Education: The Problem of Choice

Researchers believe that the educational system both reproduces inequality and promotes social mobility. On April 16, 2014, an international conference ‘School Choice and School Differentiation in Comparative Perspective’ ended in St. Petersburg. The event was organized by the HSE Education and Science Sociology Laboratory.

The conference brought together not only researchers who study school choice and social differentiation in education, but also social workers who added a real-life perspective to the problem. Researchers came from Russia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, England, Germany, and France.

Researchers study the context and reasons for school choice by parents. According to Daniil Alexandrov, head of the Conference’s programme committee and head of the Education and Science Sociology Laboratory, the educational system maintains distance between social classes on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is supposed to deliver people into positions that correspond with their abilities and interests in which they will be able to realize their potential.

The neoliberal economic paradigm assumes that the market is the best mechanism to sort goods, services, and people, since the opportunity of free choice lies at the heart of the market mechanism. During the last 30 years, reforms in various countries’ educational systems have been based on the idea that parents can choose specialized schools for their children. Scandinavian countries have taken a universalist approach to secondary education. ‘When Sweden declared that parents would be able to choose the school and allowed the schools to change, we considered it to be a marker of European countries’ transition to freedom of educational choice’, said Alexandrov.

Specialists with various research methodologies spoke at the conference, including those working in the paradigm of qualitative sociology who study middle class stratification and social policy, as well as researchers of quantitative data who use statistical models. Some participants build imitation models of educational choice made by students, as well as school segregation. Sonia Exley from the London School of Economics said that the conference opened her eyes to educational processes in other countries; previously she underestimated national educational systems and was not interested in schools outside England.

Working meetings on the opportunities for cooperation and joint research projects also took place at the conference. Many participants found opportunities to continue their studies from a comparative perspective, since they saw similarities in research areas developed by their colleagues.

Also discussed at the conference were the creation of several reviews of school choice policies in various countries, preparation of a topical journal issue with conference papers, and submission of several applications for grants to fund joint projects. Several international researchers offered the Education and Science Sociology Laboratory cooperation in data processing. In particular, Kerstin Schneider from the University of Wuppertal (Germany) said that her department is ready to welcome Master’s and postgraduate students from the HSE and help them in applying econometric methods in data collection and academic paper writing.

Tatiana Chernova