Eddie Denessen, Geert Driessen & Peter Sleegers (2005) JEP Segregation by choice? A study of group-specific reasons for school choice

Journal of Education PolicyVol. 20, No. 3, May 2005, pp. 347–368

ISSN 0268–0939 (print)/ISSN 1464–5106 (online)/05/030347–22© 2005 Taylor & Francis Group LtdDOI: 10.1080/02680930500108981

Segregation by choice? A study of group-specific reasons for school choiceEddie Denessena*, Geert Driessenaa and Peter SleegersbaRadboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands; bUniversity of Amsterdam, The

NetherlandsTaylor and Francis LtdTEDP110881.sgm10.1080/02680930500108981Journal of Education Policy0268-0939 (print)/1464-5106 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis Ltd2030000002005EddieDenessenDepartment of Educational SciencesRadboud University NijmegenPO Box 9104Nijmegen6500 HEThe [email protected]

In this paper, patterns of group-specific reasons for school choice and their implications for segre-gation within the Dutch educational system are examined. The data from more than 10,000parents are considered in analyses of variance. Parental reasons for school choice are found torelate to religion, social milieu and ethnicity, on the one hand, and the school’s denomination,social milieu and ethnic composition, on the other hand. The results show general quality ofeducation to be a leading reason for school choice while group-specific reasons for school choicealso exist with Muslim migrant parents, in particular, showing a strong preference for an Islamiceducation for their children. The results thus suggest a risk of self-segregation among Muslimmigrant parents.

Introduction

In the past decades, freedom of school choice has been placed on the political agendain a number of western countries (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation,1994; Glenn & De Groof 2002). Two widespread influences have contributed to this.One is a neoliberal market-oriented view of educational provision. The other is thedesire on the part of a growing number of parents to make their own decisions withregard to school choice. While freedom of school choice is said to improve the qualityof education as well as the level of parental involvement in the school a child attends,many studies show freedom of school choice to also lead to segregation along group-specific patterns of choice (see Karsten, 1994; Bagley, 1996; Goldhaber, 2000). Inthe present study, parental reasons for school choice and the impact of such on educa-tional segregation will therefore be examined in greater detail.

*Corresponding author. Department of Educational Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, POBox 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected]

348 E. Denessen et al.

Neoliberal reforms and increased freedom of school choice

From a market perspective, freedom of school choice is clearly preferred overrestricted school choice. Freedom of school choice enhances competition amongschools. That is, increased pupil enrolment is needed to survive in a free educationalmarket, and increased educational quality is thus needed to meet the motivation ofparents to choose the best school for their child (Bagley, 1996; Whitty & Edwards,1998; Gorard, 1999; Goldhaber, 2000). It is assumed that the enrolments of poorlyperforming schools will drop in favour of better performing schools because parentsare willing to transfer their children to better performing schools. In addition, compe-tition for pupils is assumed to force schools to improve the quality of their educationin order to maintain their enrolments and attract new pupils (McArthur et al., 1995).While little empirical evidence shows freedom of school choice to actually contributeto better pupil achievement (Holmes et al., 2003), many countries have neverthelessstarted to embrace a policy of increased freedom of school choice.

For the involvement of parents in the educational market, greater freedom ofschool choice is also assumed to be of critical importance. In the US, the growingnumber of vouchers and charter schools can be seen to be creating a system of schoolsto accommodate parental preferences (Wells et al., 1999; Gill et al., 2001). In addi-tion, increased educational diversity has been justified ‘with enthusiastic reference tothe good examples set by the Netherlands and Denmark, as a proper response to theaspirations of minority groups to contain their children’s schooling within their owncultural or religious frame of reference’ (Whitty & Edwards, 1998, p. 213).

Possible negative effects of freedom of choice

From a sociological perspective, the increased freedom of school choice is beingfollowed rather critically. Increased freedom of school choice can be associated withincreased educational differentiation, which can—in turn—have very negative conse-quences for underprivileged groups in particular (Bagley, 1996; Ball et al., 1996;Woods, 1996; Gillborn, 1997; Tomlinson, 1997; Goldhaber & Eide, 2002). In theUS, for example, numerous charter schools are being founded by parents with suffi-cient financial and cultural resources (Wells et al., 1999). But in accordance with thework of Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988), such a system of educational freedomcan clearly and actively contribute to educational inequality: ‘Where most recentanalyses of class differentiation in education have stressed the work of selection andallocation done by schools and teachers, here selection and differentiation areproduced, in part at least, by the actions of families’ (Ball et al., 1996, p. 110). In amarket-based system of school choice, educational inequality can increase whenparents from certain backgrounds are found to make group-specific choices. Greatereconomic, racial and ethnic stratification within the educational system and therebygreater social segregation is presumed to occur (Ball et al., 1996; Goldhaber, 2000).And such expressions as ‘white flight’ (i.e., the choice of white parents for schoolswith a predominantly white population) clearly refer to this mechanism (Bagley,

Segregation by choice? 349

1996). In some countries, moreover, recognition of this segregation risk hasprompted very careful formulation of policy regarding unlimited freedom of schoolchoice (see Rinne et al., 2002).

