Educational Markets and Segregation: Global Trends and Singular Experiences From Belgium and Chile (Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices) 3031361466, 9783031361463

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Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices

Vincent Dupriez Juan Pablo Valenzuela Marie Verhoeven Javier Corvalán   Editors

Educational Markets and Segregation Global Trends and Singular Experiences From Belgium and Chile

Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices Series Editors Sharon Rider, Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

This book series examines and theorizes the historical development, socio-economic context, conceptual framework and implicit conceptual assumptions of different regulatory and evaluative regimes. It investigates the values embedded in policies and their implications in practice, proposing and developing alternative perspectives on how to conceive the role of public higher education and the mission of the university in the twenty-first century. It also surveys developments arising out of the current regime, such as the “metrics industry” that has emerged to rank and measure the performance of institutions in secondary, tertiary and postgraduate education, as an important management tool in the implementation of institutional, national and international policies. The series investigates the multiple ways in which assessment has become a standardized function of governments and funders, and examines the consequences of the shifting line between private and public ownership. The series encourages relevant contributions from all disciplines, including, inter alia, philosophy, sociology, media studies, anthropology, political science, history, legal studies, and economics in order to foster dialogue and deepen our understanding of the complex issues involved. Although the emphasis is on the university, the series addresses the diversity of evaluation criteria and techniques on a broad scale, covering not only secondary and postgraduate education as well, but also adult and continuing education. Focusing especially on areas of potential contention, the series explores the ways how the standards of quality posited and tools of measurement employed resolve, engender or conceal conflicts of values, goals or interests. Book proposals are to be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Claudia Acuna ([email protected]).

Vincent Dupriez  •  Juan Pablo Valenzuela Marie Verhoeven • Javier Corvalán Editors

Educational Markets and Segregation Global Trends and Singular Experiences From Belgium and Chile

Editors Vincent Dupriez UCLouvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Juan Pablo Valenzuela University of Chile Santiago, Chile

Marie Verhoeven UCLouvain Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Javier Corvalán Alberto Hurtado University Santiago, Chile

ISSN 2570-0251     ISSN 2570-026X (electronic) Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices ISBN 978-3-031-36146-3    ISBN 978-3-031-36147-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The publication of this book is the result of exchanges and scientific seminars carried out during the period 2019–2022 between the editors of the book and all the other authors. These exchanges were facilitated by the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International (within the framework of the 6th Permanent Joint Commission with the Republic of Chile), which we thank for their confidence in our project. The editors of the book also thank their institutions for various forms of support from the Catholic University of Louvain, the University of Chile (Support from ANID/PIA/ Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence FB0003) and the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Project FONDECYT 1190967).

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Contents

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Introduction: Studying School Segregation Through the Lens of Educational (Quasi-)Markets�����������������������������    1 Marie Verhoeven, Javier Corvalán, Vincent Dupriez, and Juan Pablo Valenzuela

Part I Foundations: Theoretical Grounds, Literature Reviews and Empirical Balance 2

What’s Wrong with Social Segregation Between Schools? Ethical Perspectives ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   17 Hervé Pourtois

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 Understanding School Markets in Order to Transform Them?����������   35 Hugues Draelants

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School Segregation in Times of Globalization: Research and Policy Challenges ������������������������������������������������������������   57 Xavier Bonal and Cristian Bellei

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Markets in Education and School Segregation: Paths of Problematization and Reform��������������������������������������������������   81 Adrián Zancajo, Clara Fontdevila, and Antoni Verger

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Privatisation, School Markets and Socioeconomic Segregation: An International Overview ����������������������������������������������  103 Gabriel Gutiérrez

Part II Roots of Segregation and Attempts to Desegregate in Two Contexts 7

 School Segregation in Belgium ��������������������������������������������������������������  129 Marie Verhoeven and Vincent Dupriez

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 School Desegregation Policies in Belgium����������������������������������������������  151 Vincent Dupriez and Marie Verhoeven

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 School Segregation in Chile��������������������������������������������������������������������  167 Juan Pablo Valenzuela and Claudio Allende

10 School  Desegregation Policies in Chile: Tension Between the Market and Non-­selection Regulation ��������������������������������������������  189 María Teresa Rojas, Macarena Hernández, and Alejandra Falabella Part III Emerging Issues 11 The  School Segregation of the Chilean Elites and Its Consequences in the Socialization of Class Subjectivities������������������������������������������������������������������������������  211 Tomás Ilabaca and Javier Corvalán 12 Migrant  Students in Chilean Schools����������������������������������������������������  227 Javier Corvalán, Claudia Córdoba, Karina Rojas, and Daisy Margarit 13 Beyond  Socio-economic Segregation Among Schools: Research on Ability-­Grouping Within Schools in Chile ����������������������  245 Claudio Allende, Lorena Ortega, and Juan Pablo Valenzuela 14 Does  the Extreme Secondary School Segregation in Chile Extend to Its Higher Education?���������������������������������������������  261 Danilo Kuzmanic and Juan Pablo Valenzuela 15 Socialisation  Objectives and Practices in Schools: Towards a Fragmentation of the Field of Education?��������������������������  277 Vincent Dupriez, Dzifanu Tay, Evelyne Jadot, Hugues Draelants, and Marie Verhoeven 16 Conclusion:  What Can We Learn from Belgium and Chile for a Less Segregated Education? ����������������������������������������  295 Vincent Dupriez, Marie Verhoeven, Juan Pablo Valenzuela, and Javier Corvalán

Contributors

Claudio Allende  Centre for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE) and Institute for Advanced Studies in Education (IE), Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile CIAE, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados en Educación (IE), Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile Cristian Bellei  Center for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, Santiago & Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, Austral University of Chile, Valdivia, Chile Xavier  Bonal  Globalisation, Education and Social Policies (GEPS) research group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Claudia Córdoba  Department of Education, University of Santiago, Santiago, Chile Javier Corvalán  Department of Educational Policies, University Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile Hugues  Draelants  GIRSEF, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-laNeuve, Belgium Groupe interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur la Socialisation, l’Education et la Formation (GIRSEF), University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Vincent Dupriez  GIRSEF, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Groupe interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur la Socialisation, l’Education et la Formation (GIRSEF), University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Alejandra Falabella  Department of Educational Policies and School Development, Alberto Hurtado University, Santiago, Chile Clara Fontdevila  School of Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland Gabriel  Gutiérrez  Faculty of Education, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile Center for Educational Justice, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile ix

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Macarena  Hernández  Educational Santiago, Chile

Contributors

Justice

Center,

Catholic

University,

Tomás  Ilabaca  Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Playa Ancha, Valparaiso, Chile Evelyne  Jadot  Groupe interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur la Socialisation, l’Education et la Formation (GIRSEF), University of Louvain, Louvain-la-NeuveBelgium Danilo  Kuzmanic  Center for Advanced Research in Education, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile Daisy  Margarit  Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Santiago, Santiago, Chile Lorena  Ortega  CIAE, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados en Educación (IE), Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile Hervé Pourtois  Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Karina  Rojas  Department of Computer Sciences and Statistics, University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain María Teresa Rojas  Department of Educational Policies and School Development, Alberto Hurtado University, Santiago, Chile Dzifanu  Tay  Groupe interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur la Socialisation, l’Education et la Formation (GIRSEF), University of Louvain, Louvain-laNeuve, Belgium Juan Pablo Valenzuela  Center for Advanced Research in Education, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile Centre for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE) and Institute for Advanced Studies in Education (IE), Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile CIAE, Instituto de Estudios Avanzados en Educación (IE), Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile Antoni  Verger  Department of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Marie Verhoeven  GIRSEF, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Groupe interdisciplinaire de Recherche sur la Socialisation, l’Education et la Formation (GIRSEF), University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Adrián Zancajo  Department of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Chapter 1

Introduction: Studying School Segregation Through the Lens of Educational (Quasi-) Markets Marie Verhoeven , Javier Corvalán and Juan Pablo Valenzuela

, Vincent Dupriez

,

Abstract  This introduction sets out the scientific project underlying this book, and introduces to its three main parts. It emphasises that, paradoxically, the school segregation has emerged as a public problem at the very moment in which the longstanding movement towards the democratisation of education has generalised the inclusion of all social groups in a common system. The role played by educational markets, and by market policies in education, is underlined, while announcing an in-depth examination of theoretical, normative and policy issues related to how school markets and segregation patterns interplay. The Belgian and Chilean cases, at the heart of this book, are briefly presented, as well as the methodological mirror analysis of these two cases, with regard to the policies implemented, their impact and the social, cultural and political environment of each of the two countries.

During the second half of the twentieth century, most of the world’s school systems made significant progress in terms of ‘massification’ (the quantitative broadening of access to schooling). Social groups that previously had very limited access to formal education (such as those from the lower social classes, girls, ethnically-­marginalised groups and indigenous peoples) have gradually been enrolled in school. While this historical fact undoubtedly represented an important democratic step forward, there was also a stark downside: as school systems expanded, they tended to become M. Verhoeven (*) · V. Dupriez GIRSEF, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] J. Corvalán Department of Educational Policies, University Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] J. P. Valenzuela Center for Advanced Research in Education, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 V. Dupriez et al. (eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation, Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_1

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segregated. That is, certain categories of the population (according to social or cultural background) were grouped into specific categories of schools or tracks. Surprisingly, this de facto segmentation (or social divide) of the school institution remained relatively unnoticed (or at least, under-problematized) for a long time. It is essentially only during the past two decades (other than in the US) that school segregation has gradually emerged as a central issue for educational research and policy (Bonal & Bellei, 2018). In recent years, the introduction of ‘market’ oriented reforms to many education systems has increasingly been identified as a factor in accelerating segregation schemes (Bonal & Bellei, 2018; Verger et al., 2016). School segregation is the central focus of this book, particularly in its complex relationship to educational market policies. The editors of the present volume share the conviction that this issue continues to raise important scientific as well as ethical, cultural and political issues.

1.1 The Slow Emergence of School Segregation as a Public Concern A careful examination of the educational history of societies currently having high levels of education coverage shows that school segregation is not a recent phenomenon – even though it is only recently that it has been thematised as such. During the first half of the twentieth century, the struggle for the democratisation of education led to a gradual generalisation of access to education for all; but initially, this movement was accompanied by strong segmentation of the educational supply. Including every social stratum in education can certainly be seen as an improvement in comparison with the almost complete exclusion once experienced by various social groups (as already mentioned). But in the early twentieth century, most educational systems (in Europe, USA and Latin-America1) were still based on a logic of school orders or system of strata, at variance with the liberal principles that were the legacy of the Enlightenment. Education was organised into separate tracks (or streams, or pathways) corresponding to educational provision that was tailored to different social groups  – whose differences were often essentialised. These tracks were almost ‘watertight’ in terms of social and cultural recruitment, and there was scarcely any prospect of mobility; social destinies were clear-cut. Such a segmented system rested on the assumption that every individual should be assigned to a predetermined type of educational institution and school destiny, according to their inherited social position or their alleged (though  obviously socially constructed) ‘nature’ (in terms of race, sex, gender or other assigned identities). Within this framework, most school systems were built along multiple lines of division, whether these were geographical in nature (rural schools/urban schools), sex-based (schools for boys or girls), related to philosophical beliefs (religious or denominational  For Europe, see Prost, 2003; Chapoulie, 2006; Grootaers, 1998; for Latin America, and particularly Chile, see for eg. Kauko et al., 2015 and Le Bot, 1985. 1

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schools vs. state schools), ethnic or racial background (in some contexts), or social class (manifested in various historical forms of structural divide in categories of schools intended for working class, middle class or social elite children). Such a structural division was also based, ultimately, on functionalist reasoning, since its intention was to prepare each segment of the population for its anticipated (hierarchised) social positions. Interestingly, however, these inherited divides, while often ‘taken as given’, have not, until very recently, been thought of as ‘segregation’ (as some chapters of this book will show, e.g. Verhoeven and Dupriez, Chap. 7). In the second half of the twentieth century, as the process of education democratisation deepened, this structurally divided model (based on a representation of society as a system of separate orders) was questioned by the meritocratic principle of ‘equality of opportunity’, linking educational and social mobility to individual talents and merits, and not on inherited positions. As a result, attempts to unify the education system were implemented in many contexts (albeit at different paces and via distinct organisational modalities, as dictated by national realities), aiming to build a ‘common’ school, open to all social classes (Baluteau et al., 2018). In most cases, however, this gradual unification of different educational segments has failed to prevent the persistence of social divisions, visible in the unequal representation of social, ethnic or sex-based groups in certain categories of schools or tracks. This phenomenon has sometimes been analysed as ‘segregative democratization’ (Merle, 2009). Paradoxically, then, school segregation has emerged as a ‘public problem’ at the very moment in which the longstanding movement towards the democratisation of education has generalised the inclusion of all social groups in a common system, with ‘meritocracy’ and ‘equal opportunities’ becoming the dominant normative principles regulating participation in the modern public sphere. In other words, we might assume that school segregation becomes morally  less acceptable when schooling becomes an essential lever in the distribution of social positions (Meyer, 1977) and when inherited modes of social reproduction are gradually replaced by acquired privilege and ‘meritocratic’ competition (Baker, 2018; Turner, 1960). This development (which is specific to the school field) must also be placed within a broader picture: contemporary societies, underpinned as they are by both democratic ideals and predominantly market-led modes of regulation, have shown a constant tendency to create new internal divisions. This leads to dynamics of segregation in matters such as the spatial organisation of cities, access to culture and even to fundamental goods such as health or education. In other words, segregation in education is inextricably linked to segregation dynamics in the structure of society.

1.2 An Expanding Field of Study: Shared Assumptions and Unsolved Questions Thus, although segregation seems to be a very well-established reality in most educational systems, it only became a matter of concern for scholars in the 1960s, and more intensively from the early 2000s. First explored in the US (with a special focus

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on racial segregation), the issue was then addressed a little later in other national contexts, with attention gradually broadening to include all the various dimensions of school segregation, and a particular focus on socioeconomic segregation patterns (see Bonal & Bellei, 2018 and in this volume). But it is principally over the past two decades that it has become both a significant field of research and a key issue for international educational governance institutions (such as UNESCO and the OECD). As such, it has brought to light the negative consequences of segregation – in terms of academic achievement, of course, but also in terms of other aspects of schooling (social cohesion, democratic participation, etc.). Now that the ‘segregation issue’ is firmly on the agenda (alongside the intensified research activity it has generated), both a growing international body of knowledge and a set of shared assumptions have been constituted. Until now, however, few attempts have been made at producing a systematic review of this complex issue (see for e.g. Bonal & Bellei, 2018; Chmielewski & Savage, 2016). And even where such systematic reviews do exist, they tend to conclude that segregation patterns always arise out of a complex combination of factors embedded in particular societal and educational structures (see Bonal & Bellei, 2018). In this area, as in many others in social sciences, generalisation is difficult  – perhaps even intrinsically impossible. Nevertheless, the conviction shared by the editors of this book is that there was a need for a more systematic analysis, especially around specific assumptions and emerging topics. Of these, the role played by educational markets, and by market policies in education have recently been insistently underlined. While school segregation can clearly not be exclusively attributed to school (quasi-)market mechanisms, contemporary research in (the sociology and economics of) education has documented how such market logics might exacerbate it. Seminal work on this topic has been carried out in both Belgium and Chile (the central cases under study in this book). With schools competing to attract certain categories of students (in line with their prognosis in terms of behaviour, performance and/or compatibility with the institutional project), and as a result of the strategic behaviour of students (and their families), educational quasi-markets generate specific educational ‘niches’ that are organised around matching predetermined categories of schools and segments of the population, and this exacerbates segregation (Bellei, 2015; Dupriez & Cornet, 2005; Dupriez & Wattiez, 2016). On a broader scale, a finger is increasingly pointed at the market-oriented reforms that have developed over the past two decades at a global level, which appear to increase the socioeconomic and academic segregation of school systems – especially when they simultaneously encourage inter-school competition, parental free choice, private participation in school supply and school autonomy (Bonal & Bellei, 2018; Hogan & Thompson, 2020; Verger et al., 2016). Nonetheless, as we will see later in this volume (see Chap. 6 in particular), a close analysis of the local effects of such market-led policies on several segregation indicators calls for caution and a nuanced interpretation. Therefore, one central objective of the present volume was to offer new, up-to-date reviews (based on international literature and available databases) regarding the evolution of school segregation across time and space – particularly as it relates to the introduction of market-led policies. This will be addressed in the first part of the book (Chaps. 4, 5 and 6).

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This book was also born out of a conviction that several critical issues relating to the relationship between segregation and market policies remain inadequately addressed. In this respect, we distinguish between theoretical (or conceptual) questions, normative questions and political questions. A first set of questions is theoretical in nature. Researching ‘segregation’ and ‘educational markets’ demands a conceptual effort, as many scholars take these notions for granted and/or refer to contrasting (and sometimes incongruent) definitions. Using the concepts of ‘educational markets’ or ‘market policies’ in education might indeed result in some confusion, as it tends to blur the boundaries between historical forms of ‘quasi-markets’ (referring to the combination of free school choice with segmentation of the supply on the basis of philosophical or sociological grounds (Vandenberghe, 1999)), and recent market educational policies in global educational governance – defined by diversification of educational supply and inter-­ school competition, often combined with accountability mechanisms, and sometimes with privatisation too (Zancajo et al., Chap. 5 in this volume). From a purely theoretical point of view, we must be cautious in using the concept of the ‘market’ (imported from economics) as a sociological tool. Until now, few attempts have been made to build a sociological understanding of what an educational market actually is. In this book, following Draelants’ insightful proposal (see Chap. 3), we will consider educational markets as a social reality embedded in political and institutional arrangements, within a context that shapes social actors’ representations, values, behaviour and strategies. The issue of school segregation is similarly complex and controversial, and it is the precise intention of the authors of this volume to draw a picture that reflects this complexity. Beyond the obvious normative and political ‘charge’ of the notion (see below), using the concept of segregation for research purposes requires clarification of the dimensions, criteria and scales at which it will be examined – which inevitably raises important methodological questions. This complexity is all the greater in contemporary societies, where new dimensions of segregation (gender, race, ethnicity, etc.) have acquired fresh saliency  – whereas most classical analyses of these issues have tended to focus on social class (sometimes in intersection with ‘race’). Relatively recent phenomena, such as the massive settling of migrants in some traditional emigration countries (such as Chile) and a general sensitivity to sex inequalities have provided new avenues for research and policy on educational segregation. In parallel, new perspectives on social class segregation patterns are also worthy of attention: for instance, according to recent analyses, the problem lies not only in the school segregation of the lower social classes, but also in the fact that the middle (or even upper) social classes in some countries are segregated, with each of these groups educated in an isolated way. According to some critical perspectives, this situation would undermine the social cohesion that is desirable for a democratic society. Lastly, recent studies have shed light on the importance of exploring new scales of segregation in schooling  – with, for example, new significant developments on ‘within school’ segregation (between tracks or classes) (see Chaps. 7, 8 and 13 in this volume). To sum up, school segregation appears to be a dynamic phenomenon, and as such its analysis and policies require constant updating.

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A second set of open questions associated with this field of research is normative or axiological in nature. While school segregation can be defined descriptively (as an uneven distribution of distinct social groups in schools), it almost inevitably raises normative, axiological and political issues, insofar as i) it assumes that (due to the structure of social relations in society) the distinct social categories under study are endowed with differentiated social values; and ii) according to some scholars, it implies taking into account the negative consequences for the segregated populations, whether in terms of unequal distribution of resources, or in terms of marginalisation (van Zanten, 2001; Delvaux, 2005; Dupriez et al., 2018). As a matter of fact, the term ‘segregation’ inevitably evokes the longstanding history of intentional exclusion of Black populations in the United States (and in other contexts) not only from education, but also from the social and political rights that allow full participation in citizenship. Nowadays, an analysis of schooling segregation according to social or ethnic and cultural grounds presupposes not just a careful examination of how geographical, institutional and organisational forms of separation of students lead to systematic disadvantages, but also consideration of the ethical dimensions of these separation patterns. Which criteria, and which evaluative frameworks, should determine that school segregation be considered as a moral or ethical problem? In other words, as the philosopher Hervé Pourtois asks in this volume (Chap. 2): ‘Why is segregation a problem? What’s wrong with segregation?’ The question is neither insignificant nor innocent. Answering it demands reflection and raises questions about the purposes of school systems in our societies to which there is no consensus on the answers. An understanding of the desired outcomes a given school system aspires to is necessary to assessing the place and importance of school segregation in the academic and political debate. It also seems important to observe the way in which these purposes or desirable outcomes are operationalized through the educational process – and this includes not only pedagogical aspects, but also the organisational differentiation of schools, which can lead to unequal learning and socialising contexts. In this sense, two main arguments against school segregation are usually developed. On the one hand, it is argued that school segregation is relevant only when it implies different learning achievements between the separated groups. From this perspective, similar learning achievements between institutionally-segregated social groups at school level would theoretically wipe out the political relevance of such segregation. Similarly, it is also argued that desegregated schools could generate higher academic achievement for pupils (especially within the most disadvantaged segments of the population) as a result of so-­ called peer effect. From this perspective, desegregation is desirable because it produces greater efficiency in the school system. On the other hand, this purely instrumental argument is countered by another one, which points out that, regardless of academic results, the reduction of school segregation is a vehicle for generating other learning –this time civic in nature, such as tolerance, a sense of democracy and the ability to live in a diverse society. Some recent studies (carried out in the Belgian context) tend to show that differentiation in educational supply generates contrasting socialisation contexts, conveying specific values and attitudes towards norms and discipline, and thus contributing to the forging of different types of social agents; such fragmentation could be considered a further aspect of segregation (see

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Chap. 15). These perspectives, along with the academic and political discussions they engender, are alluded to at various points in this volume, and in particular by Pourtois (Chap. 2) and Dupriez et al. (Chap. 15). A third set of questions concerns the critical analysis of public policy and/or public action. First of all, how is it that for decades, the issue of school segregation remained largely unseen? In the name of which other political concerns, and regarding which evaluative frameworks? Through which processes, and in which sociohistorical contexts, has it gradually been constructed as a public problem? Which (political, educational or social) actors have taken up the issue? And what kind of diagnoses and strategies have they turned to? And to what extent have educational policies been considered a priority lever with which to tackle segregation, or been combined with other public policy axes (such as urban and residential policies, housing policies, etc.?). Second, what kind of policies have been deployed to remedy the situation, in the name of which objectives, and with what effects? As underlined by Zancajo et  al. in this volume (Chap. 5), an important proportion of educational policies aimed at reducing school segregation propose acting on educational market mechanisms and controlling (or mitigating) their negative effects. How have policy makers and social actors thematised this relationship? And lastly, in what way have the globalised ‘new educational policies’ transformed or reconfigured the traditional forms of school markets inherited from history, as well as their links with different forms of segregation? Beyond these political aspects, the cognitive and cultural dimensions of school segregation deserve to be highlighted and investigated. Firstly (and while we fully acknowledge the objective weight of material reality, such as residential segregation or social stratification structures), the analysis of the cognitive dimension of public policies, i.e. the cultural frameworks in which problems are defined and constructed, is essential (Muller, 2000). Secondly, if segregation does seem a persistent phenomenon, remaining impervious to numerous policy interventions, this is because social actors tend to confer a certain degree of legitimacy upon it. In other words, segregation can also be explained by the cultural and ideological dispositions present in various social groups in contemporary societies. Far from being rejected, in many countries the segregation of students enjoys some degree of legitimacy, and the strategies used by school actors serve to reinforce this on a daily basis. As a result, the policies seeking to mitigate it have often been resisted and contested – as shown in the cases discussed in this book.

