Between Inclusion and Academic Performance: The Enactment of an Inclusion Policy in Schools with High Academic Standards

This paper explores the policy enactment of the Inclusion Law (2015) and its new School Admission System (SAE, in Spanish), a desegregation school reform in a key case of social inequality worldwide: Chile, the third most unequal country within the OECD. SAE consists of a lottery-based online system where families apply to schools under a free school choice policy. Consequently, all types of selection in the admission processes started to be forbidden in those schools receiving state funding (which concentrate approximately 90% of the national enrolments), to eliminate arbitrary discrimination and increase social diversity in schools. This paper draws on a study focused on a small subset of secondary schools categorised as ‘Schools with High Academic Standards’ (SHAS), which are allowed to continue some degree of academic selectivity to keep their academic excellence. Our theoretical framework dialogues with studies on school inclusion that warn against a romanticised conceptualisation of it as ‘happy togetherness’ (Wise & Noble, 2016). Thus, we explore how school actors in SHAS are experiencing inclusion and social diversity while trying to keep high academic results. This paper focuses on the qualitative component of a mixed methods study, based on in-depth interviews with school actors at 15 SHAS in Chile (out of a total of 34). We explore the experiences of the students and parents, as well as the strategies and adjustments implemented and/or projected by these schools’ members of staff, given the implementation of SAE, to understand how the SHAS are enacting the reforms and adapting to more socially diverse students while trying to keep high academic results. We conclude with a discussion on the feasibility of desegregation policies in environments of academic excellence, an important challenge for school systems in transit of desegregation, such as the Chilean one.