The extent to which such negative effects actually occur has yet to be clearly empir-ically studied. According to Gillborn (1997) and Tomlinson (1997), the policy devel-opments in such countries as the UK and the Netherlands can be seen to lead to themarketization of schooling, decentralization and deregulation of schooling, increasedschool autonomy, the publication of school performances and increased competitionamong schools to the detriment of ethnic minorities in inner-city schools and onlyincreased social and racial segregation as a result. In contrast, Goldhaber and Eide(2002) argue that both the positive and negative consequences of freedom of schoolchoice on pupil performance have yet to be empirically confirmed or disconfirmedand conclude that, in the absence of any clear effects, increased freedom of schoolchoice is not the answer to the educational problems confronting major cities. WhenGorard et al. (2002) conducted research on the assumption that the school rolls ofunpopular schools will decrease and the number of disadvantaged pupils attendingunpopular schools will increase in a free market situation using all of the secondaryschools in the UK from 1989 to 1999, they did not find any proof for their assump-tion and concluded that there is no need to fear a spiral of school decline as a resultof increased freedom of school choice.

More recently, Gorard et al. (2003) have studied segregation effects of increasedfreedom of choice in the UK since the Education Reform Act 1988. Local analysesof segregation between 1989 and 2000 at an authority level showed that segregationbetween secondary schools did not increase as a result of marketization. Gorard et al.also pointed at differences in outcomes of small scale research and large scale researchsuggesting that results of small-scale research, in which segregation effects have beenreported, may be biased by the socio-economic and demographic changes in societyrather than changes in school admissions. Gorard et al. argue that local studies ofsegregation effects might yield different results as they show LEA-specific differencesin segregation effects since 1988.

In this study, we will look at parents’ reasons for school choice in the Netherlands,where the system of choice differs from the British and US systems.

Obligatory school choice in the Netherlands: a specific context of choice

The school choice situation in the Netherlands differs from many other countries. Inthe Netherlands, there is a total freedom of school choice. Actually, choice is obliga-tory. Children are not assigned to a local school, all parents have to make a choice.No catchment areas exist and there is a wide variety of schools. Public and denomi-national schools receive equivalent central funding. In the Netherlands, the numberof denominational schools is quite large (approximately 70% of the total number ofprimary schools, mostly of Catholic and Protestant signature). Despite increasinglevels of secularization in the Netherlands, these numbers have stayed unchanged overthe past decades. The large numbers of denominational schools in an increasingly


secularizing society implies that parents choose denominational schools for non-religious reasons (Dijkstra et al., 1997). Moreover, for reasons of convenience, thequality of education or reputation, non-religious parents may even choose a religiousschool for their child. In the 1980s Muslim parents have claimed the right of foundinggovernmentally funded religious schools. Since then, more than 40 Islamic schoolshave been founded.

The specific character of the Dutch educational system makes it rather difficult toinfer findings of research in other countries to the Netherlands. For example, designsof British research on differences between choosers and non-choosers (see Willms &Echols, 1992) are not apt for research on reasons for school choice in the Netherlands,due to the obligatory nature of school choice in the Netherlands.

Research objective

The effects of freedom of school choice on the quality of education and possible segre-gation within the educational system are as yet unclear. In the present study, parentalreasons for school choice are therefore examined in connection with the characteristicsof the schools themselves. More specifically, the following questions are addressed.

● What reasons do parents have for school choice?● To what extent can differences in parental reasons for school choice be explained

by group-specific characteristics and school characteristics?

General reasons for school choice

On the basis of previous research on school choice, several factors have been foundto play a role in the choice of school (Hunter, 1991; Morgan et al., 1993; Hughes et al.,1994; Echols & Willms 1995; Hammond & Dennison 1995). In their research onparental choice, Hughes et al. (1994) found locality to be mentioned as a reason forthe choice of school by 56% of a sample of 138 parents and reputation by 46% of theparents. Locality refers to such considerations as convenience but also to the extentto which the school is viewed as part of the local community. Reputation refers to suchissues as the care for the children and the quality of the education (Hughes et al., 1994).For her research on school choice, Hunter (1991) interviewed 300 parents and founddiscipline, good exam results and proximity to home to be the most important reasonsfor selection of a school. Of less importance were the denomination of the school,caring teachers and special emphasis on the practical area of curriculum. In yet anotherstudy of the reasons for school choice, Echols and Willms (1995) investigated themotives of 290 parents to choose a non-local school for their child to attend and foundthe preferences of the child, a well-disciplined school climate and good pupil behaviourto be critical motives. Morgan et al. (1993) found the quality of the education and thegeographical nearness of the school to be important reasons for the selection of aparticular school. Hammond and Dennison (1995) interviewed 725 parents andfound teacher quality, examination results, discipline and school reputation to be themost important reasons.


In the Netherlands, considerable research has been conducted on the reasons forschool choice with an eye to mostly the formulation of local educational policy andthe founding of new schools. The Dutch government states that insight into parentalpreferences should be taken into account with respect to the establishment of newschools (Van Kessel, 2000). And in the relevant studies, the most frequentlymentioned reasons for school choice have been found to be as follows: religiousaffiliation, quality of the education, child-rearing values and home-school distance(Boef-Van der Meulen & Herweijer, 1992). More recently, the ethnic composition ofthe school population has also been found to be a reason for school choice (Van derWouw, 1994).

