Informal Parental School Choice and Social Segregation within Public Education: A Case Study in Athens

This paper attempts to examine how social divisions are constituted within the context of public education by exploring unofficial process of school choice and social divergences on parental practices. It is based on research conducted in an area of central Athens with strong social and ethno-cultural heterogeneity. It focuses on neighbouring public primary schools with different social profiles due to the uneven distribution of students in terms of ethnic and social characteristics as well as notable differences related to the neighbourhood context. Through interviews with parents whose children attend these schools, various strategies regarding enrollment along with diverse family approaches to education are highlighted. Despite the fact that enrolment in Greek public school is based on the address of residence, the research shows that some parents choose or avoid the local school. The study investigates the identity characteristics of local schools that influence parental perceptions and shape their educational practices, such as the socio-ethnocultural status of the student population, the activities of the parents’ association, the building facilities, and extracurricular activities. One of the parametres studied is the school’s digital presence (Mascheroni et al. 2018) -website and social media- as a means of informing parents and promoting school activities. Consistent with relevant studies (Lareau 1989; Vincent 2017), findings of this research indicate that family educational strategies and the criteria on which these strategies are based show similarities among parents who share a common social and ethnocultural background. At the same time, the neighbourhood area and the identity of the local school indicate and activate specific forms of parental action that may not emerge in other spatial/school contexts. Highlighting the differentiated positions of parents in relation to school processes provides tools for understanding the multiple ways in which inequalities and divisions are structured within public education at a micro scale.