1.3 (French-Speaking) Belgium and Chile: Two In-Depth Case Studies as a Lever for Reflection The editors of this book share an assumption that understanding educational segregation necessarily involves an analysis of how it is embedded in a specific historical, social and institutional configuration, including both the societal dimensions and those related to the layout of the education system (Bonal & Bellei, 2018). In this book, (French-speaking) Belgium and Chile have been chosen as cases for such an

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embedded exploration. Our conviction was that only in-depth case studies would lead to comprehension of how specific segregation schemes are rooted in specific history and shaped by dependency paths, both institutional and political. In this volume, the first part offers a theoretical discussion and a summary of the international state-of-play in the field, while the second part focuses exclusively on Belgium and Chile. In both contexts, the ‘genesis’ of school segregation is reconstituted in relation to the political and institutional history of the country; in this way, we provide an up-to-date description of segregation patterns, according to various measures and scales. For each country, there is an observationally-rooted and critical analysis of the main public policies (directly or indirectly) aimed at tackling school segregation. Again, contextualization is needed here, if we are to understand the social meaning of policies and the pathways forged by their failures and successes. The choice of these two specific societies (one from the ‘old Europe’, with a strong social-democratic political history, the other from the ‘emergent South’, with a complex and conflicted recent political history that is profoundly marked by the historical struggle for democratisation, countered by dictatorship and neoliberalism) may seem surprising at a first glance. However, as consideration of their school system history and organisation soon reveals, French-speaking Belgium and Chile share a number of common elements. For instance, in both societies, the presence of publicly-subsidised private schools has been observed ever since the country’s foundation – and this explains why such schools continue to make up the majority of educational provision (56% of students in Chile, and above 50% in French-­ speaking Belgium). Secondly (and this is consistent with the first point), in both countries, parental choice of school is a longstanding constitutional principle, and as such is also deeply-rooted culturally. This principle has inevitably found itself at odds with policies aimed at reducing school segregation. Both of these points also explain why both Belgium and Chile have been studied internationally as examples of educational systems structured on the basis of the school quasi-market mechanism (Felouzis et al., 2013; Vandenberghe, 1999) and chosen as preferred fields for the analysis of how school systems based on such market mechanisms produce particular segregation dynamics (see, among others, Monseur & Lafontaine, 2012; Dupriez & Dumay, 2011; Valenzuela et al., 2010, 2014). Obviously, the social and political history of both countries profoundly diverged in the course of the second half of the twentieth century, and even now, they continue to be characterised by very distinct social structures and dissimilarity indices (see the concluding chapter of this volume). Chile is often presented as an emblematic case for ‘new public policies’ in education, and has, since the 1980s, implemented new forms of educational governance and strong accountability devices – whereas Belgium has only recently (and even then, timidly) adopted some elements of this new global political rationale. Interestingly, however, recent educational policies in Chile and Belgium present some similarities, as various attempts to regulate and mitigate the negative effects of the school market have been carried out, especially with regard to segregation (the Inclusion Law in Chile and Enrolment Decrees in Belgium, as described in the central part of the book). In both cases, however, the ‘core’ of school system regulation has remained untouched because the institutional

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and legal foundations of the school market (parental free choice and the freedom to create schools) have not really been challenged. Yet such policy convergence does bear the mark of distinct political and societal trajectories; for instance, as mentioned in the concluding chapter of this book, recent policies aimed at regulating the school market appear more ambitious in Chile than in Belgium – at least in terms of limiting freedom of educational supply (cf. the restrictions imposed on the possibility of opening new schools in Chile, from 2015 onwards). In contrast, the weight of a more unequal social structure in Chile, coupled with the stronger historical capacity of the elites to preserve their privileges by maintaining a fully private sector (largely protected from public regulation) is striking in comparison with the more egalitarian distribution of social positions in Belgium. This probably does affect the real possibility of implementing change in the Chilean educational system. As a result, (partially similar) political orientations and inherited social structures operate as complex (and often conflicting) forces within unique national configurations. This is why the mirror comparison of the analysis of these two cases, in their convergences and divergences, immediately seemed potentially fruitful to the editors of this book, from the beginning of their collaboration.

1.4 Methodological Considerations Considering both the similarities and the differences, our in-depth analysis of school segregation patterns in Chile and French-speaking Belgium must be considered an opportunity for a cross-resonance aimed at drawing out transversal reflections, rather than a strictly comparative attempt. This approach is in line with a long methodological tradition in social sciences, thematised in the French tradition as ‘societal analysis’ (Maurice et  al., 1982), which invites scholars to analyse a social phenomenon within its context, considered as a complex configuration of political, institutional and social dimensions. This tradition claimed to break with both ‘culturalism’ (which focuses on the ‘local’, idiosyncratic version of a phenomenon, emphasising the specificities of a national history, social structure and culture) and ‘functionalism’ (which, in contrast, is concerned with common processes, thought of as functionally equivalent and comparable over time and space (Verhoeven et al., 2022). This ‘societal approach’ aims to overcome the limitations of each of these two traditions (or, to put it another way, seeks to retain the benefits of each) by maintaining the in-depth nature of ‘culturalist’ case studies without foregoing the possibility of building cross-cutting analytical frameworks. It suggests paying close attention to the specific ways in which an issue is manifested (according to local social structures) while an in-depth, idiosyncratic approach is considered a necessary first step towards the gradual identification of cross-cutting mechanisms and the construction of an analytical framework capable of accounting for a diversity of configurations. This book does not claim to fully develop this method of societal comparison, though there has been a deliberate attempt to leave room for the specificities of the

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Chilean and Belgian case studies, in all their historical and institutional complexity. But this ‘moment’ (which constitutes the second part of this volume) has served as a springboard for transversal reflections, in dialogue with a broader overview of the international literature. Moreover, the criteria of construction and analysis of the ‘cases’ have gradually emerged out of a rational cross-discussion between the main contributors to the book about relevant comparable issues, rather than being fully defined from the outset. But the effort we have put into constructing portraits or images of each ‘case’ does not mean reducing them to a limited number of identified variables. Our methodological positioning was also influenced by more recent developments in the sociology of regulation and public action (Lendaro, 2012), with many authors of the present volume paying particular attention to the ‘cultural’ or ‘cognitive’ aspects of public policies (that is, to the frames of meaning that underlie them). As shown in several chapters of the book, local segregation patterns have much to do with culture and shared common sense, as well as with societal and educational structures or organisational dimensions. Although contributors to this volume do not necessarily share the same epistemological or methodological standpoint, most chapters of this book do make room for the historical, political, organisational and ‘cultural’ or cognitive aspects of segregation patterns and policies. A similar ‘dialogical’ effort was also made at a theoretical level. The authors of this volume obviously come from a variety of disciplines and theoretical backgrounds (namely sociology of education, educational sciences and psychology, economics of education). Therefore, in order to maximise theoretical coherence between the different parts of the work, the project was organised in several stages. An initial period was dedicated to the theoretical construction of the notions of segregation and school market, in parallel with conducting the literature reviews. An initial online workshop allowed researchers from different backgrounds to learn about these theoretical and conceptual advances. Although this effort is probably not fully complete and could be extended, we did invite all authors to be aware of this common shared conceptual language while writing their own chapters.

1.5 Structure of the Book To make room for conceptual elaboration, an updated account of the state-of-play, and the two central ‘cases’ under study, the book is structured in three parts. The first part (“Foundations: theoretical grounds, literature reviews and empirical balance”) establishes the theoretical base and contextualizes the research object in a broader field. An initial section discusses each of the two concepts that lie at the heart of our object of study: philosopher Hervé Pourtois discusses the concept of school segregation through the lens of ethics and social philosophy (Chap. 1), and sociologist Hugues Draelants reflects on the concept of educational (quasi-)markets through the lens of the sociology of markets and the sociology of education (Chap.

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2). This first part also includes the three key chapters offering original and focused literature reviews concerning the relationship between school segregation and the educational market and market policies (Chap. 4), educational markets’ political conceptions and reforms (Chap. 5) and lastly a quantitative analysis of segregation trends throughout 33 OECD countries, from 2000 to 2018 (Chap. 6). The second part of the book (“Roots of segregation and attempts to desegregate in two contexts”) focuses exclusively on the presentation of the Chilean and Belgian cases. Two chapters are dedicated to each of these in-depth case studies: one on the historical roots and description of segregation patterns, and another on the critical analysis of the main policies aimed at reducing segregation rates and mitigating the negative effect of educational markets. These central chapters have, in particular, nurtured the conclusive reflections developed in the last chapter of the book. The third and final part of this volume presents a series of chapters that are either developing ‘emerging issues’ or ongoing situations in which segregation processes are operating within the education systems of the countries considered. In this sense, new dimensions of segregation are explored (such as ethnic segregation, as a result of recent migration patterns in Chile), while the examination of a specific segment of the population (namely the elite segment of the Chilean population) allows us to understand segregation from a little-explored angle. Other contributions demonstrate how the examination of segregation at new scales (such as within schools segregation) or at other institutional levels (such as higher education) allows us to build a broader picture of this complex phenomenon, shedding light on less-visible mechanisms. Finally, the last chapter attempts to describe and conceptualise the effects of segregation in terms of socialisation in Belgium (Chap. 15). This book is the result of a 4-year inter-university collaboration, partially supported and funded through Wallonie-Bruxelles International cooperation programme (CMP 20). The project has allowed the consolidation of scientific links between researchers from the French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) (and more specifically from GIRSEF  as a research centre), and researchers from two Chilean universities that have developed an expertise in the field of education: the University of Chile (particularly the CIAE) and the University Alberto Hurtado, which also made a financial contribution to this project. Our colleagues at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with whom we have a long tradition of scientific collaboration, were also extensively called upon for their expertise in this field of research.

References Baker, D.  P. (2018). Where have all the elites gone? Cultural transformation of elitism in the schooled society. In C. Maxwell, U. Deppe, H. H. Krüger, & W. Helsper (Eds.), Elite education and internationalisation. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­59966-­3_2 Baluteau, F., Dupriez, V., & Verhoeven, M. (Eds.). (2018). Entre tronc commun et filières, quelle école moyenne ? Etude comparative. Academia/L’Harmattan.

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Bellei, C. (2015). El gran experimento: Mercado y privatización de la educación chilena.. LOM ediciones. Bonal, X., & Bellei, C. (Eds.). (2018). Understanding school segregation. Patterns, causes and consequences of spatial inequalities in education. Bloomsbury. https://doi. org/10.5040/9781350033542 Chapoulie, J. M. (2006). Mutations de l’institution «Éducation nationale» et inégalités à l’école: une perspective historique. Les Temps Modernes, 637-638-639(3), 8–83. Chmielewski, A.  K., & Savage, C. (2016). Socioeconomic segregation between schools in the United States and Latin America, 1970–2012. In G. W. McCarthy, G. K. Ingram, & S. A. Moody (Eds.), Land and the City (pp. 394–423). Lincoln Institute of Land Policy). https://www.lincolninst.edu/es/publications/books/land-­city Delvaux, B. (2005). Ségrégation scolaire dans un contexte de libre choix et de ségrégation résidentielle. In M. Demeuse, A. Baye, M.-H. Straeten, J. Nicaise, & A. Matoul (Eds.), Vers une école juste et efficace: vingt-six contributions sur les systèmes d’enseignement et de formation: une approche internationale (pp. 275–295). De Boeck. Dupriez, V., & Cornet, J. (2005). La rénovation de l’école primaire: Comprendre les enjeux du changement pédagogique. De Boeck Supérieur. Dupriez, V., & Dumay, X. (2011). Les quasi-marchés scolaires: au bénéfice de qui? Revue Française de pédagogie, 176, 83–100. Dupriez, V., & Wattiez, R. (2016). Niches éducatives, identités catégorielles et marchés scolaires. In H. Draelants & X. Dumay (Eds.), Les écoles et leur réputation: L’identité des établissements en contexte de marché (pp. 85–102). De Boeck. Dupriez, V., Barbana, S., & Verhoeven, M. (2018). Structural and systemic dimensions of school segregation in French-speaking Belgium. In X.  Bonal & C.  Bellei (Eds.), Understanding school segregation. Patterns, causes and consequences of Spatial Inequalities in Education (pp. 45–65). Bloomsbury. Felouzis, G., Maroy, C., & van Zanten, A. (2013). Les marchés scolaires: sociologie d’une politique publique d’éducation. Presses universitaires de France. Grootaers, D. (Ed.). (1998). Histoire de l’enseignement en Belgique. CRISP. Hogan, A., & Thompson, G. (Eds.). (2020). Privatisation and commercialisation in public education: How the nature of public schooling is changing. Routledge. Kauko, J., Corvalán, J., Simola, H., & Carrasco, A. (2015). The historial dynamics in Chilean and Finnish basic education politics. In P. Seppänen, A. Carrasco, M. Kalalahti, R. Rinne, & H.  Simola (Eds.), Contrasting dynamics in education politics of extremes. School choice in Chile and Finland (pp. 29–52). Sense Publisher. Le Bot, Y. (1985). Educación e ideología en Colombia. Editorial La Carreta. Lendaro, A. (2012). Revisiter l’analyse sociétale aujourd’hui. Terrains travaux, 21(2), 109–124. https://doi.org/10.3917/tt.021.0109 Maurice, M., Sellier, F., & Silvestre, J. J. (1982). Politique d’éducation et organisation industrielle en France et en Allemagne: Essai d’analyse sociétale. Presses Universitaires de France. Merle, P. (2009). La démocratisation de l’enseignement. La Découverte. Meyer, J. W. (1977). The effects of education as an institution. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 55–77. https://doi.org/10.1086/226506 Monseur, C., & Lafontaine, D. (2012). Structure des systèmes éducatifs et équité: un éclairage international. In M. Crahay (Ed.), L’école peut-elle être juste et efficace? (pp. 185–220). De Boeck Supérieur. Muller, P. (2000). L’analyse cognitive des politiques publiques: vers une sociologie politique de l’action publique. Revue française de science politique, 50(2), 189–207. Prost, A. (2003). Education, société et politiques: une histoire de l’enseignement en France de 1945 à nos jours.. Editions du Seuil. Turner, R. H. (1960). Sponsored and contest mobility and the school system. American Sociological Review, 25(6), 855–867. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089982

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Valenzuela, J. P., Bellei, C., & De Los Ríos, D. (2010). Segregación escolar en Chile. Fin de ciclo, 2010, 209–229. Valenzuela, J. P., Bellei, C., & De Los Ríos, D. (2014). Socioeconomic school segregation in a market-oriented educational system. The case of Chile. Journal of Education Policy, 29(2), 217–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.806995 van Zanten, A. (2001). L’école de la périphérie. PUF. Vandenberghe, V. (1999). Combining market and bureaucratic control in education: An answer to market and bureaucratic failure? Comparative Education, 35(3), 271–282. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform (International perspectives on education reform). Teachers College Press. Verhoeven, M., Draelants, H., & Ilabaca Turri, T. (2022). The role of elite education in social reproduction in France, Belgium and Chile: Towards an analytical model. Journal of Sociology, 58(3), 304–323. Marie Verhoeven is Professor of Sociology at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and a senior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socialization, Education and Training (GIRSEF). Her research interests focus on social and ethnocultural educational inequalities, on the educational and socializing functions of schooling, and on educational policies regarding inequalities and segregation, diversity and inclusion, and violence. Her research perspective crosses qualitative approaches, sociological theory and social justice theory.  

Javier Corvalán holds a PHD in Sociology from the catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). He is currently professor and researcher at the Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago de Chile in the fields of Educational policies and Sociology of education. His main research topics are the reproductive dynamics of the Chilean educational system, the situation of indigenous and migrant peoples in it and the socio-cultural analysis of the educational policies.  

Vincent Dupriez is Professor at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) and senior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socialization, Education and Training (GIRSEF). Vincent Dupriez has developed research in the areas of education policy, educational inequalities, school administration and comparative education, with a strong interest for the new forms of governance and their impact on teachers and students.  

Juan Pablo Valenzuela is a Full Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Education (IE) and director of the Centre for Advanced Research in Education (CIAE), at the Universidad de Chile. He has a Master and PhD degrees in Economics, from the University of Michigan, AnnArbor. He has published several texts about school improvement in education, school leadership, and evaluation of public policies.  

Part I

Foundations: Theoretical Grounds, Literature Reviews and Empirical Balance

Chapter 2

What’s Wrong with Social Segregation Between Schools? Ethical Perspectives Hervé Pourtois

Abstract  There are several reasons to believe that social segregation is wrong. The value and weight given to these reasons are variable. They depend first of all on not reducing school segregation to a pure composition effect but also considering the dynamics of how it is produced and handled by and within the schools. These effects must then be considered in the light of the educational goals assigned to the school, which include not only the acquisition of knowledge and academic performance but the relational development of the child’s autonomy and democratic integration. The policies and practices aimed at eliminating the undesirable effects will depend on these goals but also on the rights of the children and the parents in the area of education. The examination of the multiple ethical issues at stake in school segregation should lead to the conclusion that the neutralisation of its undesirable effects entails redistributive practices, whether in terms of resources or school places. But it also requires recognition practices aimed at transforming the social representations associated with membership in a social group, as well as the goals of the school.

2.1 Introduction The appearance of the concepts of social segregation and school segregation in the social sciences raises questions that are at once epistemological and political. Why should a term that historically bears such negative connotations be adopted to describe and analyse a social reality? Doesn’t this conceptual use run the risk of breaking with the axiological neutrality one expects from a social scientist? Doesn’t Translated from French by Miriam Rosen. Warm thanks to Vincent Dupriez and Marie Verhoeven for their insightful comments on a first version of this text. H. Pourtois (*) Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 V. Dupriez et al. (eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation, Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_2

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the choice of this term by researchers in education sciences stem precisely from the fact that they generally agree on considering school segregation as a problem, if not an injustice? These observations, however evident they appear, must nonetheless be examined more closely. For outside of the most extreme forms – such as the selection of students on the basis of racial or ethnic criteria –, school segregation, the absence of social mixing in the schools, is not always seen as a major problem in public opinion. In addition, policies aimed at eliminating school segregation often arouse either sharp emotion (for Belgium’s Wallonia-Brussels Federation, see Rylaendt, 2013) or indifference. The gap between the researchers’ normative viewpoint, which is more or less implicit, and that of a large number of citizens might be explained, first of all, by the complexity of the social phenomenon included in the notion of school segregation. Its causes and effects are difficult to apprehend and thus often opaque for the public, including those who are its main victims. But this complexity is not limited to the understanding of what lies behind school segregation and desegregation policies. It is also tied to ethical issues. Indeed, if school segregation is not viewed as a scandal in everyone’s eyes, this is also due to the fact that the assessment of the practices that produce it or could counteract it often bring into play a multiplicity of values and principles that are subject to divergent opinions. In order to surmount, or at least understand, these disagreements, it is useful to clarify the values and principles at stake and the tensions that may arise between them as a way of responding to the question raised in the title of this essay: What’s wrong with social segregation between schools? In the remarks that follow, I will attempt to chart these ethical issues by focusing exclusively on socio-economic segregation between schools, without addressing other aspects of school segregation. I will therefore not consider forms of segregation outside of the education system (e.g., residential segregation), or other possible forms of segregation within the school system (e.g., segregation between programmes of study or that between classes within a given school). In addition, among the forms of segregation between schools, I will only address those related to socio-economic groups, social classes. There are others – related to ethnic origins, religious convictions (see Clayton et al., 2021) or student performance – but I will not deal with them here, in order to focus on the question concerning social segregation between schools: why does the fact that some socio-economic groups are overrepresented in certain schools pose an ethical problem?

2.2 What Is School Segregation? The Conceptual Framework As we have already indicated, the word segregation is charged with meaning. It evokes first of all the history of racial segregation, namely practices deliberately carried out by a dominant group in order to isolate dominated groups, to confine

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them in reserved areas. We can think of the fact, for example, that until the 1960s, certain southern states in the United States, had schools and universities exclusively reserved for whites. And unfortunately, such discriminatory policies and practices have not disappeared. For today’s education sciences, however, school segregation no longer refers only, or principally, to this kind of overt, intentional discrimination but rather, to a widely observable and analysed social phenomenon that characterises, to varying degrees, certain school systems: the uneven distribution of students in the schools according to their social origins (class, ethnic group, gender, religion, etc.). This unequal distribution – i.e., disproportionate in relation to the distribution of these groups in the population at large – is a matter of degree. When it is considerable, it can lead to the massive over-representation of one or several social groups within a school and thus, to a homogenisation of its public on the one hand and a marked differentiation from other schools attended by a different public. Such a situation does not necessarily, or even preponderantly, result from policies or practices aimed at producing them. In many cases, this de facto school segregation stems from systemic effects engendered by the structural features of an education system and/or the larger society. It thus seems that the organisation of an education system according to the quasi-market principle and the differentiation of provision would be, among others, powerful factors of school segregation (Dupriez, 2010 and Chaps. 3 and 4 of this volume). The counter-example often opposed to this social segregation found in some education systems is the social mix characterising other systems, which for our purposes can be defined as the coexistence of students from different social backgrounds within the same school (Savidan, 2018). The question of the nature and scope of these differences is complex, however. It has to be considered in the light of a given society’s social differences and inequalities but also the geographical environment of the school itself, which can be fairly mixed or, on the contrary, characterised by residential segregation. It should also be noted that the concept of social mix, as the word mix suggests, goes beyond simple diversity or heterogeneity. A mixed school is thus not characterised only by the coexistence of students from different social backgrounds but by actual mixing, intermingling, a form of positive interaction between these students. This positive relational dimension is the opposite of the negative one characterising a situation of segregation. And the relational aspect is crucial for an ethical approach.

