on academic achievement: Evidence from the Beijing open enrollment program," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 485-496, August.
    2. Steven Glazerman & Dallas Dotter, "undated". "Market Signals: Evidence on the Determinants and Consequences of School Choice from a Citywide Lottery," Mathematica Policy Research Reports fb9c3ca046294636aa526d7c1, Mathematica Policy Research.
    3. Wada, Roy & Herbert, Zahirovic-Herbert, 2009. "Distribution of Demand for School Quality: Evidence from Quantile Regression," MPRA Paper 18078, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Francisco Gallego & Andrés Hernando, 2009. "School Choice in Chile: Looking at the Demand Side," Documentos de Trabajo 356, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    5. Trajkovski, Samantha & Zabel, Jeffrey & Schwartz, Amy Ellen, 2021. "Do school buses make school choice work?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    6. Diether W Beuermann & C Kirabo Jackson & Laia Navarro-Sola & Francisco Pardo, 2023. "What is a Good School, and Can Parents Tell? Evidence on the Multidimensionality of School Output," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 65-101.
    7. Ralph Hippe & Luisa De Sousa Lobo Borges de Araujo & Patricia Dinis Mota da Costa, 2016. "Equity in Education in Europe," JRC Research Reports JRC104595, Joint Research Centre (Seville site).
    8. Hinnerich, Björn Tyrefors & Vlachos, Jonas, 2017. "The impact of upper-secondary voucher school attendance on student achievement. Swedish evidence using external and internal evaluations," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-14.
    9. Masi, Barbara, 2018. "A ticket to ride: The unintended consequences of school transport subsidies," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 100-115.
    10. Caterina Calsamiglia & Francisco Martínez-Mora & Antonio Miralles, 2021. "School Choice Design, Risk Aversion and Cardinal Segregation," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(635), pages 1081-1104.
    11. Jung-Sook Kim & Yeo-Jung Hwang, 2014. "The Effects of School Choice on Parental School Participation and School Satisfaction in Korea," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(1), pages 363-385, January.
    12. Nevbahar Ertas, 2013. "Charter Schools and Student Compositions of Traditional Public Schools," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(2), pages 21582440134, June.
    13. Gibbons, Stephen & Machin, Stephen & Silva, Olmo, 2013. "Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 15-28.
    14. Reback, Randall, 2008. "Demand (and supply) in an inter-district public school choice program," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 402-416, August.
    15. Dustan, Andrew & Ngo, Diana K.L., 2018. "Commuting to educational opportunity? School choice effects of mass transit expansion in Mexico City," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 116-133.
    16. Gibbons, Stephen & Silva, Olmo, 2011. "School quality, child wellbeing and parents' satisfaction," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 312-331, April.
    17. Severin Borenstein, 2012. "The Redistributional Impact of Nonlinear Electricity Pricing," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 56-90, August.
    18. Ainhoa Vega-Bayo & Petr Mariel, 2018. "School choice across Different Regions of Spain," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 227(4), pages 11-36, December.
    19. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    20. Ian Walker & Matthew Weldon, 2020. "School choice, admission, and equity of access," Working Papers 298202686, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    school preferences; school choice; parental choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bri:cmpowp:09/224. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmbriuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.