The aforementioned reasons for school choice can be reduced to four generaldomains (see also Taylor, 2001). Parents can have ideological (i.e., religious and/orpedagogical) reasons for choosing a particular school. The geographical distance of theschool from home or work can play a role. The quality of the education can certainly bea reason for the choice of a particular school. And certain non-educational characteristicsof the school, such as the characteristics of the school population, can be of importance.

Parents’ reasons for school choice can be seen as an indicator for their views on thetype of schools they would preferably choose for their child. However, the provisionof schools may not meet parents’ reasons for school choice. For example, whenCatholic parents would prefer a Catholic school for their child and no Catholic schoolis available, these parents can not make a choice that is driven by their leading reasonfor choice. The provision of schools (or the lack of provision of specific types ofschools) may lead to a discongruence between parents’ reasons for school choice andtheir factual choice of a school (Teelken, 1998).

Group-specific reasons for school choice

When parents from different backgrounds are found to choose a school for group-specific reasons, segregation may be the case. Little research has been conducted onthe group-specific reasons for choice of school, but inspection of the relevant interna-tional literature shows two characteristics to possibly influence the choice of schoolby parents, namely social class (or social milieu) and ethnicity.

The reasons for the selection of a particular school appear to be strongly related tothe social class of the parents involved. When Ball et al. (1996; also see Bowe et al.,1994a, b; Gewirtz et al., 1995) interviewed 137 parents, they found that three typesof school choosers could be distinguished: ‘privileged/skilled’, ‘semi-skilled’ and‘disconnected’. The term ‘skilled’ refers to the capacities of parents to operate on theeducational market. According to Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988), the skilledchooser has the social and cultural capital needed to access school information andcompare schools with respect to the those characteristics they consider important.Stated differently: the capacity to access and use school information constitutescultural and social capital.

Privileged/skilled choosers strongly prefer a school which suits the particular inter-ests and personality of their child. Depending on their specific attitudes towards


education, privileged/skilled choosers may also select a school for its high qualityof education, high standards of academic achievement or strong emphasis on socialeducation. Semi-skilled choosers tend to select ‘good’ schools, with their choice basedstrongly on the school’s reputation. Disconnected choosers typically choose a schoolwith a close physical proximity to their home and schools which are a part of the socialcommunity (Ball et al., 1996). When the social class of parents is taken into account‘… almost without exception the disconnected choosers are working class; theprivileged/skilled choosers are almost exclusively professional, middle class … thesemi-skilled choosers tend to be from a variety of class backgrounds’ (Ball et al., 1996,p. 92).

Other research has also shown the reasons for school choice to be clearly related tosocial milieu (Van der Kley & Felling, 1989; Echols & Willms, 1995; McArthur et al.,1995). The findings of these studies are quite similar: low educated parents and work-ing class parents tend to choose a school for physical proximity whereas high educatedparents and professional and middle class parents tend to choose that school whichbest fits their child’s interests and personality. And it can therefore be expected thathigh educated parents as well as professional and middle class parents rate educa-tional or ideological reasons for school choice higher than low educated and lowerclass parents.

Research on school choice in the UK also shows ethnic composition to play a rolein parental choice of school (Bagley, 1996, p. 578): ‘… in 1994 almost a third of whiteparental interviewees cited the presence of Asian children in a school as a major factorinfluencing their choice of school’. In the Netherlands, in contrast, the ethnic compo-sition of a school appears to play only a minor role in the process of school choice(Van Breenen et al., 1991; Van der Wouw, 1994). There is, however, some evidencefor the existence of both ‘white flight’ and ‘black flight’ within systems with freedomof school choice. And in the present study, we will therefore address the issue ofschool characteristics in relation to parental reasons for school choice in greaterdetail.

Insight into parental reasons for school choice and any group-specific reasons forschool choice can help us understand the role of such in school segregation. In addi-tion, such insight can help us understand how freedom of school choice affects thecomposition of school populations.

Method

Sample, instruments and response

The data analyzed in this study come from the Dutch cohort study entitled ‘Primaryeducation’ (PRIMA). As part of this research project, data have been collected onprimary-school pupils, their parents, their teachers and the relevant school adminis-trators every two years since the 1994–1995 school year with the aid of tests andquestionnaires. The project has involved a total of 700 primary schools, which isalmost 10% of the total number of Dutch primary schools, and some 60,000 Grade


2, 4, 6 and 8 pupils (i.e., 6-, 8-, 10- and 12-year-olds). The PRIMA project ischaracterized by an overrepresentation of schools with a relatively large number ofpupils with a lower social economic status and/or ethnic minority status, whichmakes it possible to reliably estimate the systematic effects of factors pertaining tosocial milieu and ethnicity. For the present analyses, the results from the thirdPRIMA measurement conducted during the 1998–1999 school year have been used(Driessen et al., 2000).

The data on which the present analyses are based were gathered using two instru-ments: a written questionnaire for the parents of pupils attending Grade 2 (i.e., 6-year-olds) and a written questionnaire for the relevant school administrators.