2.3 An Ethical Approach to Social Segregation Between Schools After this brief sociological interpretation of social segregation as a social fact, we can begin to examine the reasons this fact can be considered unjust, or in any case undesirable, and that would consequently justify practices and policies aimed at ending or neutralising it in order to introduce greater social mixing in the schools.

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This does not mean that we are considering social segregation as an indicator or symptom of a form of injustice that must be remedied. Rather, we propose to examine how the socio-demographic composition of the schools and the differences between them in terms of this composition pose problems as such, from an ethical standpoint. In order to do so, it is obviously necessary to define the principles, the reasons according to which segregation itself can be judged undesirable. Drawing on a classic distinction in ethics, some authors (Savidan, 2018; Swift, 2021) propose two kinds of approaches to the question: the consequentialist arguments that base the ethical assessment of social school segregation on an examination of its consequences on the (non-)implementation of certain principles that should govern the organisation of the education system, and the deontological arguments that would accord an intrinsic value to social mixing within the schools, independent of its effects. In truth, a strictly deontological approach might seem difficult to maintain. The value attached to social mixing stems from the benefits it produces, just as the rejection of school segregation results from its undesirable effects. Given the difficulty of attributing an intrinsic value to it (Merry, 2021), I have opted here for what I would call a broadened consequentialist approach. From a consequentialist standpoint, the most frequent argument against school segregation bears on its consequences for educational justice in terms of the distribution of academic learning. As shown by many studies in the sociology of education (see the overview in Chap. 3 of this volume), social segregation between schools contributes to the reproduction of the educational and social inequalities associated with it. The negative impact of school segregation on the academic performance of socially disadvantaged students is a well documented social phenomenon. In particular, it makes teaching more difficult in schools with a concentration of students who are endowed with little socio-economic or cultural capital and are more distant from educational standards and culture in general because this concentration in itself generates dynamics unfavourable to learning. From this point of view, school segregation should be seen as a moral scandal. Indeed, we can argue that it is fundamentally unfair for a child’s educational trajectory (and life trajectory) to be largely determined not only by his or her social background but also by those of his or her classmates and the social composition of the school. In this case, public authorities should make every effort to stop this injustice and implement desegregation policies. However, as we will attempt to demonstrate in what follows, this argument is relevant but not sufficient. In order to broaden and develop the ethical perspective, we will explore three considerations: 1. An ethical assessment of a social phenomenon should always relate it to the practices that engender, reinforce or weaken it. In this case, the ethical assessment cannot assimilate school segregation to a simple problem of socio-­demographic composition (the distribution of students). It has to address

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segregation dynamically, by integrating the conditions that produce this distribution and the way it is dealt with, or not, within the schools. 2. A consequentialist assessment of segregation cannot be limited to identifying the impact of that segregation on educational and social inequalities; it must also consider the effects on the purposes assigned to the school and education in general. In particular, I will discuss the relational conditions of the student’s autonomous development and democratic integration. 3. Even if school segregation proves to be ethically problematic for several reasons, school desegregation policies face normative limits arising from the fundamental freedoms of parents and children, but also the relational dimension of segregation.

2.4 How School Segregation Is Produced and Dealt With A narrow consequentialist ethical approach could be limited to an assessment of the effects induced by the schools’ socio-demographic composition on the students, whatever the cause. However, such an approach would be too restrictive for two reasons. First of all, it is difficult to remain totally indifferent to the question of whether an unequal social distribution of social groups between schools is the result of a deliberate policy of segregation, of selection practices implemented by certain schools or of a systemic effect of the educational market. It is easier to condemn the segregation induced by government policy than that arising from the aggregation of parental behaviours with regards to school or programme choices. Admittedly, these aggregation effects are no more natural, or necessary, than those resulting from deliberately discriminatory education policies; they stem from practices that can be modified if there is a belief that they should be modified. And yet, a fairly simple thought experiment permits us to realise that the conditions producing school segregation must be integrated into our ethical questioning: Given a configuration x for the social distribution of places within and among schools, would it make a difference if this configuration were produced (a) by a government policy distributing students according to their racial background; (b) by a government policy distributing students according to their academic outcomes at the end of primary school; (c) by a selective admissions process based on academic outcomes; (d) by the effect of residential segregation; (e) by the effect of free competition among schools? It is quite likely that for many of us, even if the effect in terms of students distribution is identical, situation a would be judged fundamentally unacceptable, while situation e would be judged differently, because the processes leading to the segregation are different and cannot be assessed according to the same principle.

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While situation a has to do with intentional discrimination, this is not the case in situation e (which could be considered problematic for other reasons). It is therefore impossible to assess the acceptability of a given configuration of segregation without taking into account the processes that have produced it and the choices underlying it. Furthermore, it would also be an error to assimilate the effects of segregation to pure ‘composition effects’ (Swift, 2021). In most cases, it is the disproportionate demographic composition that reveals the existence of segregation. However, the unjust nature of that composition will be highly dependent on the way it is handled within the school. It is conceivable that the potentially harmful effects of an unwanted concentration of the poorest students in certain schools could be contained, if not neutralised, by appropriate teaching practices and an appropriate organisation of social life in the schools. In that case, the effects of school segregation could be reduced in spite of the absence of changes in the institution’s socio-­ demographic composition. Conversely, social heterogeneity in a school could have adverse effects on its most disadvantaged students if that diversity is not associated with adequate teaching practices. Indeed, the history of the introduction of gender mixing in the schools shows that it does not suffice to place girls and boys in the same classes in order to rid the class of gender injustices and eliminate segregation from mentalities and educational practices. Ultimately, what is important is not only the distribution of places within and between schools but the way a teacher or a school confronted with a homogeneous public – whether it is socially privileged or not – deals with the situation. In an assessment of school segregation, it is difficult to isolate the schools’ socio-demographic characteristics from their other specific features, in particular their educational practices, the organisation of school life and the social representations structuring them. The foregoing remarks lead to the conclusion that the ethical assessment of social segregation within the schools cannot be limited to a consideration of the effects of their socio-demographic composition. It is necessary to consider this segregation in a dynamic way, through an assessment that integrates (1) the processes and choices shaping the social composition; (2) the ways that composition is handled within the schools and their impact on the achievement of its educational purposes. We will now consider the reasons that can be opposed to socially driven school segregation in terms of its impact on the achievement of the aims of school-based education.

2.5 School Segregation: What Effects on Which Purposes? An ethical approach to social segregation between schools necessitates an assessment of the possible consequences of this segregation on the achievement of the purposes assigned to the educational institution. These may vary from one context to another but it is nonetheless possible to identify three essential purposes.

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2.5.1 School Segregation and Academic Performance The most common expectation is that the school ensures, in the most efficient and fairest possible way, the transmission of the knowledge the society considers important to provide to all or part of its members. Studies in the sociology of education show us that socially based school segregation exacerbates inequalities in student academic performances and the effect of social inequalities on these performances and in return, the effect of educational inequalities (e.g., Dumay et  al., 2010). Attending a school with a concentration of socio-economically disadvantaged students complicates the acquisition of the learning and social capital that permit access to social positions. The school should in fact ensure the acquisition of knowledge and skills that the students can mobilise in their adult life. It is based on the promise that this transmission could help to reduce social inequalities (Dubet & Duru-Bellat, 2020). And yet, as Bourdieu’s research has shown us, the education system can on the contrary feed the reproduction of inequalities and school segregation could be one of the contributing factors. This approach has been widely documented, through both the sociological analysis of the mechanisms producing and reproducing inequalities and normative reflection on the principles of social and educational justice that are at stake.1 That said, it might be asked whether this approach does not give an overly limited view of the problems caused by school segregation. In fact, it only considers the effects of segregation on student academic performances and the access to the economic resources and positions permitted or conditioned by these outcomes. While it is easy to accept that the school should ensure the transmission of certain knowledge and opportunities for socio-economic integration to all children and teenagers, there is no simple consensus on the nature and scope of the knowledge to be transmitted or the criteria of a fair allocation of the resources to be devoted to it. Without entering into the details of this debate, it is easy to see that once we go beyond core learning – reading, writing, arithmetic –, the question of the nature and scope of what every student should know at the end of his or her schooling is controversial. And above all, the impact of school segregation will be judged differently depending on whether we consider that educational fairness requires ensuring that all students acquire core knowledge (equality of outcomes), neutralising the impact of social background on educational pathways that can be quite different, if not hierarchical (equal opportunity) or raising the average level of student performances within a population (effectiveness). An evaluation based on a given pattern of school segregation must at least specify the criterion or criteria on which it is based. And the same is true for the assessment of desegregation policies aimed at overcoming the negative consequences of school segregation. But all of that is not sufficient either, because the school’s missions cannot be reduced to transmitting academic knowledge and contributing to a fair integration into the social division of labour. Our education systems define other objectives for  On the normative aspect, see in particular Brighouse, 2002, 2007; Dubet, 2004; Pourtois, 2008.

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the school and therefore, it is also necessary to assess the impact of school segregation with regards to the realisation of these objectives. This situation significantly complicates the response to the question at hand. The identification of the school’s missions, the relative priority accorded to each of them, as well as the degree to which the school is supposed to contribute to them, hardly enjoy consensus, even within a single education system. Certain philosophers have attempted to define them. Brighouse et al. (2016) thus identify six ‘educational goods’ as purposes for the school: ‘economic productivity, personal autonomy, democratic competence, healthy personal relationships, treating others as equals and personal fulfilment’. Ben Ayed (2015, p. 30), meanwhile, distinguishes six principles involved in social mixing in the school. To simplify matters, I will limit myself here, in addition to the issue of student performances described above, to two other missions that seem essential in regard of school segregation: ensuring the relational bases of the development of personal autonomy and integration into a democratic way of life.

2.5.2 School Segregation and Relational Bases of Autonomy Throughout their schooling, children, young people, develop their personalities and construct their identities as subjects. The school plays a crucial role in this process, even if the parents or other living environments contribute as well. And here, the school’s key role is due not only to the knowledge it dispenses but also because it is a living environment where children and young people interact among themselves and with adults and thus offers what is often termed a ‘hidden curriculum’. In particular, the school is expected to contribute to a child’s development in order to make him or her an autonomous adult. The nature of this autonomy, what the school can and should contribute to it along with the family and other educational environments, are all subject to debate. Philippe Foray (2016) thus distinguishes (1) pragmatic autonomy, or the ability to do things by oneself; (2) moral autonomy, or the ability to identify life choices and realise them; (3) intellectual autonomy, or the ability to think and judge by oneself. The development of autonomy, in its different dimensions, is based on ‘supports’ favouring socialisation. The school provides such supports, not only by transmitting the knowledge and intellectual skills listed in the study programmes but because it is a living environment where children/young persons spend a great deal of their time and meet other young people of their age and adults who do not belong to their family circle. Within this normalised framework, the quality of the interactions and the form of the relationships of recognition forged on this occasion are crucial for the development of their autonomy, in its intellectual, pragmatic and moral dimensions. It is also crucial for acquiring relational attitudes conducive to the development of the autonomy of others. As demonstrated by the work of Axel Honneth in particular, the access to autonomy in its different dimensions is only possible through favourable relationships of

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recognition.2 The fact of attending a school that is socially and culturally more homogeneous than the society at large reduces students’ exposure to diversity, and this can affect the development of their moral and intellectual autonomy and their ability to recognise that of others. Conversely, the exposure to lifestyles and orientations that are different from that of the original family setting and social environment favours this autonomy. It allows children to discover that other ways of life are possible and consequently, to step outside of themselves, to take a deliberate position on the nature of their existence and what they would like to make of it, but also on the lifestyles of others, all of which are essential attitudes in a complex, cosmopolitan world (Beck, 2006, p. 87). Similarly, exposure to diversity has epistemological virtues: the confrontation with different thoughts and judgements can lead students to build and formulate their own. Social mixing, like cultural or religious mixing within the school and the class, is thus a condition that can greatly, although not necessarily, promote the formation of subjects who are morally and intellectually autonomous and capable of recognising, respecting and sometimes even developing friendships with other persons who do not have the same social background or outlook on life. It helps to ensure the child’s right to an open future (Feinberg, 1980) that is chosen rather than imposed. This applies to all students, regardless of their social background. Conversely, the social homogeneity of schools and classes threatens to lock students into their social environments and reinforce stereotypes about social groups, whether they are dominant or dominated. From the standpoint of an autonomous subjectification that is open to otherness, we can see here that school segregation is harmful for all students, regardless of their social background. Thus, it does not penalise only children from disadvantaged socio-economic environments but also those who are more privileged socially and whose moral development can be compromised as well by socialisation conditions that offer little exposure to diversity. However, from the standpoint of subjectification, educational mixing can sometimes turn out to be problematic as well. A child’s forced immersion in a school or class with a large majority of students from a very different social environment can generate effects of (self-)exclusion and loss of self-confidence (Charmes, 2009; Seaton et al., 2010).

2.5.3 School Segregation and Democratic Integration It is often maintained that the school should play a decisive role in building and consolidating a democratic form of ‘living together’. Today, this expression is perhaps overworked and instrumentalised by a certain political rhetoric. But it still expresses a significant idea emphasised in particular by John Dewey (1927): democracy is not just a set of procedures and institutions; it is above all a form of shared life in which different interests and groups can express themselves and interact. The  See Honneth, 1995. On the implications of this approach for educational justice, see Michiels, 2016.

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development of this form of shared life is based on learning processes in which the school plays an important role. It is the school’s role as a site of democratic learning that allows it to contribute to democratic integration, in the sense that the citizens’ disposition and ability to recognise each other as equal members forming a single political community (or ‘public’, to borrow Dewey’s term). Drawing on this approach, Elizabeth Anderson notes that social segregation, particularly in the school, undermines democratic integration (Anderson, 2010; Jørgensen, 2016). Indeed, segregation leads first of all to the (future) citizens’ ignorance of the situation and interests of other citizens who do not belong to their own social group. This can feed prejudices and negative stereotypes, as well as truncated views that bias political decisions at the expense of the dominated social groups. In addition, school segregation is seen as detrimental to the attainment of democratic integration because it introduces into the social landscape, both spatially and symbolically, an inequality between social groups that can be experienced as stigmatising and discriminatory by those who are victims of it and which can further the reproduction of a non-egalitarian vision among the dominant and the dominated alike (Oberti, 2021). Social segregation between schools gives credence to the idea that there are second-class schools, because there are second-class citizens. If the school is supposed to contribute to making society democratic, its functioning and social set-up have to express equality and its corollary, the principle of a universal ability to learn. We can therefore conclude that in order to assess the ethical (un-)acceptability of school segregation, it is not enough to consider its effects on the distribution of student academic performances and the access to positions in the social division of labour. And even if it were possible to neutralise its negative impact in these areas, school segregation would still remain problematic. Because it is also necessary – and admittedly more complicated – to consider the consequences on the development of the subjects’ autonomy and democratic integration. It is safe to say that from these points of view, the balance sheet of school segregation in social terms often tends to be negative. That said, it is still possible for certain forms of school segregation to have positive effects, or, to put it another way, that a high degree of social mixing can produce harmful effects. As some authors have indicated (Charmes, 2009; Seaton et  al., 2010), social mixing in a class, especially when it is imposed, can be harmful for the most vulnerable and/or poorest students, who may face stigmatisation by their classmates without daring to assert themselves. It is therefore necessary to remain cautious when attempting to implement policies aimed at creating greater social mixing in the schools.

2.6 What Policy Responses to School Segregation? Ethical reflection cannot be limited to the assessment of social situations. It must also bear on the practices aimed at transforming these situations so as to make them less unjust, and this is much more complicated. In our case – the denunciation of

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socially based school segregation  – it is necessary to identify the direction to be taken in order to reduce it or limit the conditions behind it and its undesirable effects. Here, things become difficult, because the policies to be implemented will depend on the basic reasons that justify the opposition to school segregation but also on principles that might ultimately limit what can legitimately be done on this issue (Swift, 2021). In order to analyse the ethical stakes of policies for combating school segregation, I will use the conceptual framework proposed by the North American philosopher Nancy Fraser (1995). On the assumption that social justice requires the guarantee of the conditions necessary for equal participation in social life, Fraser identifies two kinds of politics or policies that can be mobilised in order to overcome obstacles to the attainment of these condition. 1. In the face of economic injustices, redistributive policies or practices aim to correct the distribution of socio-economic resources by acting on the structural causes or introducing compensation mechanisms. 2. Cultural injustices, meanwhile, would be caused by the fact that the dominant cultural models produce representations preventing the full participation of certain social groups in social life. They call for recognition policies or practices aimed at the deconstruction of such representations and/or the recognition of differences.3 It seems to me that Fraser’s distinction is useful for analysing the policies aimed at combating school segregation. Until now, these policies have mainly concerned redistribution. By emphasising the effects of school segregation on inequalities in student performances and opportunities for access to social positions, research in the sociology of education has often led to recommending two kinds of measures. In the first instance, those attempting to modify the socio-demographic composition of the schools so as to introduce greater social mixing (i.e., the fair allocation of school places). And when these first measures prove to be difficult to implement or insufficient, those opting to provide schools receiving disadvantaged student populations with more funding, additional educational resources and specially trained teachers, creating incentives to stabilise the teaching staff and so on. Unlike the first case, the aim here would not be to reduce school segregation but to compensate for its effects through a differentiated allocation of resources. Each of these approaches presents difficulties in terms of effectiveness on the one hand and legitimacy on the other.

 In more recent essays, Fraser (1998) mentions a third type of injustice: the political injustices that stem from the fact that some social groups are not sufficiently or appropriately represented in the political decision-making process. Representation politics would therefore be necessary to (re-) empower these groups and their members. We will not consider this type of injustice here. 3

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2.6.1 Redistributing School Places? Policies for allocating school places are not easy to set up. When social segregation is combined with residential segregation, such policies imply displacing the students towards schools outside of their living environment (known as ‘busing’ in the historic context of US school desegregation). This practice can in fact raise problems of integration, especially given that the presence of these students does not result from a conscious parental choice (Duru-Bellat, 2007). Allocating places also implies more or less binding provisions for regulating school enrolment. These often meet with opposition from middle- or upper-class parents, who develop strategies for circumventing them, in particular by sending their children to private schools (Van Zanten & Obin, 2008), thus making the regulation counterproductive and ultimately ineffective. These practices for regulating school enrolment have also raised ethical objections. Some argue that free school choice is a fundamental right based on parental autonomy and educational responsibility and that these cannot be restricted, even in the interest of legitimate social objectives such as reducing educational inequalities. The principle of free choice is often linked to that of freedom of association in order to justify a school’s right to select students for admission and in any case, that of proposing a specific educational programme, different from that of the other schools. Consequently, parents would be making a choice among a diversified provision. For some, these freedoms of choice and association, sometimes guaranteed in the Constitution, as is the case in Belgium, should take precedence over the goal of reducing school segregation. Within the context of this essay, we cannot enter into the ethical debate over the justification and limits of free school choice or determine whether it is a fundamental freedom that cannot be limited for reasons of educational justice (see Brighouse, 2002). Two remarks are necessary, however. For one thing, rather than viewing enrolment regulation systems as limits on freedom of school choice, we can conceive of them as potential means of guaranteeing all parents real opportunities for choice, which is often far from the case when the education market is not subject to regulation. In this context, freedom of school choice is not questioned but, on the contrary, guaranteed by the regulation of enrolment. It is no longer purely formal but real. For another, enrolment regulation practices inevitably lead to assigning some students to a school that would not have been their first choice or the first choice of their parents. This situation might give the impression that these students are being instrumentalised, or even sacrificed, for the sake of a social cause which will not benefit them. Such a sacrifice raises an ethical objection, namely that we cannot ‘use’ students – in other words, children – as a simple means of improving (hypothetically at least) the fate of a few others. This objection is more serious than the one invoking parental school choice because what is at stake here is the child’s right not to be treated as a means for the benefit of others, but rather, to receive the respect he or she merits per se (Swift, 2021).

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That said, two elements temper this objection somewhat. 1. First, if every child’s right not to be treated as a means places limits on public policy, it also places limits on the parents’ educational activity. The autonomy they are granted in this domain cannot be used for their own interests, the realisation of their conception of a ‘good’ life; it can only be justified by the promotion of the child’s interest. This autonomy is not a right that parents have over themselves (which is the case for freedom of conscience or freedom of expression); it is, as John Stuart Mill (1859) asserted, a right – and thus a power – they hold over another person. This right can only be justified, and should be limited, by the interest of the child, who should be its primary beneficiary. And this interest is what justifies the parents’ obligation to send their children to school and, for some, would justify a regulation of school enrolments. 2. In fact, as we have indicated, social mixing in the schools does not only benefits weaker, less socially advantaged students; it can also promote the autonomous development of all students, and their democratic integration, namely the creation of conditions in which all of them, regardless of their social backgrounds and academic performances, would be respected as ends in themselves. Foregrounding the interests of the children and the respect they deserve could therefore justify school mixing policies that are more conducive to the development of their autonomy. It is not obvious, however, that imposed social mixing will produce the expected results, if only because of the resistance it encounters. Another option would then be adopting policies which, while they cannot reduce school segregation, alleviate its effects through a redistribution of resources.

2.6.2 Redistributing Resources? Preferential policies for allocating resources to schools with disadvantaged students do not come up against sharp normative objections concerning the rights of parents or children. But if they encounter less resistance, they also have some limitations. The fact of attending, or having attended, a school benefiting from positive discrimination can be stigmatising and experienced as such by the students. And it is necessary to assess the impact that this can have on the development of the students attending them and their democratic integration. Those who attend these schools may feel discriminated against and the social marking associated with it can be unfavourable to democratic integration. In addition, a preferential allocation of resources does not guarantee that these will be used to reduce the effects of school segregation. It is therefore necessary to think about the appropriate form for policies aimed at eliminating this segregation if we consider that it affects not only socio-­ economic and educational inequalities but, as indicated above, autonomous development and democratic integration.

