The transition from a deregulated market to a centralised school admission system in Chile: mapping middle-class responses to new school choice rules

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite increasing consensus around strengthening school choice regulations to reduce its segregating effects, policy changes and research in this direction are scarce. In that context, this article tackles the recent equity-oriented reform introduced in the highly marketised Chilean school system. Based on in-depth interviews, we explore the responses of middle-class parents to the implementation of a new centralised admission system that modified the school choice rules. Our findings differentiate five types of responses. Alongside uncovering a significant opposition from parents for whom the reform is experienced as a threat to their middle-classness, we found a variety of stances consistent with heterogeneity within the broader middle class, and we reveal a high ambivalence in their policy interpretations. From these findings, we discuss the sociocultural complexities of reforms aimed at balancing choice and equity, and we contribute to prior literature by unravelling the nuances in the middle-class attitudes towards desegregation policies.