The parent questionnaire contains questions regarding parental background (i.e.,level of education, ethnicity), religion and reasons for the choice of school for theirchild.1 The school questionnaire contains questions regarding the religious identityof the school. The social milieu and ethnic composition of the school population wascomputed by aggregating the individual pupil data with regard to social milieu andethnicity.

The response rates for the written questionnaires were 68% for the parents and100% for the school administrators. The parental response rate was slightly biasedwith a response rate of 75% for those parents with a high level of education versus aresponse rate of 56% for immigrant parents with a lower level of education,2 and thisdespite the fact that both Turkish and Moroccan instructions were included with theparent questionnaire and the fact that the parents could request assistance from theschool for completion of the questionnaire (Driessen et al., 2000). Given our interestin the reasons for school choice in relation to school characteristics and not the repre-sentativeness of the parent population in the present study, such a response bias doesnot constitute a problem (Zetterberg, 1963; Gijsberts, 1993).

In the end, information from the parents of 11,362 pupils and 573 schools wasgathered.

Variables

Social milieu. Highest level of education completed by the mother or father wastaken to be an indicator of social milieu. Seven levels, ranging from (1) completion ofprimary school to (7) completion of university, were distinguished.

Ethnicity. Country of birth for the parents was taken to be an indicator of ethnicity,and the following dichotomy was thus possible: (1) both parents born in the Nether-lands; (2) at least one parent born in a foreign country.

Religion. Religion of the mother was generally taken to be an indicator of religion,with the obvious exception of father-only families. Five categories of religion weredistinguished: (1) no religion; (2) Protestant; (3) Catholic; (4) Islamic; or (5) otherreligions.


Reasons for school choice. The parents were presented 17 possible reasons for thechoice of school for their child and asked to rate the importance of each reason alonga scale ranging from (1) not important at all to (5) very important. These reasons weredrawn from previous studies of school choice. For the complete list of reasons, seeTable 1.

Denomination.3. The denomination of the school was categorized as one of thefollowing five types: (1) non-religious; (2) Protestant; (3) Catholic; (4) Islamic; or (5)other.

Composition. Based on the background characteristics of the parents of the pupilswithin the schools, two school-composition variables could be distinguished: socialmilieu (indicated by the level of parental education) and ethnicity. The compositionof a school in terms of social milieu could range from (1) schools with at least 50%children of parents with no more than a junior secondary vocational education; (2)schools with at least 50% children of parents with a senior secondary education; (3)schools with at least 50% children of parents with a higher vocational or universityeducation; or (4) schools with a heterogeneous school population. Ethnic composi-tion of a school was characterized as: (1) schools with over 50% immigrant childrenor (2) schools with at least 50% native Dutch children.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for 17 possible reasons for school choice

Reason for school choice n Mean SD Rank

School climate 10,471 4.10 0.83 2Social background of most of the pupils 10,198 3.15 1.10 11No other school available 9792 2.17 1.36 17Order and discipline 10,282 4.02 0.82 4Reputation of the school 10,245 3.74 0.95 7Pupils attending this school get ahead in society 9945 3.34 1.17 9School pays attention to each child 10,183 4.05 0.87 3Other parents are our kind of people 10,003 2.64 1.18 15Extra-curricular activities 9972 2.65 1.11 14Denomination of the school (e.g., Catholic, non-religious, Islamic)

10,314 3.18 1.31 10

School is within easy reach 10,468 3.84 1.04 5Possibility to come in contact with other cultures 10,097 2.60 1.14 16Quality of education 10,417 4.40 0.73 1Attractive school building 10,126 3.38 1.04 8Advice of friends 10,143 2.90 1.15 13Class size 10,196 3.80 0.97 6School is considerate of our religion 10,315 2.93 1.42 12


Analyses

To answer the research questions, three types of analyses were performed. First, thedescriptive statistics for each of the 17 possible reasons for choice of a particular schoolwere calculated in order to assess the importance of the reasons. In addition, the inter-correlations between the reasons for the choice of a particular school were calculatedin order to investigate the interrelatedness of the reasons for school choice. Second,the extent to which the importance of the various reasons for school choice was foundto differ with respect to the background characteristics of the parents and the differentschool populations was examined. One-way analyses of variance were performed toassess the influence of the parental background variables and school composition vari-ables on the ratings of importance for the school-choice reasons. One can expect, forinstance, Catholic, Protestant or Muslim parents to rate ‘religion’ as an importantreason for school choice. A third set of analyses was undertaken to assess the extentto which parents whose background is congruent with the characteristics of the schoolbeing attended by their child tend to rate certain reasons for school choice as more(or less) important than parents whose background is not congruent with the charac-teristics of the school being attended by their child. One can expect, for instance,Catholic parents who have chosen a Catholic school for their child to rate ‘religion’as a more important reason for school choice than Catholic parents who have chosena non-Catholic school for their child or non-Catholic parents who have chosen aCatholic school for their child. Analyses of variance with parental backgroundcharacteristics (i.e., religion, social milieu, ethnicity) and school characteristics (i.e.,denomination, social milieu composition, ethnic composition) as the independentvariables and ratings of the different reasons for school choice as the dependentvariables were thus performed to reveal the relevant interactions between parentalbackground variables and school characteristics.