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2.6.3 Recognition Policies? The two types of measures we have just mentioned both come under what philosopher Nancy Fraser calls the redistributive policies: the redistribution of places in one case and that of resources in the other. For Fraser, the redistributive policies differ from the recognition policies. While the first are aimed at the division of resources, the second seek to transform the cultural representations and models that in some way prevent certain groups and their members from participating in social interaction as peers. The deconstruction of prejudices and stereotypes associated with gender, race or social background thus come under recognition politics, which is aimed at the transformation of social relations through a change in the agents’ representations of themselves and others. What I would like to suggest here is that Fraser’s typology could help to further thinking about the policies that are necessary for addressing the injustices caused by school segregation. First of all, it would permit a better understanding of the limits of the reallocation practices (places or resources) mentioned above. Indeed, the fact that school segregation reinforces inequalities in student performances is not due to a composition effect or a poor allocation of resources alone. It also results from the representations that students, parents and teachers associate with the students’ social backgrounds, as evidenced by habitus of class (Dupriez & Draelants, 2004). These representations affect social relations within both the school (between students and teachers) and the society (the undeniable advantage of being able to mention a ‘good school’ on one’s CV). If the different school players could be encouraged to question these representations and their effects (e.g., in the training of teachers or their work in the classroom), it might be possible to neutralise, at least partially, the effect of school segregation on inequalities in student performances. But this is not all. Recognition remedies of the kind we have mentioned would also permit addressing the other two grounds for concern raised by school segregation: the obstruction of autonomous development and the reproduction of political inequalities. As we have suggested, school segregation can reinforce the mutual misunderstanding and misrecognition of social groups, thus leading to rejection, disdain or lack of self-confidence and self-esteem among the students who are the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. If the schools cannot achieve authentic social mixing – which would imply not only co-existence but the genuine encounter of young people from different social backgrounds  – they might develop teaching practices designed to increase students’ awareness about unknown or badly known social realities and transform their representations of society in a more egalitarian direction that is more sensitive to the conditions of each person’s autonomous development. The definition of what such teaching practices could and should be lies outside the scope of this article. I would simply suggest that this is one possible line of thought about remedies for school segregation. These certainly include redistributive practices but cannot be limited to them, if only because of the relational dimension of school segregation and the necessity for the school to introduce

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relational conditions that contribute to each student’s autonomous development and democratic integration (on this point, see also Winter, 2018). Finally, I would add that the solutions to the injustices caused by school segregation do not lie exclusively within the school. Educational practices and policies, whether for redistribution or recognition, will not suffice. It is also necessary to consider how to ensure a just representation of students’ interests in the school’s decision-making process. The main victims of school segregation often come from families who seem to have little involvement in the schools’ participative structures and little concern for political issues around the school. Allowing their interests to be recognised both within the schools and in the elaboration of educational policies is a challenge that goes far beyond the single question of school segregation.

2.7 Conclusion There are no serious reasons to believe that social segregation within and between schools could be a good thing. And there are several reasons to believe that it is a bad thing. But the value and weight given to these reasons are variable. They depend first of all on not reducing school segregation to a pure composition effect but also considering the dynamics of how it is produced and handled by and within the schools. These effects must then be considered in the light of the goals assigned to the school in education, which includes not only the acquisition of knowledge and academic performance but the relational development of the child’s autonomy and democratic integration. The policies and practices aimed at eliminating the undesirable effects will depend on these goals but also on the rights of the children and parents in the area of education. This can affect the degree of tolerance for school segregation and the legitimacy accorded to desegregation policies. The examination of the multiple ethical issues at stake in school segregation should lead to the conclusion that the neutralisation of its undesirable effects entails redistributive practices and policies, whether in terms of resources or school places. But it also requires recognition practices and policies aimed at transforming the social representations associated with membership in a social group, as well as the goals of the school, in order to generate social relations promoting greater justice in learning processes, autonomous development and democratic integration, even in the absence of social diversity in the schools. Indeed, it is less a question of opposing two kinds of policies – redistribution and recognition – than viewing them as two dimensions to be integrated into school policies and teaching practices. The relative importance to be accorded to each of them will depend on the context, but also on the priority a society gives to one or another of the school’s purposes and the rights of the children and parents.

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References Anderson, E. (2010). The imperative of integration. Princeton University Press. Beck, U. (2006). Cosmopolitan vision (C. Cronin, Trans.). Polity Press. Ben Ayed, C. (2015). La mixité sociale à l’école. Tensions, enjeux, perspectives. Armand Colin. Brighouse, H. (2002). School choice and social justice. Oxford University Press. Brighouse, H. (2007). Educational justice and socio-economic segregation in schools. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41(4), 575–590. Brighouse, H., Ladd, H. F., Loeb, S., & Swift, A. (2016). Educational goods and values: A framework for decision makers. Theory and Research in Education, 14(1), 3–25. Charmes, E. (2009). Pour une approche critique de la mixité sociale. Redistribuer les populations ou les ressources ? La vie des idées. https://laviedesidees.fr/Pour-­une-­approche-­critique-­de-­la-­ mixite-­sociale.html Clayton, M., Mason, A., Swift, A., & Wareham, R. (2021). The political morality of school composition: The case of religious selection. British Journal of Political Science, 51, 827–844. Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Swallow Press. Dubet, F. (2004). L’École des chances: Qu’est-ce qu’une école juste? Le Seuil. Dubet, F., & Duru-Bellat, M. (2020). L’école peut-elle encore sauver la démocratie ? Le Seuil. Dumay, X., Dupriez, V., & Maroy, C. (2010). Ségrégation entre écoles, effets de la composition scolaire et inégalités de résultats. Revue Française de Sociologie, 51(3), 461–480. Dupriez, V. (2010). Methods of grouping learners at school. UNESCO. Dupriez, V., & Draelants, H. (2004). Classes homogènes versus classes hétérogènes: Les apports de la recherche à l’analyse de la problématique. Revue Française de Pédagogie, 148, 141–165. Duru-Bellat, M. (2007). Quelle marge de manœuvre pour l’école dans un environnement d’inégalités? In S. Paugam (Ed.), Repenser la solidarité, l’apport des sciences sociales. P.U.F. Feinberg, J. (1980). The child’s right to an open future. In W. Aiken & H. LaFollette (Eds.), Whose child? Children’s rights, parental authority, and state power (pp.  124–153). Rowman and Littlefield. Foray, P. (2016). Devenir autonome. Apprendre à se diriger soi-même. ESF éditeur. Fraser, N. (1995). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a “post-socialist” age. New Left Review, 212, 68–93. Fraser, N. (1998). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, participation. The Tanner Lectures. https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-­to-­z/f/ Fraser98.pdf Honneth, A. (1995). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts (J. Anderson, Trans.). Polity Press. Jørgensen, S. L. (2016). Between integration and freedom: School segregation in critical perspective. Scandinavian Political Studies, 40(3), 265–288. Merry, M. S. (2021). Is faith in school integration bad faith? On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 4(11), 1–7. Michiels, T. (2016). Reconnaissance et justice éducative. Philosophiques, 43(1), 93–113. Mill, J. S. (1859). On liberty. John W. Parker and Son. Oberti, M. (2021). Segregation, inequalities and discrimination. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 4(11). https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.6 Pourtois, H. (2008). Pertinence et limites du principe d’égalité des chances en matière d’éducation scolaire. In V. Dupriez, J. F. Orianne, & M. Verhoeven (Eds.), De l’école au marché du travail, l’égalité des chances en question (pp. 49–64). Peter Lang. Rylaendt, N. (2013). Les décrets “inscriptions” et “mixité sociale” de la Communauté française. CRISP – Courrier hebdomadaire, 2188–2189, 118 p. Savidan, P. (2018). Mixités. In P. Savidan (Ed.), Dictionnaire des inégalités et de la justice sociale (pp. 1100–1113). PUF.

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Seaton, M., Marsh, H. W., & Craven, R. G. (2010). Big-fish-little-pond effect: Generalizability and moderation—Two sides of the same coin. American Educational Research Journal, 47(2), 390–433. Swift, A. (2021). Segregation from a normative perspective. On Education. Journal for Research and Debate, 4(11). https://doi.org/10.17899/on_ed.2021.11.1 Van Zanten, A., & Obin, J. B. (2008). La carte scolaire. PUF. Winter, L.  A. (2018). Relational equality in education: What, how and why? Oxford Review of Education, 44(3), 338–352. Hervé Pourtois is Professor of political philosophy at the Université catholique de Louvain and a member of the Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics. His work focuses mainly on issues of pluralism and democracy in politics and education.  

Chapter 3

Understanding School Markets in Order to Transform Them? Hugues Draelants

Abstract  Since the 1980s, the overwhelming majority of countries has gradually adopted school choice policies. School markets are thus a reality in full development. In order to gain a better understanding of this object, this chapter will draw on the contributions of the sociology of markets (François, P. (2008). Sociologie des marchés. Armand Colin.), on the economy of singularities (Karpik, L. (2007). L’économie des singularités. Gallimard.) and on the sociology of market arrangements (Callon, M. (2017). L’emprise des marchés: Comprendre leur fonctionnement pour pouvoir les changer. La découverte). For those authors, it is theoretically possible to design a market that actually produces the intended and defined objectives; it is all a question of market engineering. But knowledge of the concrete functioning of school markets is lacking in this literature. We will therefore also draw on the sociology of education to enrich the discussion about market regulation and pay particular attention to questions of inequality. In doing so, we will also insist on the need to (re)politicize the market.

3.1 Introduction Since the 1980s, the vast majority of countries, whatever their size, level of economic development or political structure, have gradually adopted policies to liberalize school choice (Forsey et al., 2008; Windle, 2014; Verger et al., 2016; Abrams, 2016). The concrete expression of this global movement varies greatly in its form and intensity according to the context and history of each educational system (Mons, 2004). On the one hand, education systems, which allocated pupils to schools in a centralized and bureaucratic manner, have seen the rise of a demand for freedom of choice (e.g., France). On the other hand, where freedom of choice was already H. Draelants (*) GIRSEF, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 V. Dupriez et al. (eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation, Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_3

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present and highly established, such as in Belgium, the public authorities have reinforced their control so as not to allow the development of a wild educational market. In such cases, and even more in systems that openly support the market, as in England, the state seeks to provide a framework for the free choice of actors in order to guarantee the proper functioning of the market. It retains control over the objectives of the system and defines the content of curricula. The central government also defines the rules for allocating students to schools and, through a specialized agency, provides information to families on the performance, effectiveness and efficiency of schools, etc. Thus, while some education systems have a long tradition of complete school choice; a few still resist the introduction of greater latitude in terms of family choice. However, this choice is rarely complete or unconstrained. Indeed, the major trend in education policies in many countries, linked to globalization and the spread of transnational public policy frameworks, is leading to a convergence of systems towards greater freedom of choice, but also towards greater regulation1 of choice (Maroy, 2006). A rich body of research has developed over the last 15 years to study the mechanisms for implementing school choice. From this perspective, known as “market design”, “the problem of school choice refers to the question of how to allocate students among schools, taking into account preferences, school capacities, and policy objectives” (Cantillon, 2017). In short, markets are now a booming reality in the school world, and the willingness of public authorities to design them is following the same path. This is particularly the case in our school system, that of French-speaking Belgium (see Chap. 7 of this volume), which was the starting point for our reflection. The study of the effect of school enrollment reforms on families’ school choice behaviors (Deceuninck & Draelants, 2016; Deceuninck et al., 2020), led us to ask: can markets be regulated effectively? What should we pay attention to? How can sociologists position themselves in this discussion? What do they have to say as experts? In order to provide food for thought for those who are asking the same type of questions, our goal in this chapter is to propose a theoretical reading of the school market mobilizing different approaches to achieve a more complete understanding of what school markets are. To do so, we will combine theoretical and empirical contributions from the sociology of markets on the one hand and the sociology of education on the other. Within the sociology of markets, we will mobilize the work of Lucien Karpik and Michel Callon, two prominent figures in the French sociology of markets, whose contributions are particularly remarkable and theoretically accomplished (François, 2008). A central bibliographic reference concerning Karpik is the book Valuing the unique. The economics of singularities (2007; 2010 for the English version).2  Regulation here refers to the way in which the state attempts to guide the behavior of actors through its rule-making action and its educational policy. 2  The passages quoted in the chapter, translated by us, come from the original French version (Karpik, 2007). 1

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Concerning Callon, we will rely mainly on his book, not translated into English, L’emprise des marchés (Callon, 2017). Within the sociology of education, we will draw on the book “Choosing a school” by Agnes van Zanten (2009) and the synthesis of the literature on school markets that she wrote with Georges Felouzis and Christian Maroy (Felouzis et al., 2013) will be central pieces.3 In the next section, we describe how these two approaches differ before explaining how they complement each other and how we propose to apply the theoretical frameworks from the sociology of markets to school markets.

3.2 Sociology of Markets and Sociology of Education: Common Points and Differences 3.2.1 The Markets as Seen by Sociologists of Education and Sociologists of Markets There is no lack of theorization in the educational literature about school markets. Researchers in education, mainly sociologists of education, have produced many very interesting reflections on markets. Why then would one want to mobilize the sociology of markets? To explain this, we will briefly outline what sociologists of education tell us about markets, but also what is missing from this literature that justifies using the sociology of markets to complement the sociology of education. Sociologists of education we draw on generally define school markets as a mode of regulation, i.e. a means of regulating schooling that privileges the autonomy of schools and the choice of school by families, and that gives rise to competition between schools. This mode of regulation can have various origins: in many cases, the market is the result of an educational policy decided with the aim of improving the quality and performance of the education system, as is the case in the UK for example. In other education systems, the market is less the result of a deliberate policy than a de facto reality linked to institutional heritage. Such is the case in Belgium, where school autonomy and parental choice are constitutional rights linked to the historical will to respect confessional pluralism. A third type of situation is that of unofficial markets produced by local actors’ strategies to divert the rules to their advantage, as in France (Felouzis et al., 2013). By making this type of distinction, many sociologists of education first show the great empirical diversity of realities that lie behind the expression “school markets” (Ibid.). Moreover, sociologists of education often deconstruct the notion of market

 We also give a place to our own research or to that carried out within our research center (Girsef, UCLouvain). See a.o. Deceuninck & Draelants, 2016; Deceuninck et  al., 2020; Draelants & Dumay, 2011; Dupriez & Cornet, 2005; Maroy, 2006. Of course, the sociologists of markets and sociologists of education we rely on in this chapter are not representative of all views within these two fields, they represent views that we think are significant and relevant. 3

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by showing everything that separates the school market from the neoclassical idea of market. They point out, for example, that education is, in most cases and in particular as far as compulsory education is concerned, a non-market good (since price does not intervene as such as a form of direct regulation, they are at best “quasi markets”4) (Maroy, 2006). The relational nature of education must also be taken into account: the provider and the user indeed co-produce education; furthermore, the educational service produces a good for the individual who receives it, but it also has a collective impact. This relational dimension as well as the collective outcomes justify that the State regulates the educational offer (Felouzis et al., 2013). They also indicate that school markets are opaque because it is difficult to evaluate the quality of the educational service (Draelants, 2016). We are only able to assess it at the end of the schooling. Finally, they note that the markets are always local, since the choice is always circumscribed to a more or less restricted territory, which suggests that the competitive situations vary greatly (Delvaux & van Zanten, 2006). In some regions, for example in rural areas, schools are not under great pressure, which is more the case in urban areas with a dense school supply. The school market is therefore a “market with holes” (Felouzis & Perroton, 2007). All of these elements lead many sociologists of education who employ the market concept to distance themselves from its use in the neo-classical economic literature. Some even prefer to avoid it.5 From this point of view, the sociologists of education do not differ from the sociologists of markets. One can even say that they repeat their inaugural gesture. As François points out in a book synthesising the sociology of markets: “very often (…) sociologists feel obliged to carry out a cadastral survey of the aporias and errors of economic science. The image they give of the “economists’ market”, therefore, is drawn in a mirror which one may suspect tends to distort the reality it reflects” (François, 2008, p. 25). When studying school markets (or other types of markets) and comparing them to the theoretical model of the perfect market used by neoclassical economists, sociologists discover quite logically that concrete markets are far from it. Sociologists of education who work on school markets, like their colleagues who study other real markets, will therefore question the “exorbitant theoretical conditions” on which perfect markets are based (Ibid.). However, we note that if all sociologists show how far “real markets” – of which school markets are a part – are from perfect theoretical markets, only sociologists of markets will ask themselves the question of the “processes of market-making” (processus de mise en marché), i.e. the social conditions of possibility of the very existence of markets (actors, rules and institutions required). Sociologists of education  As education is a public service, researchers often speak of “quasi-markets”. This imply that the financial allocation that schools receive from the state varies proportionally according to the number of students they manage to enroll. 5  This is the case, for example, of the Belgian sociologist Bernard Delvaux (Delvaux, 2005; Delvaux & Joseph, 2006; Delvaux & Van Zanten, 2006), who developed the concept of local spaces of interdependence between schools to describe the functioning of the French-speaking Belgian “quasi-market”. 4

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generally do not address that question. Probably because sociologists of education, unlike sociologists of markets, are not interested in markets for themselves. They study their functioning less for its own sake than to understand their consequences on schools and on school actors, students and their parents in particular, as well as to understand the impact of markets on educational inequalities. Felouzis, Maroy and van Zanten, for example, consider that the development of school markets is fueled by the search for the reproduction of their social status by the upper social categories. Thus, the school market is intrinsically associated with the maintenance of social inequalities. Let us add that if sociologists of education do not problematize the processes of market-making, it is undoubtedly also because they often have a negative predisposition towards the market, especially when they practice a critical sociology. In this perspective – which is quite relevant in our opinion, as we shall return to in conclusion – the market logic tends to be seen as intrinsically negative and as having performative effects. Studying the market would then be tantamount to accepting the market logic and would present the risk of encouraging its development.

3.2.2 How Researchers and Sociologists Relate to the Market Researchers tend to adopt three main types of position with regard to the market according to Bunar (2010). There are enthusiasts, fervent promoters of the market; in contrast to these, there are skeptics or disbelievers, who virulently criticize the market or adopt an anti-market attitude; and, in between these two groups, some researchers adopt an intermediate, more ambivalent attitude. The pro-market perspective presents competition between schools as the best way to improve the quality of the educational service, conceived as a market good like any other. One of the most famous champions of the school market was the economist Milton Friedman (1955). He argued that funding families to cover the cost of education in government-approved private schools of their choice could generate healthy competition among schools, thereby improving their quality. Friedman was thus one of the promoters of the school voucher inserted in the political programs of countless liberal parties around the world. Influential pro-market economists include John Chubb and Terry Moe (1990), who have taken up and strengthened Friedman’s argument for a pure market system in education, but with greater emphasis on the importance of free parental choice. Many sociologists of education fall behind the second position; the skeptics. Their opposition to the market is often principled, especially for those who belong to the current of critical sociology of education, which fundamentally questions the orientation of educational policies and their evolution towards market and managerial modes of regulation (the logic of competition and the increased weight of the market; accountability, high-stakes tests…) (Mehta & Davies, 2018). In this perspective, the spheres deemed to be of public interest (education, health, etc.) should be preserved from any form of market colonization. Among the prominent figures

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of this current are the British sociologists Michael Apple (a.o. 2001, 2005) and Stephen Ball (a.o. 1993, 2003). While not all sociologists take such an overtly critical perspective, most are generally reserved about the effects of the market. Their work often highlights that educational systems that value freedom of choice are associated with an increase in school segregation and an exacerbation of social inequalities in relation to school (Felouzis et al., 2013; several contributions in this volume). Finally, between these first two groups, some researchers adopt an intermediate, more ambivalent attitude towards the market. This is often the case with educational economists. Many of them, without being unconditional supporters of the market, are not opposed to it. They seek above all to improve its functioning, considering, in accordance with neo-classical economic theory, that the market is a mode of coordination that theoretically has more virtues than drawbacks. The question of inequality does not interest economists as much as sociologists, but some are concerned about it. They consider that the market does not necessarily produce inequality. The problems, they say, do not come from the market as such but from the existence of failing markets. It is then a question of market engineering or political engineering. A famous proponent of this approach is the Nobel Prize winner, Alvin Roth (2015), who explains how to build better markets. Some sociologists of education working on markets can also be included in this group, such as John Fitz, Stephen Gorard and Chris Taylor. For them, it is no longer time to debate for or against the market. They consider that “choice and selection are now cornerstones of education policies”, and this must be acknowledged (Fitz et al., 2003). This intermediate position thus includes researchers who are open to the politics of school choice and its instruments (calls for tenders, vouchers, charter schools, marketing, etc.) less out of principle than out of pragmatism. They tend to think that freedom of choice is an irreversible process. Based on the observation that free choice has strong parental support, they give up fighting for its abolition. They consider it more fruitful to think about how to regulate and organize an educational market that takes into account issues of social justice and educational inequality. This intermediate and moderately critical position towards the market is also the one adopted by the market sociologists discussed in this chapter. In relation to the three different positions adopted by researchers vis-à-vis the market we mentioned above, Karpik and Callon adopt an intermediate approach, a market-ambivalent position. For them, markets can bring the worst as well as the best, and the challenge is to understand how to preserve the best while protecting oneself from the worst. Callon is very explicit in this respect. He believes that “the challenge is to understand markets in order to better identify the possible means of their transformation” (Callon, 2017, p. 63). Citing Polanyi (1944), he identifies two ways of approaching the problem: Either one considers, following Marx’s example, that it is essential to contain the development of the market and to circumscribe it to certain situations of exchange while preserving other spheres deemed to be of public interest (education, health, etc.) from any form of market colonization. Or one considers that it is possible and desirable to transform markets in their conception (following Roth’s example) so that their implementation responds to specifications

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defined collectively and democratically by society, which seems to be the option chosen in a growing number of educational systems, including that of French-­ speaking Belgium. We do not necessarily share this optimism as we will come back to later in the chapter. While keeping their distance from the presuppositions of economic models, sociologists of markets nevertheless take them seriously. Lucien Karpik seeks to produce a more encompassing theory of markets that can be applied to singular, heterogeneous goods in order to show how markets function in situations not foreseen by classical theory, how they can accommodate actors who are not purely rational, imperfect information, heterogeneous goods… Others try to show the social conditions of possibility under which the theoretical criteria of the economic model of the perfect market can be reached. Michel Callon, in particular, takes as his starting point the definition of the market proposed by neoclassical economists. But, as a sociologist, he questions the social conditions of possibility of rational action as well as the social conditions of production of a calculating agent such as the model of the perfect market presupposes and which it needs to function efficiently. In practice, the two approaches, illustrated here by the works of Kaprik and Callon, are complementary and we will use them jointly. For example, in order for the market to accommodate actors who are not purely rational, they both stress the need to strengthen information and to equip the market. “Computation and market action are not a state of nature: they presuppose learning and, even more so, the mobilization of equipment that contributes to making market action possible” (François, 2008, p. 153). In this sense, the real object sociologists of markets study is the “processes of market-making” – defined as the “processes by which things become commodities and people act as buyers and sellers” (Ibid., p. 153). In the end, and to put it in other terms, it is not so much on the question of the nature of markets that the contribution of sociologists of markets seems to us to be innovative in comparison with the literature in sociology of education studying school markets. It is rather in relation to the question of becoming a market and the types of actors and institutions necessary to move towards an effective market operation.

