Parents’ Attitudes Toward School Choice Change in Chile: The Role of Information in an Unequal Context

Abstract

ABSTRACT The School Admission System (SAE, the Spanish acronym for “Sistema de Admisión Escolar”) was recently implemented in Chile to mitigate the market logic in school admission. This system represents a drastic change in how families select schools. The following study analyzes the relationship between the sociodemographic characteristics of parents, their consumption of information, and their attitudes toward the SAE. A latent class analysis and a multinomial logistic regression model used data from a survey administered to parents. Three attitudes toward the SAE were identified: positive, neutral, and hostile; those attitudes have been influenced by several factors, including region of residence, socioeconomic group, and the quantity and objectivity of consumed information.