Results

Descriptive statistics for the importance ratings for the 17 reasons for the choice ofschool are presented in Table 1. The mean scores show ‘quality of education’ to bethe most important reason. ‘School climate’ and ‘the school pays attention to eachchild’ were also rated highly. The least important reasons were ‘there was no otherschool available’, ‘the possibility to come in contact with other cultures’ and ‘theother parents are our kind of people’.

School quality is reported to play a bigger role in the process of choosing a schoolfor one’s child than school composition. A negative choice (e.g., ‘no other school wasavailable’) is rarely made.

The intercorrelations between the ratings of the 17 reasons for school choice arepresented in Table 2. As can be seen, ‘quality of education’, ‘school climate’ and‘school pays attention to each child’ were positively interrelated and also correlatedpositively with ‘order and discipline’, ‘pupils attending this school get ahead in soci-ety’, ‘an attractive school building’, ‘class size’ and ‘reputation of the school’. These


Tab

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51


positive correlations suggest a relation between issues of educational quality and aschool’s infrastructure. No relations were found between ratings of the importance ofeducational quality and ratings related to school composition, religion or the distancebetween home and school.

The two reasons for school choice based on characteristics of the school population(i.e., ‘the social background of most of the pupils’ and ‘the other parents are our kindof people’) were found to correlate positively with each other. The same holds for thetwo reasons pertaining to parent and school religion (i.e., ‘the school is considerate ofour religion’ and ‘denomination of the school’). Such reasons for school choice as ‘theschool is within easy reach’ did not correlate with any of the other reasons for schoolchoice. The absence of relevant associations between many of the reasons for schoolchoice suggests that different and clearly distinct sets of reasons can motivate thechoice of a particular school for one’s child.

Parental background

Analyses of variance were next conducted on each of the 17 reasons for schoolchoice to assess the impact of parental background characteristics. More specifically,the effects of the parents’ religion, educational level and ethnicity were assessedsuccessively.

Religion of the parents was found to influence three of the 17 reasons for schoolchoice (see Table 3).4 Denomination of the school was rated more important by theProtestant parents than by the parents from the other religious groups while non-religious parents rated this reason for school choice least important of the groups.Muslim parents rated ‘the possibility to come into contact with other cultures’ as amore important reason for school choice than the other parents while the Protestantparents rated this reason least important. Muslim parents also rated ‘the school isconsiderate of our religion’ as a more important reason for school choice than theother parents. Not surprisingly, the group of non-religious parents rated this reasonrather unimportant. It should be noted that the reasons for school choice that have

Table 3. Mean scores showing relevant differences between religious groups on reasons for

school choice

Religion of parents

Reason for school choiceNo religion

n=3164Protestant n=2155

Catholic n=3456

Islamic n=1933

Other n=394 R2

Denomination of the school 2.79 3.80 3.10 3.27 3.13 0.07Possibility to come in contact with other cultures

2.52 2.26 2.46 3.42 2.81 0.10

School is considerate of our religion

1.91 3.63 2.76 4.13 3.23 0.32


been found to differ between religious groups have been rated relatively low,compared to other reasons (see Table 1). For each religious group, the quality ofeducation remains the most important reason for school choice.

Parental level of education produced no relevant differences in the ratings of reasonsfor school choice, which indicates that no social milieu differences could be identifiedwith respect to reasons for school choice.

With regard to ethnicity or native Dutch versus immigrant parents, the analyses ofvariance revealed relevant differences on two reasons for school choice (see Table 4).

The mean scores show immigrant parents to rate ‘the possibility to come intocontact with other cultures’ as a more important reason for school choice than nativeDutch parents. The same holds for ‘the school is considerate of our religion’. Theseresults resemble the results for religion and reflect the fact that most of the immigrantparents (59.2%) were Muslim (relative to 0.1% of the native Dutch parents). And theresults for religion and ethnicity may thus be confounded.

School characteristics

In the next set of analyses, the effects of school denomination, social milieu compo-sition of the school and ethnic composition of the school on the ratings of importancefor the reasons for school choice were examined.

The ratings provided by the parents of the children attending schools of differentdenominations differed on the same reasons for school choice as for religion (see Table5). Three reasons were rated highest by the Muslim parents: ‘the denomination of theschool’, ‘the possibility to come into contact with other cultures’ and ‘the school isconsiderate of our religion’. In contrast, parents sending their child to a Catholicschool rated ‘denomination of the school’ as less important than other parents (evenless important than parents sending their child to a non-religious school).

No differences between the ratings of reasons for school choice were found for theparents sending their children to schools with differing social milieu compositions.These results show the reasons for school choice to not lead to group-specific selec-tion of schools by pupils from predominantly high versus low social milieus.

With respect to the ratings of the reasons for school choice by parents sending theirchildren to schools with different ethnic compositions, relevant differences were found

Table 4. Mean scores showing relevant differences between native Dutch and immigrant parents

on reasons for school choice

Ethnicity

Reason for school choiceNative Dutch

n=7304Immigrant

n=2781 R2

Possibility of coming into contact with other cultures 2.4 3.2 0.10The school is considerate of our religion 2.7 3.6 0.08


(see Table 6). The parents of children attending schools with a mostly immigrantpopulation rated ‘the possibility of coming into contact with other cultures’ and ‘theschool is considerate of our religion’ as more important than the parents of childrenattending schools with a native Dutch majority. Given the relations between Islamicreligion and ethnic origin, the results regarding the influence of the ethnic compositionof the school on parental ratings of importance for school choice may be confounded.