3.2.3 Socializing, Equipping and Politicizing Market Analysis Karpik’s and Callon’s approaches are genuinely sociological because they insists on the social construction of markets and market institutions. In so doing, they both socialize markets. We may consider the socialization of markets as the inaugural gesture of the sociology of markets. François speaks in fact of the “repopulation of the market scene” (“by bringing to light the crowd of intermediaries and actors of all kinds who intervene there”) as “one of the topoi of the sociology of markets” (François, 2008, p. 265). Here the socialization of markets goes beyond the simple fact of repopulating them; it underlines, more fundamentally, that the very act of consuming cannot be taken for granted.

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Karpik’s way of socializing the market consists mainly in emphasizing the importance of equipping the market and consumers with judgmental devices. In other words, Karpik equips markets, he materializes them, he shows how much the market is dependent on various devices (guides, awards…) without which the consumer could not make his choice, allowing us to get rid of another abstraction induced by the economic approach, that of a market without supports. As for Callon, he goes even further in the way he socializes the market, since he believes that the products and the agents themselves must be transformed for there to be a market. He is interested in the processes by which things become commodities and by which people act as buyers and sellers. Where Karpik’s and Callon’s approaches seem less convincing to us is in taking into account the interests and power relations between actors. These are central questions in relation to the issue of inequality. Logically, knowledge of the concrete functioning of school markets is also lacking in their works. We will therefore also draw on some sociology of education to enrich the discussion about market regulation and pay particular attention to questions of inequality. In doing so, we will insist on, what we call, the need to (re)politicize the market. This will allow us to complete and enrich the theory inspired by the work of Karpik and Callon. In summary, we will combine three approaches to better understand education markets: Karpik’s socioeconomics of singularities (Karpik, 2007, 2010); Callon’s sociology of market arrangements (Callon, 2017); and some traditions in the sociology of education. Especially works that focus on the links between social stratification, hierarchization and school segregation, as well as those who study the evolution of education policies in relation with inequalities in the context of the market. The first approach will allow us to underscore the importance of the equipment necessary for the functioning of markets and the judgmental devices consumers rely on to make reasonable choices. The second approach, which denaturalizes market behavior, will emphasize the market-making process. The third approach will serve to re-politicize markets, that is, to reinscribe the question of the market and the choices made on it in the regulation process and its consequences on the social stratification and the differentiated relationships to the market that exist according to social categories. We examine each approach in turn in the following section. First, it should be noted that our focus on how to socialize, equip and politicize market analysis is more analytical than normative. It is above all a question of better understanding the “nature” and functioning of markets in general and in the schooling system in particular. The question of their transformation remains open.6 Those who promote market development in education should definitively take into account what these approaches teach us. However, we are not in favor of going that road. For theoretical and empirical reasons but also ethical ones, we are rather circumspect and pessimistic about the very possibility of being able to adequately control the educational markets and use them to fight effectively against school segregation. The last part of the chapter where we address the issue of inequalities and that of

 It is why we formulated the title of this chapter in the interrogative form.

6

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Fig. 3.1  From monopoly to competition, back and forth: a cyclical process

market regulation in relation to the natural tendency of markets to drift towards monopolies (see Fig. 3.1) should made clear that our personal position is akin to a skeptical point of view with a tendency towards criticism.

3.3 Bringing Together Sociology of Markets and Sociology of Education to Understand School Markets 3.3.1 The Schooling System as a Market of Singularities Before explaining how it is possible to consider school markets as market of singularities, a theoretical detour is necessary. Karpik distinguishes between “traditional markets”, those at the heart of the work of neoclassical economists in which exchanges or supply and demand are regulated by prices and quantities, and those in whose adjustments depend on the quality of the products or services exchanged, quality that is often uncertain. He calls this non-traditional type of market the “market of singularities”: “singularities are incommensurable products of exchange (goods and services). And the market of singularities is composed of relations marked by uncertainty about quality between singular products and actors in search of the “right” singularity” (Karpik, 2007, p. 38). According to Karpik, this world of singularities does not prevent reasonable choice. “It is even the express condition for the market of singularities to exist” (Ibid., p. 39). He also notes that the ignorance and uncertainty that characterize the markets of singularities does not prevent them from functioning at all; it is even paradoxically thanks to the deficit that many markets of this type maintain themselves. “Everything happens as if they were immune to the surplus of ignorance and uncertainty, as if the strength of belief/confidence developed at the same time as the

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production of new knowledge. (…) In short, despite the inefficiency of the devices of judgment, the founding belief [which idolizes, which symbolically valorizes singularity, sometimes by will of social distinction] is enough to maintain the continuity of the market” (p. 344). However, the situation would be according to Karpik in the process of changing: “the consumers refuse more and more to associate ignorance and singularity”, “the conditions of exercise of reasonable choices belong from now on to the claims of the subject” (p. 344). “Singularity markets have many features that prohibit a large fraction of the customer base from making reasonable choices. This relationship of dependence is increasingly difficult to bear. (…) In this new context, the markets of singularities cannot subsist without the development of an engineering of the devices of judgment. (…) The goal is simple to state, if not easy to achieve: to base the attachment to the market of singularities on the possibility of making reasonable choices and, by doing so, to create the conditions of a felicity that owes the least possible to belief” (p. 345). Drawing on a heterodox economic current, the economics of conventions, Karpik puts forward the idea that in order to reduce the uncertainty that reigns in the market of singularities, it is necessary to call upon institutions and conventions. In short, the market of singularities does not prevent the making of reasonable choices but it requires institutions, conventions, what Karpik calls “judgment devices” to reduce uncertainty. In relation to the economics of conventions, Karpik’s contribution is to propose a cartography of conventions or, to use his vocabulary, of the “judgment devices” used. Karpik makes a theoretical distinction between two categories of devices: judgement devices and trust devices. He distinguishes in this way between situations where uncertainty about the good or service exchanged is due to the opacity of the market and those that depend on the opportunism of one of the parties. The first situations correspond to judgement devices, the second to trust devices. Actually, judging devices are always also trust devices. However, some are more effective than others in generating trust: “to be effective, the judging device must be credible. And to be credible, it must have the trust of those who use it” (Karpik, 2007, p. 82). In other words, “judgment and trust are two sides of the same coin” (Ibid., p. 82). Karpik also distinguishes between what he calls personal and impersonal judgement devices. The former are more likely to foster trust and therefore function as trust devices. This is due in particular to the nature of the information collected, which is hot rather than cold, to use the opposition proposed by Ball and Vincent (1998), in the case of personal devices. This is also the result of the type of channel through which this information is transmitted: personal social networks (relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors) rather than public and official channels. Knowing that an important advantage is that the information transmitted by personal devices is individualized and personalized information (van Zanten, 2009). Judging devices can take a variety of forms. Karpik divides them into five groups: networks, confluences, rankings, guides (Karpik also speaks of “cicerones”) and labels. We give a definition of each type of judgment device in Table 3.1 and specify whether it is personal or impersonal.

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Table 3.1  Types of judgment devices Types of judgment devices The network: all the interpersonal relationships, weak or strong, that one can mobilize to share advice, opinions, experiences The confluences (junctions or meeting points): information coming directly from the schools (facework, impression management)

Rankings: lists ordered according to defined criteria, e.g. ranking of schools according to their success rate in national exams Guides and reviews: set of evaluations, advice, comparison (more qualitative than rankings) Labels: guarantee that the institution has a certain number of qualities (e.g. “IB schools” offering International Baccalaureate program)

Remark Personal device (strengthens trust) Personal of impersonal device High risk of opportunism (weakens trust) Impersonal device Impersonal device Impersonal device

Let us now see what the economics of singularities developed by Karpik can teach us if we apply it to school markets. In a traditional market, it is necessary for a rational choice to emerge that applicants be able to compare the goods on which they will choose. This comparison is much easy when the compared goods are homogeneous in their qualities. In this context, the price plays both the role of a signal that reduces uncertainty about the quality of the good and that of an adjustment variable between supply and demand. However, in a school market, price plays no role whatsoever, except in the context of a private, fee-paying offer that remains marginal in many school systems. Schools as goods are therefore immeasurable goods (Karpik, 2007). Parents perceive them as a complex configuration of a multitude of qualities, and none of these configurations can be objectively considered more valuable than another. The fact that schools are incommensurable, that there is no objective scale for measuring their quality and establishing absolute hierarchies means that the school market is a market of singularities. This also means that there is a high degree of uncertainty about the quality of the goods traded in this market (Felouzis & Perroton, 2007). The quality of the good exchanged remains partially or completely unknown until the claimant has experienced his or her choice for a sufficiently long period to establish an assessment of the appropriateness of that choice. In other words, the parent can only be sure that the institution chosen was appropriate once his or her child has actually attended school there for a relatively lengthy time. This type of market is characterized by a valuation lag (ibid.). The fact that these goods are incommensurable does not prevent parents from trying to compare and rank them, but the cost of doing so is much higher in this type of market than in a competitive market where price acts as a quality signal. Parents have to gather a lot of information before making a judgment. There is therefore a very strong need for information in the school market. But the distribution of this information is unequal between the applicants and between the providers and the applicants.

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A multitude of parameters can explain the differences in access to information between applicants. The fact that the parent is part of a more or less dense network of potential informants. The fact that the parent has (or has not) been enrolled in the education system in which he or she is seeking to enroll his or her child. The parent’s ability to translate the mass of information he or she receives into useable knowledge when making a choice, and so on. The literature on the sociology of education tells us that not all parents behave like “school consumers”. Significant social inequalities exist in terms of choice. There is, therefore, a strong informational asymmetry between providers and applicants, which poses a double threat to the transaction: a threat of opacity (linked to uncertainty about quality) and a threat of opportunism (linked to the fact that the providers are not passive). Indeed, in such a context, schools develop capture strategies by putting forward an advantageous presentation of themselves, which raises the issue of trust. The whole process of making a judgment is about reducing uncertainty about quality and assessing the degree of trust that can be placed in a particular piece of knowledge. In order to reduce this double uncertainty, about quality and trust, it is essential that the parent be able to mobilize a series of judgment and trust devices. Without these devices, the choice can only be made by chance and there can be no rational choice or competitive market.

3.3.2 The Schooling System as an Arranged Market For Michel Callon, the theory put forward by Karpik is too marked by his distinction between markets (traditional ones where there is an agreement on goods and singular ones where this agreement is lacking). Callon’s perspective is different; it is in line with that of Chamberlin (1949), who posits that “any market transaction implies the prior individualization of the good that changes hands” (François, 2008, p. 263). Callon thus considers that a good that is the object of a transaction is an individualized product whose quality has been adjusted to its recipient (Ibid., p. 263). Callon believes that it is not enough to equip the market as Karpik suggests. In his opinion, the question is much broader. The goods and services subject to transaction have a history and the process by which they are exchanged in a market must be included in the market definition. All the goods that surround us, if we take the time to observe them have a story to tell us. The water bottle we buy at the supermarket was first drawn on a sheet of paper by an industrial designer probably assisted by an ergonomist and a brand marketer. A modeler probably made a scale example before another engineer took care of its production. It was then attached to a batch of bottles and placed in an aisle at a specific location in the supermarket. Once purchased and consumed, it will be discarded with other plastic waste before being repackaged and starting a new process. But it could also have been recovered by an artist who would have used it for a work of art. Through this example, we see that the state of bottle has, during its

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career, changed several times. From prototype, it has become a commodity before being discarded or becoming a work of art. In this perspective, the marketization or commodification is therefore a particular state of the good or service in the course of its history. The question is how goods and services move from one state to another. It is therefore less the singularities of certain goods and services that interest Callon specifically than the processes of singularization of all goods and services. If all goods or services can undergo a process of singularization, it remains that some of them are by nature singular and therefore more uncertain than others. Callon acknowledges that the nature of the goods and services plays a role in the greater or lesser ease with which they can circulate. But what makes one good more likely than another to circulate lies, in the terms of the sociology of market arrangements, above all in the singularization or social density of things. A dense good is a good that has become so singularized, so adjusted to its owner, that the latter cannot bring himself to get rid of it. A dense good is opposed to a commodity good, which is substitutable and circulates easily. But the states that define the types of goods and services are not fixed once and for all; they evolve notably under the effect of public policies. For example, public evaluations of schools and their rankings contribute to their equivalence, their desingularization, and they become more easily commensurable, comparable and ultimately substitutable. The neo-classical conception of markets completely overlooks these questions; it paints a fixed picture of the good or service subject to transaction. Another important limitation is its lack of interest in the process by which the agent gradually becomes a consumer ready to conclude the transaction. Yet, for there to be a market, Callon also stresses that the agents themselves must be transformed. Markets presuppose, in principle, calculating agents. For Adam Smith in his famous work The Wealth of Nations, the energy that sets consumers in motion on the market is the pursuit of their personal interests. For the neoclassicals, it is the search for maximum utility. Callon wonders about the social conditions of calculation. He believes that the equipment Karpik talks about helps to make the market action possible. All the material devices that an agent mobilizes can help him to evaluate the goods and services of an exchange, but they are not enough to produce a calculating agent. He is therefore also interested in the processes by which people act as buyers and sellers. How do school parents become school consumers? For the sociology of market arrangements developed by Callon, choosing means developing an attachment during a process of singularization. The attachment must be understood here in the psychological sense of the term. The more the attachment is based on affect, emotions, passions, the stronger and more exclusive the attachment is. To understand the reasons that push a consumer to engage in a transaction is therefore to trace the progressive process of attachment of the consumer to a good or service. If we follow Callon and admit that a good, in order to be exchanged, must be singularized, i.e. adjusted to its recipient, which allows the latter to become attached to it, this has important practical consequences. This implies that “the study of markets must start from the singular relations that are established between a particular supplier and a particular demander. The analysis of concrete markets therefore starts

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from the study of the multitude of bilateral relations that Callon suggests naming monopolies, since they involve the supplier and the demander who, progressively, have singularized the good that will finally be exchanged (François, 2008, p. 264). When this adjustment occurs, Callon speaks of an “intricate” good, which prevents it from circulating and being compared. To understand what competition consists of in the markets according to Callon, one must understand why a good that has become individualized can still evolve and become, at least in part, substitutable for others. Let us recall that, according to Callon, the process that defines the qualities of a good can always change. This individualization translates into an attachment of the exchanged good to its buyer, and the essential work of competition consists in stabilizing this attachment, or on the contrary, in breaking it” (François, 2008, p. 264). Thus, according to Callon, concrete markets are monopolies, since they bring together suppliers and demanders who, progressively, have singled out the goods that will eventually be exchanged. The process that leads to monopolization should not be seen as the opposite of competition, but rather as the sign of its most striking success. In the case of the study of school markets, this has fundamental implications: it means that the existence of a school market or quasi-market does not necessarily go hand in hand with unbridled competition between schools. Rather, it produces a mixture of competition and monopoly. Everything that makes a good or service unique in a market tends to pull it towards monopoly and away from perfect competition. The situation of the Belgian quasi-market corresponds well to this hybrid situation of “monopolistic competition” described long ago by Chamberlin7 and which joins the concept of the “educational niche” developed by Dupriez (Dupriez & Cornet, 2005; Dupriez & Wattiez, 2016), another way to express the existence of local monopolies. The notion of a market is often understood as necessarily implying that schools would be in competition. Competition between schools is real, but it should not be overestimated because the study of concrete school markets and the relationships that exist between schools and their positioning strategies show that competition is limited. At first, it is limited by geographical distance: it has already been mentioned competition is played out in  local spaces. It is also limited by the nature of the school offer and pedagogical projects: some schools belong to such different categories that they are not in any way in competition.8 This is a fundamental point for

 Chamberlin was the first to give an account of a form of economic struggle that plays on both competition and monopoly in an already very old work: The Theory of Monopolistic Competition (1949). However, despite the new perspective provided by Chamberlin’s work, no major transformation of neo-classical economic theory has taken place (see Karpik on this subject). 8  In the sociology of markets, another author of interest for further exploration of these issues is Joel Podolny (1993). The mechanics of the statutes, he describes, “tend to institute relatively watertight market segments, and to prevent the establishment of generalized competition” (François, 2008, p. 269). 7

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understanding the rationale for action by principals. What they are really looking for is to match their project with their enrollment, to ensure stability in this area, which maximizes predictability and limits uncertainty, the school leaders’ main enemy. Schools are therefore seeking not so much to compete with the surrounding institutions as to distinguish themselves from them, to specialize in order to adapt to their audience, to carve out their “niche” (Dupriez & Cornet, 2005). In other words, they seek to produce incommensurability, whereas the market needs commensurability to function. Of course, if two schools play in the same organizational category, they will be competing, but even within a category, the goal is to specify its organizational niche in order to attract a specific public. This of course tends to reinforce social as well as ethnic between-school segregation (van Zanten, 2009). At the local level, the challenge for a school management is therefore to work on the adequacy of its environment and to succeed in maintaining this adequacy, when it is found. This adequacy is reflected in pedagogical concepts, internal regulations, teaching offers, the way in which lessons are given and discipline is managed, etc. It is the whole functioning of the school that is affected and in depth. This is why we can speak of an “organizational identity” (Draelants & Dumay, 2011).

3.3.3 The Difficult Regulation of Markets in the Face of Their Monopolistic Tendencies As Max Weber had already perceived, the market is characterized by the impersonality of social relations and this is precisely what makes it “a singular mode of constitution of the social bond” (François, 2008, p. 49). In order to establish itself, the market favors impersonal relations and leads to radical competition, which undermines previous modes of operation and weakens established monopolies. To protect themselves, market actors will gradually seek to build new monopolies to resist the market of pure and perfect competition. The Belgian policy to regulate enrolment offers a good example. In French-speaking Belgium, policies have been implemented to regulate enrolment at the entrance to secondary education (see Chap. 8 in this book). Prior to the reform, the choice process corresponded well to the monopoly situation described by Callon, that of a multitude of bilateral and singular exchanges between families and schools. The enrolment process involved meeting and talking with the principal and teachers of the proposed school. The process implied a personalized relationship and could be read as a search for a social match, or a correspondence between a personal identity (that of the child) and a presumed group identity (that of the school). During a private interview between the student, his or her parents and a representative of the school, the various parties involved assessed the degree of compatibility between the characteristics of the child’s profile (previous performance, behavior, etc.) and those of the school (level of requirements, options offered, teaching philosophy, values, etc.). If there was a “match” between the two

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profiles, then enrollment had a good chance of being approved. The enrolment regulation policy has troubled this tradition of individualized choice, since it introduces a system of bureaucratic, anonymous and impersonal choice that tends to de-­ individualize the Belgian school market.9 However, the school actors, families and establishments alike, who preferred the old system, do not remain passive; they resist, developing strategies to circumvent or escape the new rules. The rationalization of the market therefore tends to be defeated. We have shown elsewhere that some parents, because of the extreme singularity of the institution they desire, are unable to consider other options (Deceuninck & Draelants, 2016). Since many of them did not get the school they wanted for their child in the new registration system, they objected vehemently. Principals, too, have been very critical of the reform, tending to reject it because it undermines their control over their student population, thereby destabilizing their educational niche, which often forms the basis of their organizational identity (Draelants & Dumay, 2011). Principals are keen to maintain direct contact with families before the selection process in order to retain some control over their students. For example, they organize open houses or information meetings that provide opportunities for informal exchanges between management and families prior to enrollment. The Belgian case illustrates that the forces that oppose competition and seek to establish monopoly situations are numerous and powerful. We believe that Callon is right to consider that by making competition the core of markets, neoclassical economics produces an abstraction. This is why Callon insists on the fact that monopoly situations, unlike to what neoclassical theory maintains, are not just imperfections that prevent pure and perfect competition. In his perspective on market arrangements, monopoly constitutes “the most complete expression of competitive struggle” (p. 50). It is the sign of a highly developed capacity for singularization and therefore of competitive power. Callon takes up an old idea according to which “monopoly is the strategy that expresses in the purest way the logic of competition” (p. 51). Karpik’s position on monopoly differs in part from that of Callon. For Karpik, singularity automatically produces monopoly, since he believes that one can only speak of a market for singularities if there are coordination devices that serve as decision aids. The market in the singularity regime is either equipped or does not exist. There are no more equivalences, no more commensurability, and so only monopolies. In other words, monopoly is nothing more than the normal situation in an economy of singularities. In this sense, Karpik tends to join Callon. And we can consider that both authors finally envisage monopoly as being basically the normal situation of “markets”, that is to say what happens when economic transactions are not regulated nor equipped. A normal situation, in the sense that it is widespread, but not in the sense that it is  The reform only concerns the entrance to the first year of secondary school, which is certainly a decisive stage, but as the reform does not affect the rules of enrolment in the previous and subsequent years, the destabilization of the school market remains limited. 9

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desirable. Both Karpik and Callon judge monopoly as a problematic situation that requires government intervention, in accordance with the belief that it is possible to organize the market to serve the common good. For Karpik, monopoly is a problem, a form of drift, of market failure. For Callon, although monopoly is the most complete expression of perfect competition, it does not correspond to what he understands by an efficient market. Both authors lead to the idea that it is necessary to regulate the markets. However, Callon’s analysis is more complex than Karpik’s and less optimistic: by asserting that singularization does not really pose a problem for actors but that it tends, on the contrary, to be sought after, Callon raises the question of resistance to desingularization. In the tradition of Max Weber, he suggests that if we chase singularization out the door, it will tend to come back in through the window. Commenting on Max Weber’s pioneering work on market realities, François points out this limit to market regulation by emphasizing that market logics, once stabilized, cannot be satisfied with the impersonality of social relations that characterizes them. They always tend to reintroduce logics that are heteronomous to them, which implies, in particular, more personal, more singular social relations. And he raises a quite fundamental question on this subject: “can markets really support themselves, can they, in other words, do without heteronormative foundations?” (p. 51). The mere fact of asking the question suggests, even if regulation remains the objective, that it is futile to think that it is possible to control markets completely. In any case, we think that this task must be continually repeated in order to adapt to the monopolistic tendencies of competition. See the graphic representation that we propose (Fig. 3.1). Figure 3.1 attempts to schematize this cyclical process and thus to draw attention to the need to challenge any overly simplistic and dichotomous opposition between competition and monopoly. It reminds us, as Callon said, that the search for a monopoly is the very essence of competition. Once stabilized, market logics cannot be satisfied with the impersonality of social relations that characterizes them. They always tend to reintroduce logics that are heteronomous to them, more personal, more singular social relations. This then leads in principle to an increase in segmentation and therefore in school segregation.

