Municipalities’ different interpretations of justice for families who do not participate in local school choice regimes

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore differences in how civil servants in Sweden organize and justify their policies towards families who do not make a school choice. We draw on theories about competition as a social construction as well as different notions of justice in education. We present descriptive statistics from a large-scale quantitative data set and conduct a qualitative content analysis of interviews with civil servants to study school choice policies in Sweden, well known for its consumer and market-oriented education policies for the past 35 years. We identify that municipalities that organize mandatory school choice have both different policies and different justifications towards families who, despite information campaigns and other activities, fail or refuse to make an active school choice. The study makes an empirical contribution to the previously theorized relationship between choice and competition and offers a nuanced understanding of differences in how local authorities organize and justify allocation policies in their school choice regimes. We raise the question of whether extensive localized differences towards families are justified in an educational system that has an outspoken agenda towards equal treatment and equally good education for all no matter of the student’s family background.