Interactions between parental background and school characteristics

Thus far, some clear relations between parental background and characteristics of theschool, on the one hand, and rated importance of reasons for school choice, on theother hand, have been observed. In the following, the extent to which combinations ofparental background factors and school characteristics appear to affect the degree ofimportance assigned to the different reasons for school choice will be examined. Thefocus will be on three specific combinations. First, the combination of parental religionand the denomination of the school. Second, the combination of parental level of educa-tion and the social milieu composition of the school. Third, the combination of parentalethnicity and the ethnic composition of the school population.

Table 5. Mean ratings of importance for reasons for school choice provided by parents sending

children to different denomination schools

Denomination of the school

Reason for school choiceNon-

religious n=3323

Protestant n=2856

Catholic n=4463

Islamic n=225

Other n=495 R2

Denomination of the school 3.11 3.50 2.98 4.48 2.95 0.05Possibility of coming into contact with other cultures

2.88 2.28 2.56 3.43 2.62 0.05

School is considerate of our religion 2.56 3.36 2.87 4.56 2.66 0.07

Table 6. Mean ratings of importance for reasons for school choice provided by parents sending

children to schools with different ethnic compositions

Ethnic composition of school population

Reason for school choice > 50% immigrant n=1657

> 50% native Dutch n=879

R2

Possibility of coming into contact with other cultures

3.34 2.63 0.06

School is considerate of our religion 3.88 2.79 0.11


Parental religion and denomination of the school. The cross-tabulation of parentalreligion and denomination of the school showed almost half of the non-religiousparents to choose a religious school. Over 70% of the Protestant and Catholic parentschose a school that fits their religion (see Table 7). However, Muslim parents werefound to choose mostly non-Islamic schools (only 11% of the Muslim parent chosean Islamic school). For these results, the following two explanations can be given.First the figures indicate that religious schools have been chosen by a large portion ofnon-religious parents, which may imply that religious schools are often chosen fornon-religious reasons. Second, the availability of specific types of school may limit therange of possible reasons that may actually lead to school choice. The rather lownumber of Muslim parents to choose an Islamic school may be explained by therather limited availability of Islamic schools. In large parts of the Netherlands, forexample, the distance to the nearest Islamic school is considerable. Islamic schoolsnevertheless have a rather uniform population, and no non-Muslim parent in thissample has chosen an Islamic school for their child.

Three cells with a frequency of zero prevented the straightforward conduct of ananalysis of variance for parental religion and denomination of the school. We thereforesplit the analyses into two parts. First, we analyzed the effects of parental religion andschool denomination, omitting Muslim parents and schools (see Table 8).5 Second,we analyzed the ratings of the 17 reasons for school choice by the Muslim parentssending their children to the schools with different denominations (see Table 9).

Table 8 shows ‘denomination of the school’ to be rated highest by parents with areligious background congruent with the denomination of the child’s school. Thesame holds for the ratings of ‘the school is considerate of our religion’. These resultsshow parents who rate these reasons as important to also actively seek and select aschool for the same reasons. However, as noted before, the reasons for school choicethat have been found to differ between religious groups have been rated relatively low,compared to other reasons (see Table 1). For each religious group, the quality ofeducation remains the most important reason for school choice.

Table 9 shows ‘denomination of the school’ to also possibly be a leading reason forthe selection of a school and particularly an Islamic school by Muslim parents. Morespecifically, Muslim parents who have chosen an Islamic school for their child ratethis reason as very important (4.48).

Table 9 also shows Muslim parents who have chosen an Islamic school for theirchild to produce relatively lower ratings for ‘no other school was available’ and ‘theschool is within easy reach’ and relatively higher ratings for ‘other parents are our kindof people’. Apparently, distance constitutes only a minor reason for these Muslimparents to select an Islamic school. In contrast, the cultural (i.e., ethnic/religious)background of the parents of the children attending the school may clearly encourageMuslim parents to choose an Islamic school.

Parental level of education and social milieu composition of the school population. Theanalyses of the influence of various levels of parental education in conjunction with


Tab

le 7

.C

ross

tabu

lati

on o

f pa

rent

al r

elig

ion

and

deno

min

atio

n of

sch

ool,

incl

udin

g co

lum

n pe

rcen

tage

s

Par

enta

l rel

igio

n

No

relig

ion

Pro

test

ant

Cat

holic

Isla

mic

Tot

al

Den

omin

atio

n of

sch

ool

Non

-rel

igio

us15

4851

.0%

316

15.2

%43

613

.3%

817

43.1

%31

1730

.3%

Pro

test

ant

671

22.1

%14

7471

.0%

312

9.5%

217

11.5

%26

7426

.0%

Cat

holic

818

26.9

%28

713

.8%

2525

77.1

%64

534

.0%

4275

41.6

%Is

lam

ic0

0.0%

00.