3.4 Conclusion. Repoliticizing Markets to Address Inequality and Segregation If the sociology of education is interested in school markets, as we have seen, it is for the simple reason that these markets are frequently associated, as the title of this volume shows, with the maintenance or even the reinforcement of segregation and therefore of social inequalities. The question of inequality, on the other hand, is largely absent from the sociology of markets. Nor is there any mention of social

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stratification or social classes. To be fair, Karpik does not completely overlook the issue, he mentions it in passing: “singularity markets have many features that prohibit a large fraction of customers from making reasonable choices”. However, Karpik remains vague when he addresses the subject, he does not mention the characteristics of this clientele, which would have a hard time making reasonable choices. Moreover, he leads one to believe that the problem could be solved from the outside: it would suffice to equip the market so that agents can make reasonable choices (i.e. behave as consumers). From the perspective of the sociology of education, this kind solution is insufficient. For example, this would be tantamount to considering that the difficulty encountered by working-class families in choosing a school is essentially the result of a lack of information or an impediment (failure to anticipate the time of enrolment or the belief that if they do not choose the best schools it is because they are victims of discrimination at enrolment). Information inequalities and discrimination matter obviously but there is more to school choice inequalities than that. For school markets to work, parents are expected to be informed school consumers, making rational school choices, yet the propensity to use freedom of choice and the very ability to compare and gather the information needed to choose are unevenly distributed among families. Middle and upper class parents show a much more strategic relationship to schooling than that of working-class parents. In addition, the criteria for judging and choosing and choice criteria differ greatly from one another. There is no shared definition of what a “good school” is. All these facts have been pointed out many times by sociologists of education (see e.g. Ball et al., 1996; van Zanten, 2009). Therefore, parents would not make the same use of the judgment devices that might be made available to them. In practice, our own research suggest that the school choice of working-class parents, when prompted by political regulation, is much more akin to an obscure and constraining choice than to an informed and empowering choice (Deceuninck et al., 2020). So the problem is not only with the external equipment (i.e. the judgment devices), but also with the “internal equipment”, so to speak. By this we mean what sociologists usually refer to as social dispositions or habitus (Bourdieu, 1972). Callon is aware that agents must be transformed to become consumers. But he also underestimates the issue of inequalities; his sociology does not consider the questions of dispositions and differentiate relationships to the market according to social classes. In the end, the market allows the expression of pre-existing differences, and since not all choices are equal, since only some parents have the information necessary to make an enabling choice, the market (even when equipped) tends to renew social inequalities. Hence the need to (re)politicize the markets through the contribution of the sociology of education. When we talk about (re)politicizing, we mean three things. First, highlighting the importance of the competing forces and interests at work in the market (e.g., privileged institutions and attempts by families to resist desingularization). Secondly, taking into account the habitus and the unequal propensity of different social classes to behave as consumers, to share identical criteria and to make a rational and

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reflexive use of the devices of judgement. Thirdly seeing that the market is not neutral, and to point out the paradoxical and risky aspects of a regulation that seeks to generalize middle-class behavior. Not all families behave like consumers, but policies favouring school markets implicitly make the case that this is the way forward. In order for policies that promote school markets to work effectively, they indeed require turning all students and their parents into school choosers. The achievement of the objectives of such a policy therefore paradoxically depends on the generalization of the strategic behavior typical of the middle and upper classes to the entire population, a strategic behavior often criticized. Rightly, since it is this strategic behavior that drives upper-­ class parents to continually refine their strategies in response to educational policies aimed at addressing inequality (Draelants, 2016). The middle and upper classes do not remain passive in the face of changes in the composition of institutions, which fuels the resingularization process (and the cyclical process described above) In short, the choice of school markets is not trivial, nor neutral, since it fosters strategy, but morally questionable and risky. The moral consequences flow directly from strategic behaviors that are clearly contrary to the general interest and that undermine solidarity and the common good. Moreover, applied to education, the market-making policy advocated by sociologist of market is, to put it bluntly, the same as trying to turn the working-class parent into a middle-class parent without changing his or her economic situation. This is tantamount to accepting that it is up to social agents to adapt to society and its market mode of functioning. Thinking of educational policies within the market paradigm means accepting an adaptive approach to change and renouncing deeper, more transformative change in the school system and in society. As for the risky aspect of such a policy, it stems from the uncertainty of its consequences. There is no guarantee that it will prove effective, even from a pragmatic point of view. It is doubtful that it will lead to an efficient market, if it pushes towards a cyclical process due to social inequalities and divergent class interests. The two consequences can be opposite or combined: either the process of market creation succeeds and has negative moral consequences or it fails; but it can also fail and still have moral implications. It seems important to us, therefore, to keep this in mind and to re-politicize the market, especially in education. The question of the market is not just an engineering question that could be left to technocrats, it is a question that raises political issues that should be publicly debated and linked to the question of educational goals and the kind of society we want to promote.

References Abrams, S. E. (2016). Education and the commercial mindset. Harvard University Press. Apple, M. W. (2001). Comparing neo-liberal projects and inequality in education. Comparative Education, 37(4), 409–423. Apple, M. W. (2005). Education, markets, and an audit culture. Critical Quarterly, 47(1-2), 11–29.

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Ball, S. J. (1993). Education markets, choice and social class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 3–19. Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education market: The middle classes and social advantage. Routledge. Ball, S. J., & Vincent, C. (1998). ‘I Heard It on the Grapevine’: Hot knowledge and school choice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 19(3), 377–400. Ball, S. J., Bowe, R., & Gewirtz, S. (1996). School choice, social class and distinction: The realization of social advantage in education. Journal of Education Policy, 11(1), 89–112. Bourdieu, P. (1972). Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique. Librairie Droz. Bunar, N. (2010). Choosing for quality or inequality: Current perspectives on the implementation of school choice policy in Sweden. Journal of Education Policy, 25(1), 1–18. Callon, M. (2017). L’emprise des marchés: Comprendre leur fonctionnement pour pouvoir les changer. La découverte. Cantillon, E. (2017). Broadening the market design approach to school choice. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 33(4), 613–634. Chamberlin, E. H. (1949). Theory of monopolistic competition: A re-orientation of the theory of value. Oxford University Press. Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). America’s public schools: Choice is a panacea. The Brookings Review, 8(3), 4–12. Deceuninck, J., & Draelants, H. (2016). De l’appariement personnalisé à l’appariement standardisé. In H. Draelants & X. Dumay (Eds.), Les écoles et leur réputation (pp. 213–232). De Boeck. Deceuninck, J., Draelants, H., & Balfroid, L. (2020). Penser les choix scolaires à partir de la sociologie des agencements marchands. Le cas de la réforme des inscriptions en Belgique francophone. Education Comparée, 23, 131. Delvaux, B. (2005). Régulation des interdépendances entre écoles: vers un modèle de responsabilité collective? Recherches sociologiques, 1, 29–51. Delvaux, B., & Joseph, M. (2006). Hiérarchie scolaire et compétition entre écoles: le cas d’un espace local belge. Revue française de pédagogie, 156, 19–27. Delvaux, B., & van Zanten, A. (2006). Les établissements scolaires et leur espace local d’interdépendance. Revue française de pédagogie, 156, 5–8. Draelants, H. (2016). The insiders: Changing forms of reproduction in education. In A. Koh & J. Kenway (Eds.), Elite schools (pp. 151–168). Routledge. Draelants, H., & Dumay, X. (2011). L’identité des établissements scolaires. Presses universitaires de France. Dupriez, V., & Cornet, J. (2005). La rénovation de l’école primaire: Comprendre les enjeux du changement pédagogique. De Boeck Supérieur. Dupriez, V., & Wattiez, R. (2016). Niches éducatives, identités catégorielles et marchés scolaires. In H. Draelants & X. Dumay (Eds.). Les écoles et leur réputation (pp. 85-102). De Boeck. Felouzis, G., & Perroton, J. (2007). Les « marchés scolaires » : une analyse en termes d’économie de la qualité. Revue Française de Sociologie, 48(4), 693–722. Felouzis, G., Maroy, C., & Van Zanten, A. (2013). Les marchés scolaires: sociologie d’une politique publique d’éducation. Presses universitaires de France. Fitz, J., Gorard, S., & Taylor, C. (2003). Schools, markets and choice policies. Routledge. Forsey, M., Davies, S., & Walford, G. (Eds.). (2008, May). The globalisation of school choice? Symposium Books Ltd. François, P. (2008). Sociologie des marchés. Armand Colin. Friedman, M. (1955). The role of government in education in economics and the public interest. Rutgers University Press. Karpik, L. (2007). L’économie des singularités. Gallimard. Karpik, L. (2010). Valuing the Unique. The Economics of Singularity. Princeton University Press. Maroy, C. (2006). École, régulation et marché: une comparaison de six espaces scolaires locaux en Europe. Presses universitaires de France.

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Mehta, J., & Davies, S. (Eds.) (2018). Education in a new society: Renewing the sociology of education. The University of Chicago Press. Mons, N. (2004). De l’école unifiée aux écoles plurielles. Évaluation internationale des politiques de différenciation et de diversification de l’offre éducative (Doctoral dissertation, Université de Bourgogne). Podolny, J.  M. (1993). A status-based model of market competition. American Journal of Sociology, 98(4), 829–872. Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation. Rinehart and Co. Roth, A.  E. (2015). Who gets what and why: The new economics of matchmaking and market design. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. van Zanten, A. (2009). Choisir son école: stratégies parentales et médiations locales. Presses universitaires de France. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Zancajo, A. (2016). The privatization of education: A political economy of global education reform. Teachers College Press. Windle, J. (2014). The rise of school choice in education funding reform: An analysis of two policy moments. Educational Policy, 28(2), 306–324. Hugues Draelants holds a PhD in Sociology, is a Professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium and a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Socialization, Education and Training (GIRSEF). His research focuses on the processes of (re)production of educational inequalities as well as on educational policies, their reception and implementation in schools.  

Chapter 4

School Segregation in Times of Globalization: Research and Policy Challenges Xavier Bonal and Cristian Bellei

Abstract  In this chapter we situate school segregation as an increasingly relevant field of study within educational policy. In the introduction we map the origins of the study of segregation and its unbalanced development in the USA, Europe and Latin America, showing how the trends of change in contemporary society have repositioned the importance and interest in school segregation. In the second section we synthesize the social mechanisms that generate school segregation, considering both external and internal factors within the educational field. Next, we describe and discuss the evidence on public policies that have sought to prevent, contain or reduce segregation, distinguishing those implemented in traditional educational contexts from those applied in educational systems oriented by market dynamics. Finally, we reflect on the reasons why school desegregation policies have been given low priority, despite the enormous amount of evidence on their adverse effects. We identify significant political, cultural and institutional limits that hinder desegregation policies, particularly their potential for social and political conflict, which tends to dissuade public authorities from giving them the priority that this policy deserves.

X. Bonal (*) Globalisation, Education and Social Policies (GEPS) research group, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] C. Bellei Center for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, Santiago & Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, Austral University of Chile, Valdivia, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 V. Dupriez et al. (eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation, Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_4

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4.1 Introduction: School Segregation as a Relevant Field of Study The uneven distribution of students among schools, according to their social origin, ethnicity, gender or any other attribute, is a central issue in educational research. It has received special attention in the United States since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court sentence, which questioned the “separate but equal” doctrine in American schools, in a context of historical apartheid, and situated segregation at the forefront of educational policy. This historical milestone opened the door to desegregation policies, such as busing (school transportation between racially segregated districts), but these policies lost prominence from the 1980s decade. The controversy regarding their legitimacy and effectiveness has been constant in the USA (Noblit, 2015), though its long-term aggregate effects seems to be poor considering the school re-segregation processes of recent decades (Frankenberg & Orfield, 2012; Patterson, 2001). Since the 1960s, and especially after the Coleman Report (Coleman et al., 1966), school segregation and desegregation policies became a central object of academic study. Several authors (Hanushek et al., 2003; Ogbu, 2003; Orfield, 2001; Orfield & Lee, 2005; Saporito, 2003) have focused their studies on different aspects of school segregation (scale, spatial dynamics, consequences on academic performance and social cohesion, and effects of desegregation policies), contributing to build a prolific field of studies for more than 50 years. Most of this research refers to racial segregation, although in recent years studies increasingly focused on socioeconomic segregation (Mickelson, 2018; Palardy, 2013; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). In other parts of the world, school segregation has not received the same attention. However, this has begun to change recently. In Europe, better access to data especially after PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) of the OECD-, the importance of migratory movements and market-oriented educational reforms have generated a growing interest in the study of school segregation in different countries and have promoted international comparative studies (Alegre & Ferrer, 2010; Benito et al., 2014; Dronkers & Robert, 2008; Gorard & Smith, 2004). In Europe, the study of ethnic and racial segregation has been less central than in the United States, and more prominence has been given to the unequal schooling condition of immigrant students and student from low socioeconomic status. In Latin America, where social and economic inequalities are remarkable high, the study of school segregation has only been a priority in recent years. Research has mainly focused on factors accounting for the high levels of exclusion from the school system, low academic performance and noticeable educational inequity. Nevertheless, internal and external migration movements, processes of urban polarization, and new educational policies (such as the promotion of private schools and different forms of decreasing state responsibility) have increased educational differentiation among social groups. These trends are combined with more traditional forms of educational segmentation, which are reinforced in the form of educational access extended to low-income populations: while, in urban areas, high-socio-economic

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status (SES) families tend to attend private or selective public schools, in rural zones, indigenous people live and study in highly segregated environments. All these factors and the improvement in the quality of available data (mainly linked to international studies, such as the PISA) have facilitated an increasing number of studies on school segregation motivated not only by a broad concern for equity, but also by its potential contribution to improve students’ academic performance. Additionally, globalization has expanded the processes of fragmentation and segmentation in large Latin American cities, which have also increased the level of interest among scholars in this emerging field. More than 60 years after the Brown vs. Board of Education sentence, the topic of school segregation not only remains an important area of educational research, but has gained momentum in recent decades. Globalization has undoubtedly impacted this renaissance in school segregation studies. Social inequalities have increased in many of the urban spaces in the globalized world. Economic growth and social development have been unequally distributed and generated growing processes of urban fragmentation and segmentation across neighbourhoods. As Musterd et  al. (2017) argue, globalization and polarization have taken place simultaneously, even in cities of countries with strong welfare regimes. Moreover, the increase in social inequalities since the mid-1970s and the incapacity of governments to use public and social policies to reduce them (Atkinson, 2015) have contributed to worsening socio-economic segregation in major cities. Global inequalities, economic globalization and political conflicts are also affecting migration movements all over the world. Despite the many restrictions on the movement of people, compared to the flow of goods and capital, the number of migrants in the world reached nearly 270 million people in 2020 (3.5% of the world’s population), compared to the 120 million in 1990.1 Socio-economic spatial segregation has increased as a result of all these trends, although its intensity and particular characteristics have varied in different countries and cities, depending on factors such as pre-existing urban segregation, the process of economic restructuring, the development and transformation of welfare states, and the characteristics of housing policies (Musterd & Ostendorf, 1998; Tammaru et al., 2015). Education has not been immune to these tendencies. Residential segregation, migration movements, economic inequalities and sometimes education policies themselves have mostly produced an increasing process of school segregation between the most disadvantaged social groups and the upper classes of society. Obviously, these processes have adopted different shapes and intensities in different parts of the world, from the reinforcement of traditionally segmented curriculum structures to the appearance of new divisions related to market dynamics and privatization processes. Inequalities are produced and reproduced for various reasons and experienced in a distinct manner by different social groups. Social cleavages are imported into the education systems for economic, cultural, religious, linguistic, sexual and many other factors that divide societies.

 See https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf

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Indeed, what these divisions have in common is that they significantly impact on the life opportunities of underprivileged groups, whether they are girls, poor, black, religious or linguistic minorities. Hence, the relevance of school segregation as a field of study rests primarily on the fact that it is one of the most important factors explaining the reproduction of education inequalities. Research on factors predicting academic achievement has, in fact, played a relevant role in boosting studies on school segregation, since a lack of educational inclusion has crucial consequences regarding the educational opportunities of the most vulnerable populations. The study of school segregation has made enormous progress in refining measures to estimate its magnitude, as well as in implementing more complex designs to identify its effects on different dimensions of students’ experiences. Contrary to certain positions that might find civic virtues in voluntary and spontaneous school segregation processes (Merry, 2012) and homogeneous school communities (Chubb & Moe, 1990), there is a great deal of evidence to show that school segregation has negative effects on the performance of the most disadvantaged students (Dumay & Dupriez, 2008; Dupriez et al., 2008; Rangvid, 2007; Thrupp et al., 2002). Despite the existence of relevant school effects (organizational and pedagogical practices), which can have a positive impact on learning processes and outcomes of students, the net effect of school composition variables on student performance tends to be greater than the net effect of variables related to pedagogic practices and organizational processes (Benito et al., 2014; Krüger, 2018). We have also learned that higher- or lower-ability students’ concentration has a greater effect on performance than ascriptive characteristics (Rumerger & Palardy, 2005; Van Der Slik et  al., 2006), as well as the fact that compositional effects are asymmetric because they are strongest among the most underprivileged students. Put another way, the educational performance of ethnic minorities or low-SES students is more sensitive to composition effects than it is in the case of higher-SES students (Hanusheck et al., 2002; Andersen & Thomsen, 2011). Beyond inequalities in educational performance, research has also shown the negative effects of school segregation on other aspects of social life. Schools’ social and ethnic heterogeneity can be decisive in terms of students’ capacity to develop social capital and promoting intercultural friendship networks (Van Houte & Stevens, 2009; Tropp & Prenovost, 2008). Religious, linguistic or ethnic mixing can also facilitate a reduction in prejudice and higher levels of contact between opposed communities in contexts of political conflict (Hughes et al., 2013). Schools’ racial, ethnic or social composition is also related to aspects such as violence, racial prejudice, labour market outcomes, wages or a sense of democracy (Mickleson, 2018).

4.2 The Social Mechanisms of School Segregation: External and Internal Factors to the Educational Field Understanding school segregation processes in a context of globalization is a complex task. It requires exploring the interaction between the different dimensions that generate spatial inequalities in schooling. Some of the factors inducing processes of

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school segregation are external to education systems and would require political action beyond education policy. Residential segregation, pockets of poverty in specific neighbourhoods, migration waves, demographic trends, forms of cultural closure and cultural emulation are potential factors that generate school segregation, which can only be addressed by developing urban development policies, social policies or cultural actions to facilitate social integration. However, other causes of school segregation may be identified in the characteristics of education systems or in specific education policies that may favour polarization and an unbalanced distribution of underprivileged or highly privileged students. Early tracking and institutional differentiation, the presence of a large number of private schools, and the capacity of schools to select their students are aspects that correlate with high levels of school segregation (Alegre & Ferrer, 2010). In the same vein, models of school choice, the definition of catchment areas, levels of shared responsibilities to enrol students at risk and inspection systems to avoid student selection and fraud are factors that can be decisive in understanding how school segregation is produced and reproduced. The interaction between external and internal factors produces unique scenarios of school segregation, which engender inequalities of a different nature and intensity. Hence, policies to tackle school segregation must focus on different aspects, depending on the specific characteristics it adopts in different contexts. Reducing school segregation in some cities may require systems of student mobility, such as bussing in the US. However, in some European cities characterized by lower levels of residential segregation, policies could focus on such aspects as reforming institutional differentiation or redefining school catchment areas. In Latin America, inequalities in the quality of schooling between public and private schools and high levels of urban segregation among the upper classes configure specific scenarios of extreme educational segregation between the rich and the rest of the population. Actually, according to the evidence, similar reforms may produce different and even opposite results when implemented in different contexts. The way in which policies are designed, the structural characteristics of social inequalities and the specificities of education systems are key aspects in understanding why even similar generic policies produce different effects in different contexts. For example, while the Education Reform Act of 1988, which expanded school choice in the UK, had no impact on school segregation (Gorard & Fitz, 1998; Taylor & Gorard, 2001), the universal voucher system in Chile and the expansion of the educational market significantly increased school segregation (Valenzuela et  al., 2014; although recent policies seem to have decreased it: see Gutiérrez in this same volume). Likewise, while school mapping (definition of catchment areas) has shown a certain level of effectiveness in some Spanish municipalities to mitigate segregation (Alegre et al., 2010; Bonal, 2012), in France, the carte scolaire (school admission system based on proximity criteria) has been ineffective in ensuring diversity in schools (Felouzis et al., 2018; Oberti, 2007a). If similar policies have different effects, it is crucial to understand the conditions under which educational policies are developed. Thus, we need to investigate the historical, cultural and institutional aspects of each society to understand the social

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and educational mechanisms that produce processes of exclusion, segregation and educational polarization. In the rest of this section, we briefly discuss the evidence on four groups of factors that produce school segregation.

4.2.1 Residential Segregation Residential segregation has been identified as one of the main causal forces of school segregation. However, the relationship between modes of residential segregation and school segregation is far from simple and linear. Firstly, we are confronted by a dual causal relationship. Residential segregation affects school segregation as much as differences in school quality impact on families’ residential patterns and choices, especially among the middle class (Boterman, 2013; Frankenberg & Kotok, 2013; Raveaud & van Zanten, 2007). Unequal schooling, middle-class educational strategies and residential segregation interact locally in complex ways and significantly impact on educational attainment (Maloutas, 2007). In their search for social advantage, middle-class families produce circuits of schooling in the educational marketplace, which reproduce spatial inequalities in school composition and academic performance (Ball et al., 1995). Secondly, residential segregation does not have one single and unique effect on the processes of school segregation and the educational performance of ethnic minorities. While a vast amount of research has provided evidence of the negative consequences of ethnic residential segregation and school segregation on the educational opportunities of students from minority groups (Andersson et  al., 2010; Gramberg, 1998; Rothstein, 2015), some research has pointed out that ethnic density does not always has a negative effect on educational outcomes. The academic performance of youngsters from ethnic minorities especially depends on the level of integration of the respective ethnic minority in the host country, as well as the stability and quality of the neighbourhood. These variables explain why, for some ethnic minorities, their level of concentration may be more damaging than it is for others (Fleischmann et al., 2011). These disparities have been of particular interest to geographers, who have tried to assess whether there are specific neighbourhood effects on different social dimensions, with educational attainment being one of them. The existence of neighbourhood effects implies that there are aspects related to spatial characteristics, which impinge on social outcomes (attitudes, performance, opportunities) beyond the individual characteristics of residents (Friedrichs et al., 2003). In education, the presence of neighbourhood effects would indicate that residential segregation affects education performance beyond school composition or school effects. While most research along these lines has shown that neighbourhood effects are less significant than institutional or peer effects (Del Bello et al., 2015; Sykes, 2011), some authors have pointed out the non-linear and threshold aspects of neighbourhood effects, meaning that their impact is larger from specific levels of socio-economic or ethnic concentration (Galster, 2014). Interestingly, the non-linear aspect of neighbourhood

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effects underlines the fact that residential effects are stronger in the most affluent neighbourhoods (Duncan et  al., 1997; Helbig, 2010), suggesting that residential segregation could exacerbate the educational privileges of the most well-off more than it would damage the opportunities of the most disadvantaged. In any case, the moderate role of neighbourhood effects is consistent with the fact, as confirmed by many studies, that school segregation is higher than residential segregation (Harris, 2017; Karsten et al., 2006; Rangvid, 2007), demonstrating the importance of other factors beyond urban segregation in understanding how processes of spatial inequalities in schooling are produced and reproduced.