0%0

0.0%

216

11.4

%21

62.

1%T

otal

3037

100.

0%20

7710

0.0%

3273

100.

0%18

9510

0.0%

1028

210

0.0%

(chi

-squ

are

= 5

645.

54, d

f =

9, p

= 0

.000

; Cra

mer

’s V

= 0

.43)


the social milieu composition of the school population on the ratings of importancefor the various reasons for school choice did not reveal any relevant results. Thisshows the social milieu composition of the school population to not play an importantrole in the process of selecting a school.

Parental ethnicity and ethnic composition of the school population. The analyses of theinfluence of parental ethnic background in conjunction with the ethnic compositionof the school population on the ratings of importance for the various reasons forschool choice also did not reveal results of relevance. On the basis of the absence ofany such interaction effects, we can conclude that the differences in the ratings ofimportance for the reasons for school choice reported for the native Dutch versusimmigrant parents in Table 4 are the same for the schools with at least 50% nativeDutch pupils and the schools with more than 50% immigrant pupils. Conversely, thedifferences in the ratings of importance for the reasons for school choice reported bythe parents of children attending the two aforementioned types of schools (see Table6) can be assumed to be the same for native Dutch and immigrant parents.

Discussion

In the present paper, the importance of 17 possible reasons for school choice and theissue of group-specific reasons for school choice were addressed. The quality ofeducation was found to be one of the leading reasons for the selection of a school. Inaddition, several of the other reasons for school choice appeared to be related to thequality of education as a reason for school choice, including school climate, order anddiscipline, and pupils attending this school to get ahead in society. A number of

Table 8. Mean ratings of importance and results of analyses of variance for reasons for school choice according to specific combinations of parental religion and denomination of school

Parents’ religionDenomination of the school n

Denomination of school

School is considerate of our religion

No religion Non-religious 1548 3.15 1.84Protestant Protestant 1474 4.16 4.02Catholic Catholic 2525 3.18 2.86No religion Protestant 671 2.45 1.96No religion Catholic 818 2.30 1.88Protestant Non-religious 316 2.87 2.50Protestant Catholic 287 3.14 3.01Catholic Non-religious 436 2.61 2.17Catholic Protestant 312 3.00 2.75Total R2 0.19 0.32Partial R2 interaction effect

0.09 0.04


Tab

le 9

.M

ean

rati

ngs

of im

port

ance

for

rea

sons

for

sch

ool c

hoic

e ac

cord

ing

to I

slam

ic p

aren

tal r

elig

ion

and

deno

min

atio

n of

sch

ool

Par

enta

l rel

igio

nD

enom

inat

ion

of

the

scho

oln

No

othe

r sc

hool

ava

ilabl

eO

ther

par

ents

are

our

kin

d of

peo

ple

Den

omin

atio

n of

th

e sc

hool

Sch

ool w

ithi

n ea

sy r

each

Isla

mic

Isla

mic

216

1.85

3.23

4.48

3.46

Isla

mic

Non

-rel

igio

us81

72.

562.

603.

354.

03Is

lam

icP

rote

stan

t21

72.

452.

472.

723.

83Is

lam

icC

atho

lic64

52.

872.

512.

914.

04R

20.

040.

030.

140.

03


reasons related to the school’s infrastructure such as class size, attractive school build-ing and reputation of the school were also related to the importance of the quality ofeducation as a reason for school choice. Beyond these reasons, two other sets of inter-related reasons were found to be of importance for school choice. Two aspects of thecomposition of the school population were found to be related: the social milieu back-ground of the pupils attending the school and the other parents are the same kind ofpeople. And two issues of religious affiliation were also found to be related: thedenomination of the school and the school is considerate of parents’ religion. Theparents generally rated these compositional and religious reasons as being of lessimportance than the quality of education reasons.

Group-specific reasons for school choice were mainly found to exist with respect toreligious and ethnic groups. In the Netherlands, religion is an important factor forsegregation within the educational system (Dronkers, 1995). With respect to differentreligious groups, we can conclude that this is particularly the case for Muslim and Prot-estant parents (with orthodox Protestant parents standing out among the Protestantsin particular; see Driessen & Van der Slik, 2001). Stated quite simply: Parents whohave chosen a Protestant or Islamic school for their child have often selected the schoolfor religious reasons. With regard to the effects of ethnicity on the relative importanceof different reasons for school choice, immigrant parents show a preference for schoolswhich are considerate of their religion and schools with an Islamic denomination. Inother words, the differences in the reasons for school choice reflect the differencesbetween immigrant and native Dutch parents with possible self-segregation alongthese lines.

At present, many immigrant parents have not chosen an Islamic school for theirchild. This is presumably due to the rather limited availability of Islamic schools inthe Netherlands. While there are currently 41 Islamic primary schools, the demandfor such is three to four times this amount (cf. Van Kessel, 2004). As the availabilityof Islamic schools in the Netherlands increases, immigrant parents may collectivelyopt for such schools and in this way contribute to segregation within the educationalsystem. This increase in segregation only seems to hold for Muslim parents, sincedifferences between native Dutch and ethnic minority parents seemed to be mainly areligious matter.6 As opposed to the expected ‘white flight’ or departure of nativeDutch pupils from ‘black’ schools, a form of self-segregation is likely to occur whenimmigrant Muslim parents actively seek and select a ‘black’ school for their child.This process of self-segregation has yet to occur on a scale of marked significance dueto two factors. The first is the tightening of the criteria for the establishment of newschools by the Ministry of Education (Driessen & Merry, 2004). The second is thefact that Muslim parents are not very well organized, have little experience with andare often frustrated in their efforts to establish new schools (Driessen & Bezemer,1999).

A most remarkable result is the absence of any social milieu related effects onthe relative importance of reasons for school choice. In contrast to other studies(see Ball et al., 1995, 1996), the present study did not reveal any relevant differ-ences in the ratings of reasons for school choice across parents from different social


milieus. These results are consistent with the study of Gorard et al. (2003) whoalso reported that segregation did not increase as a result of marketization. Furtherresearch is needed to confirm these results. In this research different methods fordata-analyses should be used to get more insight in the hidden mechanism thatmay be operating when especially native Dutch parents justify the reasons forschool choice. Bagley (1996) found marked discrepancies between the results ofanalyses based on questionnaire versus interview data with the parents referring tothe racial aspects of choosing a school more often in the interviews and not ratingethnic considerations as being of importance on the questionnaire. Bagley thenargued that the results of research on reasons for school choice may often thus bebiased by the method of data collection with interview data revealing attitudes notcaptured by questionnaires. More qualitative measures may be needed to elicitmore accurate information regarding school choice. Direct inquiries into thereasons for school choice may, alternatively, lead to social desirability and therebya response bias.

Finally, to gain greater insight into the complexity of the educational market andthe extent to which parents actually have a choice with regard to a child’s school,some additional measures—including information on the actual distance betweenhome and school and the characteristics of the schools available to the parents—should be utilized. The results of our study may be limited, due to the absence ofinformation on the specific local context in which parents have to make their choices.According to Gorard et al. (2003), segregation effects may differ across educationalareas within one educational system. Especially within the Dutch system, in which astrong religious diversity within regions exists (the southern part of the country beingoverwhelmingly Catholic, and the northern part being overwhelmingly Protestant),local studies are called for to bring nuances to the results of the present study. More-over, localized studies could reveal the extent to which schools’ composition reflectsthe composition of the local population on the one hand and the specific spatialnature of competition (see Taylor, 2001) on the other. The results of the presentrather decontextualized study can only partly entangle the knot of the problem ofrelating school choice to segregation within educational systems.

In closing, the results of the present study show group-specific reasons for schoolchoice to indeed contribute to increased religious—and consequently ethnic—segregation across schools. Our results highlight the importance of religious andethnic factors, which may be typically Dutch and due in part to the religious plurifor-mity of the Dutch educational system. Given the associations between school choiceand the characteristics of the educational system, the results of replication research inother countries with less religious pluriformity than in the Netherlands could differfrom the present results. In those countries, the relationship between ethnicity andreligion may be less visible. Therefore religious factors may be incorporated in stud-ies on segregation within those educational contexts. In general, a comparison of theresults of this study with the results of similar studies in other countries is called forin order to better understand the general nature of the process of school choice inwestern countries.


Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the two anonymous referees for their very helpfulcomments. The data used in the present analyses are from the Dutch cohort study‘Primary education’ (‘PRIMA’). Collection of the data on this cohort was financiallysupported by the Foundation for Behavioural Sciences from the Dutch Organizationfor Scientific Research (NWO).

Notes

1. Given that the children were attending Grade 2, the parental choice of school was quite recent.2. The response percentages presented here have been assessed by comparing the response with

information about parents provided by school administrations.3. In 2002, 30% of the schools in the Netherlands were Catholic; 30% were Protestant; and 34%

were non-religious. In addition to these types of schools, about 16 other types of schools havebeen officially recognized by the Dutch government and account for the remaining 6% of thetotal number of schools in the Netherlands (NMECS, 2004). In contrast to many othercountries, the different types of schools in The Netherlands are almost all financed by thegovernment; the percentage of private schools is very small; and an open educational marketwith considerable variety is the result. In the UK, a considerable variety of schools also exists,but many of the schools are only accessible to those who can afford it. Recent efforts to obtainpublic funding for Muslim schools in the UK have proved successful, however (Parker-Jenkins& Hartas, 2002; Walford, 2002).

4. Due to the large sample size, over 90% of all statistical tests proved to be statistically significant.Most of these significant effects, though, were very small. For purposes of the present study,only the most relevant results are thus presented. More specifically, effects accounting for lessthan 5% of the variance in the ratings of importance for the various reasons for school choicehave not been presented.

5. To test the differences between the ratings of parents whose religious, social milieu, or ethnicbackground is congruent with denomination of the school, school’s social milieu compositionand school’s ethnic composition, respectively, and parents whose background is not congruent,interaction effects were tested. Abelson and Prentice (1997) have provided some guidelines forsuch tests, which they have called tests of matching hypotheses. For purposes of the presentstudy, only interaction effects accounting for at least 3% of the variance in the ratings of impor-tance for the various reasons for school choice have been reported (also see note 4, above).

6. In this study 59% of the ethnic minority parents were Muslim.

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