4.2.2 Institutional Differentiation and Tracking Institutional differentiation is a decisive social mechanism of school segregation. International comparisons, based on the PISA, have highlighted a close relationship between early tracking and between-school segregation (Murat, 2012; Alegre & Ferrer, 2010; Jenkins et al., 2008). Countries such as Austria, Belgium or Germany have higher levels of secondary school segregation than countries with comprehensive education systems (particularly the Nordic countries). Social differences between tracks are greater than differences within tracks (Jenkins et al. 2008), while socio-economic background variables have a stronger effect on education inequalities in less comprehensive education systems (Duru-Bellat et al., 2004). The differences in educational and social value among tracks largely explain their different social composition and the higher levels of socio-economic or ethnic segregation in less valued tracks. While the thesis formulated by Baudelot and Establet (1971) refers to the dual network of the French education system in the 1970s, it remains valid today for most societies, as proven by international comparisons. The evidence is so clear that the OECD itself has pointed out the negative effects of early tracking and low permeability between tracks concerning the educational opportunities of the most disadvantaged, while suggesting that upper secondary education student selection processes should be deferred (OECD, 2012). The academic and social segregation related to tracking increases educational inequity. Early tracking or high levels of within-school ability grouping provides students with different learning environments, while having a negative impact on those students located in the lower tracks, along with any clear evidence of the benefits for high achievers and no significant effects on overall performance (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2006). Teacher and student expectations are also deeply affected by tracking, with low expectations for and from low performers and manifest consequences regarding their stigmatization. Lower tracks tend to receive fewer human and material resources and are usually avoided by the best teachers (Oakes, 2005). Student trajectories are clearly marked by their prior allocation in lower tracks, with little opportunity to move to higher tracks or groups. Earlier allocation, therefore, inhibits the development of learning potentialities among many students (Blossfeld et al., 2016).

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4.2.3 Education Markets and the Marketization of Education A third crucial social mechanism concerning the reproduction of school segregation is related to the market-oriented reforms that have spread globally in recent decades. These reforms have not necessarily enhanced direct privatization processes in education (although Chile and Peru are examples of increasing direct private provision). Rather, they have promoted public-private partnerships and other measures emulating organizational and accountability systems of the private sector. Policy tools inspired by market reforms, such as voucher systems, charter schools, low-fee private schools, free schools, higher levels of school choice, school-based management reforms and contracting out school services, have expanded as “good policies” promoted by international organizations (Patrinos et al., 2009) and national governments, with the support of private corporations (Robertson et al., 2012). As in the case of other social mechanisms, social and institutional contexts modify the effects of market reforms on school segregation. Policies enhancing school choice, for instance, may have different effects, depending on the level of residential segregation, but also on variations in the quality of schools and the extent to which the quasi-market is regulated. The socio-spatial characteristics of local education markets and parental choice strategies interact to produce heterogeneous effects across neighbourhoods and municipalities (Bonal et al., 2019, 2020). A large number of studies confirms that the unequal choice opportunities of families with a high or low SES impact negatively on school segregation (see, among others, Gewirtz et al., 1995; Denessen et al., 2005; Easton, 2015; Bonal et al., 2017; Bellei et al., 2018). Greater choice capacity facilitates processes of white flight and triggers processes of distinction with families looking for privileged and high quality schools (Zancajo & Bonal, 2020). However, it is also the case that some international comparisons have found that segregation by parental occupation or country of birth is lower in countries with relatively little governmental control of schools and higher levels of choice (Gorard & Smith, 2004), and that the 1988 reform in the UK, which increased school choice, slightly reduced socio-economic segregation (Gorard & Fitz, 2006), a finding that was also reported for Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (Bartholo & Da Costa, 2018). These controversial results call for the need to unpack the relationship between choice and segregation in each specific context. As discussed, both catchment areas and free choice can facilitate school segregation, depending on the weight of other mediating factors within the complex relationship between school choice and segregation. There is less controversy, however, about the effects of diversity in educational supply on school segregation. Beyond the already mentioned relationship between the presence of private schools in education systems and school segregation (Alegre & Ferrer, 2010), there is other evidence confirming that the higher the diversity of schools, the stronger the mechanisms of social and academic student selection. This is true for free schools in the UK (Green et al., 2015) or Sweden (Bunar & Ambrose, 2016), for private independent and private subsidized schools in Chile (Elacqua, 2012; Valenzuela et  al., 2014) or Spain (Bonal, 2012), for areas with a higher

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diversity of school supply in France (Oberti, 2007b), for low-fee private schools in Peru (Balarin & Escudero, 2018), for religious or pedagogical diversity in the Netherlands (Karsten et al., 2003), and for charter schools (Garcia, 2008) or magnet schools (Saporito, 2003) in the US. Diversity in schooling stimulates processes of selection and self-selection, as well as white flight, and can favour processes of cultural, religious or ethnic closure in specific schools. Of course, the mechanisms triggering school segregation work differently according to the modes of educational differentiation. However, despite the arguable benefits that a greater variety of curricular and pedagogic models can produce in terms of educational quality, there is no doubt that this diversity of school projects, accompanied by systems of enhancing choice, such as vouchers, tends to increase school segregation by SES or ethnic origin.

4.2.4 School Admission Policies and Resource Allocation Finally, educational policies that regulate admission systems and student allocation, as well as compensatory policies, also play an important role in triggering school segregation. Admission policies refer not only to the level of freedom in terms of school choice or the definition of catchment areas, but to many other decisions regarding student distribution, such as classroom ratios, the number of places reserved for students with special needs or to students with a low SES, or decisions regarding the opening or closing of new classrooms in certain schools. Regulations on these aspects and everyday political decision-making may either favour or reduce processes of school segregation. Research in this area has evidenced that reforms that provide schools with high levels of discretion in terms of student admissions, or that do not impede admission tests or certain forms of discriminatory school entrance requirements, increase the polarization of social factors, ethnicity or ability within school enrolment (Balarin & Escudero, 2018; Bellei, 2009; Contreras et al., 2012; Harris, 2012; Krüger, 2018; Söderström & Uusitalo, 2010). Active policies to ensure a balanced distribution of disadvantaged students can be decisive in terms of desegregation. Beyond the well-known practice of bussing in the US, other policies of affirmative action, such as reserving a number of places for students with certain characteristics, can result in a more equal distribution of at-risk students. Despite these policies having been developed to a greater extent at the university level, in order to ensure places for minority students, some educational systems include similar measures for basic and post-compulsory education. Reserving places for Roma children has been a common measure in some Eastern European countries (Miskovic, 2013; CHR, 2017). Meanwhile, in Spain, there is a legal obligation imposed on every school to reserve a minimum number of places for students from a low-SES background or for late-arrival migrants (Bonal & Zancajo, 2018). In Belgium’s French community, the reform of the admission system has enabled public authorities to intervene in order to ensure a more balanced distribution between

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privileged and underprivileged students (Dupriez et al., 2018). The implementation of such measures can be a decisive factor in reducing school segregation, as well as counterbalancing the effects of residential segregation or school competition. Finally, compensatory policies represent another mechanism, which can, somewhat paradoxically, contribute to school segregation. While compensatory policies can be powerful instruments with which to improve the learning conditions of children with social and academic disadvantage, they can also have unintended consequences for the unequal distribution of students. On the one hand, compensatory policies have a known stigmatization effect for certain schools, which may prevent middle-class families from sending their children to them. As the analysis by Felouzis et al. (2018) demonstrates, the Zones d’Action Prioritaire in France are designed to compensate for the effects of school segregation, rather than to prevent it. Nevertheless, despite gaining access to supplementary human or material resources, or despite focusing their pedagogic action on singular projects, as in the case of magnet schools, these types of measures may polarize educational demand between disadvantaged and privileged students. On many occasions, there is a trade-off between targeted education policies, which are focused on the needs of specific groups or territories, and other policies, such as defining catchment areas or reserving places for students with special needs, thereby attempting to balance the distribution of vulnerable students among all schools. On the other hand, the specific design of compensatory policies may introduce biases that exacerbate school polarization among social groups. As Gorard and Siddiqui (2018) show in the case of the UK, territorial focalization (and ignorance of the social composition of schools) may lead to failed systems of compensation and higher school segregation. Likewise, policies designed to facilitate access for poor children to supposedly high-quality schools may, in fact, increase academic and social selection and aggravate school segregation. This occurred in the UK, on account of the Assisted Places Scheme policy (Easton, 2015) and the expansion of places in selective grammar schools (Gorard & Seddiqui, 2018), and in Colombia, after the launch of a programme of charter schools (Termes et al., 2016).

4.3 School Desegregation Policies: Mapping the Agenda In this section we analyze the policies and regulations that seek to inhibit, control or reduce school segregation. In order to understand the link between policies and the causal factors in the production of school segregation, we associate those policies with the educational context in which they have been implemented. We distinguish between traditional forms of school segregation and those more associated to market dynamics.

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4.3.1 Policies in Traditional Contexts of School Segregation Traditional forms of segregation within the public system were based on institutional segmentation: different kinds of curricula and educational aims in respect of different student populations. They represented the established way of channelling increasing social and academic diversity caused by expansion processes; in some way, they were the price to pay for the maintenance of the middle classes when incorporating the lower classes into the system. Once segregation trends were identified, a repertoire of more or less conventional policies was developed to tackle school segregation. However, the ultimate effectiveness of these policies has been questioned, given that, in the medium term, privileged groups have always found ways to avoid undesirable schools. Curriculum Differentiation Many educational systems have channelled the process of schooling through differentiated forms of curricula, producing a segmentation that almost inevitably reflects a hierarchy. The most widespread example of this is the organization of a vocational channel oriented towards work as an alternative to general secondary education, which is clearly oriented towards higher education (Kerckhoff, 2001; Shavit & Müller, 2006). Since the publics of both streams tend to be socially differentiated, this socio-educational segmentation is reflected in the social composition of the institutions. Increasingly, several countries, such as France and Belgium, have recognized this segmentation as inequitable and tried to modify it, either by extending the common curriculum or by delaying the moment of separation between the two tracks (Dupriez et al., 2018; Felouzis et al., 2018). A non-segmented curriculum would make the difference in educational opportunities between institutions less evident by favouring the homogenization of their students. However, this is rarely achieved. Another form of curricular differentiation is the one based on the level of academic requirements or the performance of the schools, thereby creating academically selective public schools. Given the multiple ways in which the performance of students is related to differences in class and ethnicity, the consequence is that these schools also contribute to educational segregation. In this case, given that it is recognized that the orientation of the curriculum is the same as for other public schools, the hierarchy of prestige or quality between the two is even more evident (Abdulkadiroğlu et al., 2014). This produces inequality in relation to non-selective schools, which governments have attempted to overcome by developing compensatory policies (such as Zones d’Action Prioritaire in France or targeted budgets in UK). However, the social context makes it very difficult to reverse.

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Within-School Tracking Differentiation has also been organized according to performance within the same institution, under various forms of grouping students and giving curricular options such as elective courses (what the literature calls streaming or intra-school tracking). Internal grouping and other forms of intra-school differentiation do not have a single interpretation or assessment (Gamoran, 2010). For some, it constitutes another manifestation of school segregation (in this case, between classrooms within the same school), since the different tracks are associated (in practice) with the social class, race and ethnicity of the students. Thus, the elimination of these practices is considered an important desegregation policy, although their interaction with sociocultural dynamics produces ambiguous results and, potentially, high conflict (Yonezawa et al., 2002). However, allowing and even promoting some degree of internal differentiation has also been interpreted as a consequence of preserving a certain social heterogeneity within public schools. Typically, the middle classes push for this type of differentiation to produce more opportunities for their children within the public system. The alternative for the middle classes is then to move to private schools. Thus, tolerating a certain internal differentiation in educational experiences would preserve the social heterogeneity of schools, configuring a trade-off between inter-­ school segregation and intra-school segregation (Chmielewski, 2014). Certainly, these types of practices are rarely formulated as “social integration policies”, but rather as local socio-educational dynamics, spontaneous from the point of view of policies, but effective as educational micropolitics. School Zoning and Admissions Procedures School zoning (i.e. that students have access priority for attending schools within a radius close to their homes) exists in many countries, although with important operational differences, in terms of coercive tactics for enrolment and the control of the school offer. From a general perspective, by linking the social composition of schools with that of their urban environment, zoning reproduces residential segregation in schools, but design details matter in modulating this effect. Policy makers have tried different alternatives, such as in the case of Spain where educational authorities have modified the size and the shape of catchment areas for each school to expand school choice opportunities (Bonal & Zancajo, 2018). Likewise, it is important to define whether school admission processes and decisions will be managed centrally or at the level of each school, and the degree to which families can choose a school within their area (by organizing a quasi-market, as we will discuss below). In many countries where school segregation is greater than residential segregation, zoning has been proposed to increase the social heterogeneity of schools. However, in other contexts, zoning itself can become a factor of segregation. An additional reason that produces school segregation is that not all parents respect the

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designation made by public authorities for their children; typically, the most educated and those with the most resources can influence those decisions, as has been documented in Peru and Argentina (Balarín & Escudero, 2018; Krüger, 2018). In France, given the inadequate functioning of zoning in some contexts, school choice beyond the reference area was introduced as a solution, which apparently did not have the expected positive effect of higher social mixing (Felouzis et al., 2018). This is consistent with the evidence associated with the negative effects of school choice on segregation. More generally, in several public education systems, the admission practices of the schools are not particularly transparent and easily lend themselves to arbitrariness. This is due to the fact that, on the one hand, schools try to select less problematic students or avoid minority students and those who are disadvantaged and hinder the teaching process or the school’s performance, while, on the other hand, families carry out different practices to influence the allocation process of school places. Several countries have introduced measures to make these systems more transparent, non-discriminatory and even progressive, but experience suggests unequal effects in this respect.

4.3.2 Desegregation Policies in a Market-Oriented Context Beyond “traditional” forms of segregation, based on fairly widespread characteristics of public education systems, there are forms of segregation associated with market or quasi-market dynamics, which are identified as producers of school segregation in several studies. Certainly, these dynamics can be more or less transparent and, although they are mainly associated with the private sector, they also occur within public education systems. In such cases, policies have tried to lessen the segregating effects of the school market, while maintaining its organizing principles, especially the choice of schools by families, thereby reducing the potential for these policies to reduce inequalities. Privatization and School Autonomy In academic research, private schools are mostly considered to be a relevant factor in the production of school segregation. This happens because, unlike public schools, which are initially open to the whole community, private schools tend to specialize in subpopulations, which sometimes constitute particular communities. In systems that are historically based on private provision in order to guarantee pluralism, such as in the Netherlands or Belgium, these involve religious, ethnic or philosophical communities; in other countries, private education (which is generally more restricted and expensive) tends to be associated with upper and sometimes middle social classes, except in the Chilean case, where privatization under an open market regime has produced an enormously specialized offer according to the level

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of income of families throughout the entire range of social stratification. Certainly, the characteristics of the operation of private schools that produce segregation are also replicated in some cases within the public system, as in the case of Peru or Argentina; that is, when schools have the autonomy to differentiate their offer to diverse audiences, they impose admission requirements on students and families, thereby controlling the overall admission processes. Despite this evidence, in general, countries have not implemented policies to reverse privatization tendencies; on the contrary, in some cases, these policies have been openly promoted. Policies aimed at reducing the segregating and unequal effects of privatization have been rather indirect. For example, in Belgium, compulsory educational standards have been established for all schools in an effort to reduce the heterogeneity of the offer (Dupriez et  al., 2018). Yet, the most widespread policy in this regard has been the regulation of school admission processes to avoid arbitrary discrimination, make the processes more transparent and guarantee freedom of choice for families in a more productive way. However, as the Chilean and Belgian experiences show, even these fairly moderate policies to tackle segregation have faced enormous resistance from private schools (Ávalos & Bellei, 2019), which feel threatened because their educational projects are based on homogeneous communities. School Choice The freedom of choice for families is a key mechanism of educational systems organized with a market logic, where all parents are expected to be active choosers looking for the school that best suits their preferences. Given that “preferences” are associated with the cultural, social and economic characteristics of families, school choice is usually recognized as a factor that produces school segregation. Some countries that allow school choice, such as Belgium, Chile and Brazil (Bartholo & Da Costa, 2018; Bellei et al., 2018; Dupriez et al., 2018), have tried to reduce its effects on segregation, seeking to equalize the conditions under which families of different social classes or ethnic groups choose school. This includes implementing information campaigns and disseminating school performance indicators, or reducing the costs associated with schooling, such as transportation and school fees. On the other hand, some cities in the Netherlands, the United States and Spain (Alves & Willie, 1987; Bonal & Zancajo, 2018; Boterman, 2018), seek to partially reduce the freedom to choose, implementing policies of “controlled school choice”, allowing the election only within a pre-defined area, or empowering local authorities to maintain partial control over the admission process. This is done by only allowing choice within a specific territory or by giving power to local authorities to maintain partial control over the admission process. For instance, some countries have introduced regulations to redistribute students with higher learning difficulties among local schools in cases where the dynamics of choice produce their hyperconcentration in a small number of schools.

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It is interesting to note that, in the opposite direction, in some systems such as in France or Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (Bartholo & Da Costa, 2018; Felouzis et  al., 2018), authorities have begun to implement school choice policies as a way to combat the segregation produced by school zones, provide greater mobility to disadvantaged families and facilitate their integration into more diverse schools. The evidence provided by these examples, although initial, suggests that they have not significantly reduced school segregation. Thus, broadly speaking, it coincides with the more consolidated evidence about the Netherlands, Chile and some districts in the US, which reveal that parents’ school choice is not part of the solution of school segregation, but can actually be one of its causes. Competition Finally, market dynamics are reflected in the competition between schools to attract specific families and thus obtain advantages over others, typically in the form of resources, but also prestige and better performance. Given the relationship between the characteristics of families and school choice mentioned above, competition between schools also tends to reinforce segregation by increasing the number of “desirable” students from more advantaged families and, especially, highly “preventable” students from lower social classes, ethnic minorities or migrant backgrounds. Of course, traditional systems also produce prestigious hierarchies among schools, but the dynamics of segregation are less intensive because there is reduced arbitrariness in the admission policies, families exercise less freedom of choice (and self-segregation) and schools do not benefit economically (at least formally) from these differences in prestige. In fact, the market situation exacerbates all these processes. In addition to some of the previously mentioned policies that control school autonomy and parental choice, some countries have implemented policies that are focused on reducing the effects of competition between schools. These policies include increasing the resources associated with “at-risk” students (e.g., immigrants or low-income families) in per capita financing schemes, giving preference to disadvantaged students in the admission process when there is excess of demand, avoiding the publication of performance rankings that may stigmatize certain schools, or modifying the geographical area within which schools compete for students.

4.4 Why Have School Desegregation Policies Been Given Low Priority? Political, Cultural and Institutional Limits to Desegregation To conclude, we try to interpret why, despite all the available evidence, has desegregation been assigned a low priority on the educational policy agenda in the vast majority of countries.

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To begin with, we need to make a basic distinction. The previous analysis focused on policies that, with varying but generally low intensity, address some of the causes that create school segregation and therefore try to prevent it. Other policies, on the other hand, simply try to mitigate some of their effects and cannot therefore be considered as policies that tackle school segregation. For example, several countries (such as the US or Chile) have implemented school improvement programmes targeting poorly performing schools with a high concentration of at-risk students, while others allocate compensatory funds to schools where the most disadvantaged students attend (as in UK or Belgium) or to urban areas where such students mostly live (such as in France), so that local or school authorities can provide better conditions and better inputs for their teachers and students. Although the educational effects of these policies are varied (some of them have been quite successful), their effectiveness with regard to school segregation has been questioned. As mentioned, in some cases (such as the Zones d’Action Prioritaire in France), undesired effects have been documented, such as the stigmatization of schools or areas “benefiting” from these policies. Paradoxically, in the long term, these policies may end up reinforcing the level of segregation and the consequences that they were intended to alleviate. The review of international experiences also allows for the identification of another pattern. There is, in general, an absence of public policies directly aimed at reducing school segregation once this has occurred. The well-documented US experience involving direct policies of racial desegregation continues to be the most resolute instance of policies of this kind. In most of the studied countries, school segregation has not been defined as a matter of educational policies and, at most, political action has been limited to partially alleviate its consequences. Furthermore, in some cases in which school segregation has been identified as a problem to be solved and become part of the policy agenda, the measures that have been implemented either try to only address its causes indirectly (such as increasing the voucher value for low-income students in Chile) or may be qualified as “voluntary” desegregation policies, based, for example, on school choice mechanisms (as in the case of France and Rio de Janeiro). This relatively low priority for addressing school segregation in the context of educational policies contrasts sharply with the growing scientific evidence in terms of its relevance, magnitude, and negative consequences. Certainly, evidence has also been provided regarding the positive effects of being educated in integrated contexts. In an extensive review of this literature, Mickelson (2018) shows how a large body of research points out that studying in diverse schools/classrooms favors the acquisition of academic learning in Language, Mathematics, or Science (in addition to increasing access to College and students’ graduation rates). These effects are especially positive for those belonging to disadvantaged groups, who also benefit from accessing to non-academic learning forms and better social integration (e.g., less social prejudice, less racial stereotypes; greater trust, respect and acceptance of different people, and greater interracial relationships and friendship). Likewise, diversity generates benefits in the medium and long term, such as the citizen commitment of young people (e.g., community work, political participation,

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participation in civil society organizations) and better quality of adult life, including labor dimensions, social relations and community life (Mickelson, 2018). The question then is how to understand this apparent distance between the academic relevance assigned to school segregation and the low priority given to this problem by policy makers and even by activists promoting changes in education. First, the evidence regarding segregation in education has been presented relatively recently in almost all countries, with the exception of US, although, in this case, the racial segregation of schools was not an undiscovered phenomenon, but an institutional feature of the US educational system. In Europe and Latin America, school segregation was, at best, subsumed under more general themes about inequity in education, rather than the object of direct political discussion. In addition, available rigorous evidence for its negative consequences remains scarce outside of the US, which clearly reduces the pressure on governments to take action. Likewise, the priority agenda for governments is always limited. Actually, policies that dominate current international debates in education, such as privatization, school autonomy and test-based accountability are to some extent factors contributing to segregation. Thus, far from giving priority to desegregation policies, governments feel attracted to global education policies that are potentially inconsistent with a desegregation strategy. As such, there is a clear incompatibility between theoretically opposing agendas. So far, it is quite clear which agenda is winning this dispute. Secondly, even in contexts in which policymakers have become aware of the relevance of segregation and are interested in advancing policies to combat it, it is not clear as to what tools they have at their disposal. Although the evidence is quite convergent concerning some of its causes, the same cannot be said with regard to policies to combat it. For example, some governments promote vouchers and school choice as a way to increase families’ mobility and allow them to self-desegregate, while others promote zoning to decrease the dynamics of the school market or pursue compensatory policies that target specific groups of students. Somewhat paradoxically, the same desegregation measures used in one specific context have been identified as factors that produce school segregation in other contexts. Likewise, the US experience highlights the complexity in implementing policies of forced desegregation, since, in the medium term, some of its effects seem to be reversed. Forced desegregation may carry the price of an eventual abandonment of the public education system by the middle classes, as has happened in some countries. Certainly, context matters when it comes to assessing the appropriateness of one policy or another. Given the sensitivity around this issue, social actors have reacted to policies in ways that are not always predictable, which can ultimately inhibit the effects of specific policies, as well as generate new negative effects. In short, the path of desegregation policies is highly uncertain. Finally, the political economy of desegregation policies is tremendously complex and potentially very conflictive (Bonal, 2012; Oakes et  al., 1997; Wells & Serna, 1996). Desegregation policies are concerned with controlling institutional dynamics, which are deeply rooted in both the public and the private sectors. They also attempt to modify sociocultural practices of difficult and slow change, as well as impinge upon the social interests of the upper and middle classes to the benefit of

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the lower classes, minority ethnic groups and migrants, that is, those sectors with less voice and power in society. The few experiences of direct desegregation policies, and even some indirect ones, have shown the extent to which they can be explosive in terms of social conflict. Thus, it is not surprising that decision makers have mainly chosen to only pursue policies that deal with the effects of segregation or, at most, do not help to increase it. This is certainly a first step prior to openly promoting the policies of integration and diversity in schools. To decisively advance in this direction, it seems that most countries have not yet arrived at a social consensus on the value of education in diverse contexts; in short, this is a pending social debate. Finally, the complexity of the causes of segregation, which certainly include the weight of urban segregation and new forms of exclusion based on immigration, in which social class mixes with issues of language and race more than before, demands an approach that goes beyond educational policies. They need a cross-­ sectorial approach, which is generally absent from these public policies. In summary, desegregation policies face, in addition to their technical difficulties, social, cultural and political obstacles to be effective. In some countries these stem from long institutionally rooted traditions. For example, according to Dupriez et  al. (2018), the institutional differentiation of education provision in the Francophone area of Belgium, ​​ linked to the existence of socially segregated populations, was consolidated at an early stage in the development of the educational system of that country. That meant that from its guiding mission it did not prioritize integration into a common educational project; rather, it reinforced an anti-diversity culture in the school. That is, instead of valuing the existence of a common school, Belgian society has recognized the value of preserving diverse school networks based on different sociological communities (historically Catholic and liberal), thus promoting freedom of education, school choice and the private provision of education. This sociocultural segregation, explicitly imported into the educational system, has generated the conditions for the emergence of a quasi-market, which has slowly become autonomous from its context of origin linked to religious tolerance and has become more based on academic and social inequalities. Thus, despite the recent concern about the severe educational segregation that this system produces, its historical and social roots are so deep that the weak egalitarian policies that have been implemented have not been enough to overcome the strong resistance they face. Actually, the social, cultural and institutional nature of the barriers to desegregation policies reduce their chances of success, even in countries where there is an ideological tradition that should favor them. This would be for instance the case of France. Although formally committed to the meritocratic ideals of equal opportunities and the common school, Felouzis et al. (2018) argue that the translation of these ideals into real policies in a context of democratization and school massification have not produced greater equality. In fact, they have even contributed to consolidate the social and ethnic segregation of the French educational system. This paradox occurs because educational policies have sociocultural dimensions and produce reactions from social actors that can cause unwanted effects that are difficult to anticipate. Thus, for example, despite the fact that the French “common school” has tried to homogenize the school experience, various forms of competition and

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selection have maintained a certain level of differentiation of educational opportunities. In addition, although school zoning allows for a certain diversity within schools, this is limited by residential segregation and the avoidance strategies of families with greater cultural and economic capital. Finally, although priority education zones try to reduce the effects of segregation, they reinforce stigmatization as a result of targeted policies. In this way, social inequality always has found interstices by which to transform itself into school segregation. To wrap up, our comprehensive review of the current debates on segregation in education underlies the dynamism of this academic field and emphasizes the complexities involved in properly identifying both its causes and consequences. Despite this complexity, our conclusion is that the available evidence provides solid grounds for considering school segregation by race, social class and ethnicity as a problem of enormous relevance, which should become a priority on educational policy agendas. However, the political experiences also provide revealing information to prevent us from simplistic approaches to the issue, since its solution will depend not only on institutional changes, regulations and new organizational practices, but also on the social and cultural support of societies, which ultimately should be based on a shared vision of educational policy radically oriented towards socio-­ educational equity.

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Wells, A. S., & Serna, I. (1996). The politics of culture: Understanding local political resistance to detracking in racially mixed schools. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 93–119. Yonezawa, S., Wells, A. S., & Serna, I. (2002). Choosing tracks: “Freedom of choice” in detracking schools. American Educational Research Journal, 39(1), 37–67. Zancajo, A., & Bonal, X. (2020). Education markets and school segregation: A mechanism-based explanation. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1858272 Xavier Bonal is Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and director of the research group Globalisation, Education and Social Policies (GEPS) at the UAB and Coordinator of the GLOBED Project, an Erasmus Mundus Master on Education Policies for Global Development. He has widely published on sociology of education, education policy and globalization and education and development. He has worked as a consultant for international organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF, the European Commission, the OECD and the Council of Europe.  

Cristián Bellei is associate researcher at the Center for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile, and Professor at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Austral University of Chile. He has been Tinker Visiting Professor at Stanford University. He is a Sociologist from the University of Chile, Master of Education Policy and Doctor of Education, both from Harvard University. He has published extensively about education policy, school change and improvement, school segregation, privatization and school choice.  

Chapter 5

Markets in Education and School Segregation: Paths of Problematization and Reform Adrián Zancajo, Clara Fontdevila, and Antoni Verger

Abstract  Over the last years, a broad consensus has been forged regarding the negative impact of market policies on educational equity, especially in terms of school segregation. The preoccupation with the equity effects of educational markets has penetrated the policy agenda of different countries, although it has not crystallized in a univocal reform approach. Building on the results of a systematic literature review, this chapter examines how educational markets have been problematized in relation to the phenomenon of school segregation, as well as what policy and regulatory options have been adopted in different education systems to address them. The findings show that, while the problematization of educational markets is generally motivated by their impact on educational inequalities, the specific axes of inequality and the factors and actors triggering problematization processes vary greatly across contexts. The chapter also finds that educational reforms aimed at mitigating the role of markets on segregation tend to focus on three main regulatory areas – namely, school funding, school choice and admissions, and the authorization of educational providers. Finally, the chapter reflects on the political and implementation challenges, among other limitations, of these regulatory reforms, concluding that their effectiveness in countering market forces remain still an open question.

5.1 Introduction In recent years, a broad consensus has been forged, both in academic and policy circles, regarding the negative impact of pro-market policies on school segregation (see the Introduction to this volume). Different international organizations, A. Zancajo (*) · A. Verger Department of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain C. Fontdevila School of Education, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 V. Dupriez et al. (eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation, Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_5

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including those that have actively promoted market policies in education such as school choice, the public financing of private providers or school league tables, have pointed out the need to review such policies to prevent them from causing educational inequalities (see, for example, OECD 2017a, World Bank 2018, or UNESCO, 2022). The evidence available shows that the mechanisms through which educational markets can trigger school segregation are diverse and interrelated (Zancajo & Bonal, 2020). However, it is possible to draw an analytical distinction between those mechanisms activated by the demand-side and those activated by the supply-­side. In the case of the demand-side mechanisms, markets in education often become an unequal field of action for families and students from different social groups. The greater choice capacity granted to families tends to favor the middle or upper classes, who can navigate the system better than working-class families (Ball, 2003; Musset, 2012). On the supply side, the policies that encourage competition between schools tend to generate processes of segmentation of the educational offer, which reinforce, in turn, processes of school segregation (Jabbar, 2015; Zancajo, 2020). To mitigate the negative effects of market policies on education equity, a significant number of countries have gone through reform processes and revised their funding schemes for the private school sector. In many cases, policy actors operating at both the international and the national level consider that regulatory reforms have the potential to reconcile the supposed benefits of the market with the need for greater levels of equity. Nonetheless, the growing consensus on the relationship between markets in education and school segregation has not crystallized into an unequivocal reform agenda, and it is not clear what is meant by the ‘effective regulation’ of educational markets in terms of policy design. In this chapter, we argue that the way in which the phenomenon of school segregation is problematized is fundamental when it comes to understand the nature of the reform processes through which segregation is addressed. As Bacchi (2016) has pointed out, drawing on different policy formation theories, problem identification is an essential moment to understand the policy options that governments adopt. Following this line of inquiry, the chapter is structured as follows. In the first section we analyze how and through what arguments the relationship between markets in education and school segregation has been problematized in OECD countries. In the next section, we aim to understand how these problematizations have triggered different types of regulatory reforms aiming at reducing the negative impact of markets in education on school segregation. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the relationship between markets in education and school segregation, as well as on the capacity of regulatory reforms to deal with such challenges.

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5.2 The Problematization of Educational Markets 5.2.1 The International Debate on Educational Markets and Inequalities Over the last years, the debate on the impact of educational privatization and pro-­ market policies on equity has acquired a global dimension. Comparative research has repeatedly demonstrated that educational systems featuring publicly private subsidized schools, as well as those where coordination between supply and demand relies on market mechanisms, exhibit higher levels of school segregation and social stratification between public and private schools (OECD, 2012b, 2019; Alegre & Ferrer, 2010; Dumay & Durpriez, 2014; Baum, 2018; Eurydice, 2020). Indeed, academic research and civil society organizations have been drawing attention to the connection between market policies and educational inequalities for decades. However, it has not been until recently that such considerations have been incorporated into the discourses of key international organizations. The 2017/18 edition of the Global Education Monitoring Report, published by UNESCO, observes that ‘encouraging education systems to function more like markets is likely to benefit better resourced schools and families, leading to greater inequality’ (UNESCO, 2017, p. 61). Also, in 2017, the OECD published a position paper which emphasized the need to implement effective regulations to prevent market policies in education from undermining the educational opportunities of the most socially disadvantaged students (OECD, 2017a). Even the World Bank, an historic enthusiastic advocate of market policies in education, recognizes in the World Development Report 2018 that, under certain circumstances, the participation of private providers might negatively affect education equity, and that ‘it may diminish political support for an effective public school system in the long run’ (World Bank, 2018, p. 177). Other international actors, such as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education or the Abidjan Principles, a transnational civil society initiative, have also drawn attention to the need to establish appropriate regulatory frameworks as a mean to mitigate the negative impact of privatization and commodification in the education sector –especially from an equity perspective (United Nations, 2015; The Abidjan Principles, 2019). Most of these international organizations and initiatives approach public regulation as an instrument to inhibit or compensate for the negative effects of educational markets. However, significant differences can be observed in terms of their approach to this issue. On the one hand, UNESCO, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, or the Abidjan Principles initiative privilege regulatory frameworks in which the State plays a central role – establishing prescriptive rules and monitoring their compliance through inspections and sanctions (United Nations, 2015; Moumné

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& Saudemont, 2015). This strategy is known in the regulation literature as the ‘command and control’ approach (Baldwin et al., 2012). In contrast, organizations such as the World Bank consider that regulatory strategies based on incentives and the so-called ‘short route of accountability’ might be more effective in guaranteeing equality of opportunities. This approach revolves around the expansion and strength of school accountability policies and the reinforcement of information systems as mechanisms to ensure that families and students can exercise a ‘real choice’ regardless of their socioeconomic status, and to prevent educational providers from developing discriminatory practices (World Bank, 2004; Lewis & Patrinos, 2011; Baum et al., 2014).

5.2.2 The Effects of the Educational Market on School Segregation: Paths of Problematization In many countries, education markets have been mainly problematized as a result of their effects on the unbalanced distribution of disadvantaged students, and due to their association with an increase in the level of social stratification between schools. This is certainly the case of education systems such as those analyzed in greater depth in this volume (Chile and the French-speaking community of Belgium), but also of Denmark, England, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Flemish community of Belgium or Spain (see Alegre & Ferrer, 2010; Bonal & Bellei, 2018; Demeuse & Friant, 2011; Dumay & Dupriez, 2014; Dupriez et  al., 2018; Elacqua, 2012; Vandenberghe, 1999). In many of the above-mentioned countries, the growing corpus of evidence on the impact of educational markets on school segregation has generated important public debates. However, such debates have been informed by different arguments and frameworks, and have thus taken different directions. For instance, in the Netherlands and in the Flemish community of Belgium, the debate has tended to focus on school segregation along ethnic lines. In these education systems, the rise of so-called ‘ghetto schools’ (schools concentrating a high percentage of students from ethnic minorities) has given way to an important debate on the role of private subsidized schools in contributing to this phenomenon (Sierens et al., 2011; Peters & Walraven, 2011). Beyond strictly axiological considerations, the controversy surrounding ‘ghetto schools’ has also focused on the implications for the integration and academic performance of immigrant and ethnic minority students. An OECD report published in 2010 noted that the high level of choice in the Netherlands, a feature of Dutch education directly related to the high share of private subsidized schools, was one of the main factors at the root of an unequal distribution of students. This same report recommended the adoption of different measures to balance school choice with a more even distribution of students (Peters & Walraven, 2011; OECD, 2010).

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In other contexts, the debate on market policies has focused on segregation along socioeconomic lines. This is the case of the French-speaking community of Belgium or Chile. In these two educational systems, the question of school segregation was absent from the educational debate for decades, and it was not until the early 2000s that it started to gain some prominence (Dupriez et  al., 2018). There, academic research contributed decisively to the problematization of school segregation in relation to the educational market. In particular, the first waves of the PISA evaluation were crucial to obtain the necessary data for rigorous analyses of the school segregation phenomenon. In French-speaking Belgium, evidence produced during those years was mobilized by civil society organizations and teacher unions to warn on the direct relation between market dynamics and the high level of school segregation, among other forms of educational inequality (Dupriez et  al., 2018). As a consequence of this debate, in 2005, the Ministry of Education published a strategic document that set the future priorities for the educational system, and which placed the fight against school segregation as one of the priority areas of action. The document, entitled ‘Strategic Contract for Education’ (Contrat Stratégique pour l’Éducation), established an ambitious framework of action for the educational reforms that would be implemented later (Danhier & Friant, 2019). Chile is probably the country where the debate on educational markets and school segregation has been most intense and has had more important policy implications. Students’ protests in 2006 and 2011 were especially effective in drawing public attention to the negative effects on equity of more than three decades of market policies in education. This, in turn, generated a political debate on the need for regulatory reforms to mitigate such effects (Zancajo, 2019). While the role of students’ and civil society mobilizations was decisive in the problematization of the Chilean education market, it is also important to bear in mind that Chile is one of the countries for which scientific evidence on the relationship between the education markets and school segregation is more extensive and profuse (see, for example, Elacqua, 2012; Valenzuela et al., 2014; Villalobos & Valenzuela, 2012). Indeed, international organizations such as the World Bank or the OECD have shown in the past that the regulatory shortcomings of the Chilean educational market is one of the primary causes of the high levels of school segregation and stratification (OECD, 2004; World Bank, 2007). In the case of Sweden, the relationship between school segregation and the education market has not only been problematized by independent academic research, but also by studies commissioned and carried out by the government. Such studies have demonstrated that the increasing families’ capacity of choice (resulting from the school voucher system adopted in the 1990s) has negatively affected the even distribution of students according to their socioeconomic status (Volckmar & Wiborg, 2014). In the case of Denmark, Olsen (2015) argues that the poor results of the PISA study in 2000 fostered debate on the role of private subsidized schools as a driver of school segregation, and the effects of such phenomenon on academic performance. In Spain, the impact of market mechanisms on school segregation has also been problematized (Murillo et al., 2018). This debate is much more intense in regions such as Catalonia, Madrid or the Basque Country, where private subsidized

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education represents a particularly significant share of the total enrolment. In Catalonia, the Ombudsman (Síndic de Greuges1) has repeatedly warned that, at least to some extent, school segregation is connected to the co-existence of public and private subsidized schools, with the latter enrolling a much lower share of students of immigrant background or of low socioeconomic status (Síndic de Greuges de Catalunya, 2008, 2016). As a result of the public debate generated by this and other sources of evidence, in 2018, the educational administration, along with the main organizations of private subsidized providers and other key education stakeholders, signed the so-called ‘Pact Against School Segregation’. The document proposed several measures and regulatory changes oriented at tackling school segregation, a number of which entailed changes in the regulation of the private subsidized school sector. In some countries, the processes of problematization of the educational market have been more explicitly linked to student selection practices, which are especially prevalent in highly competitive school contexts. For example, in Chile, selective admissions have been primarily problematized as a driver of school segregation, but also because of their discriminatory nature. The student mobilizations of 2006 led eventually to the legal prohibition of selective admission in 2009 – a prohibition that affected both public and private subsidized schools (Santa Cruz, 2016). However, the poor regulation of the school choice and admission processes, including the absence of adequate prioritization criteria, rendered the prohibition virtually ineffective. Indeed, most schools continued to conduct selective practices despite they were formally banned (Carrasco et al., 2017). Selective admissions also feature prominently in other contexts. For example, in England, the autonomy of private subsidized schools (including Academies, Free Schools and voluntary-aided schools) regarding school admissions has been problematized given its potential effects on school segregation, and because it might facilitate the discrimination of certain social or ethnic groups. In fact, available evidence indicates that those schools with high levels of autonomy in admissions tend to enroll more socially advantaged students (Allen et al., 2010; Gorard et al., 2003; West et  al., 2004). It has also been observed that there is a positive relationship between the proportion of schools with autonomy in the admission process and school segregation at the local level (Gorard et al., 2003). In response to such concerns, there have been different attempts to curb student selection practices, which have materialized in a series of reforms focusing on the regulation of admission processes (West et al., 2011). Student selection has also enjoyed some centrality in the charter schools’ debate in the United States. Although, as a rule, charter schools are not authorized to select their students, some practices have been identified as promoting the self-exclusion of certain social groups. The practices that are considered to constitute a form of indirect or covert selection include excessively complex or burdensome enrolment processes, the demand and expectations for high levels of parental involvement with the school  Public institution independent from the government and comparable to the figure of the Ombudsman, tasked with the defense of citizens’ rights –especially against situations of lack of protection, abuse or negligence on the part of public administrations. 1

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community, or discouraging families of students with special needs from enrolling in the school, under the pretext of a lack of adequate resources (Jabbar, 2016; Weiler & Vogel, 2015; Welner, 2013; Bergman & McFarlin, 2018). Supporting this line of reasoning, West et al. (2006) have found that charter schools are more likely than public schools to select their students on the basis of academic criteria, either through admission examinations or requirements relating to prior academic performance. The OECD (2019) has also noted that, over the last years and in parallel to the expansion of charter schools and a slight increase in the freedom of school choice, the share of schools that declare to select students according to their academic ability has increased by 10 percentual points in the US. In this country, the political debate around student selection has mainly focused on the discrimination of students with special needs, and it has eventually led to the adoption of different regulatory provisions oriented at improving the opportunities to access charter schools for children with disabilities (National Council on Disability, 2018; Waitoller, 2020). In Ireland, in the past years, the growing level of religious diversity has sparked an important debate given the tendency of private subsidized schools to exclude non-Catholic students. According to Rougier and Honohan (2015), this is a particularly relevant issue in those areas that have experienced a dramatic demographic change – that is, regions with an important share of students from a migrant background, but where the school supply is still primarily made up of Catholic schools. In 2011, a report by the Irish government pointed out that the regulation of the admission processes in place at that time could not accommodate the needs of an increasingly diverse society – both from an ethnic and religious perspective. Among other issues, the report warned that complaints related to admission processes had increased by 750% since 2002, and that the situations of exclusion affected mainly students with an immigrant background (Ledwith & Reilley, 2013). Finally, in countries such as Sweden and Spain, although selection practices have not been systematically documented, it is possible to identify some debates on such issues. In the Swedish context, West (2017) observes that the media have alerted that some private subsidized schools would be engaging in selective practices, aimed primarily at excluding students from certain social or ethnic groups. Whereas in the case of Spain, despite the existence of a controlled election system, several irregular practices have also been identified in admission processes. These include situations in which subsidized schools under-report the number of available school seats, the non-observance of the prioritization criteria established by the educational administration, or the recommendation to some families to enroll in another school (Villaroya, 2003; Síndic de Greuges, 2016).

5.3 The Regulation of the Educational Market: Options of Reform and National Experiences Over the last few years, and in direct connection with the problematization processes described above, a number of countries have initiated reform processes to tackle the most negative effects of markets on school segregation. This section

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examines and systematizes these reforms according to three major regulatory dimensions: (1) school funding, (2) school choice and admissions, and (3) authorization of educational providers.

5.3.1 School Funding 5.3.1.1 Compensatory Funding Policies A growing number of studies highlight the potential of needs-based funding as a mechanism to compensate and prevent inequalities generated by pro-market policies (Musset, 2012; OECD, 2012a, 2017a). The notion of needs-based funding refers to those resources’ distribution schemes that consider aspects related to the school composition and provide resources to schools considering the proportion of students identified as disadvantaged. The relevance of this financing approach lies not only on their effectiveness in compensating for the differential cost derived from the different social composition of schools, but also in their potential to disincentive the student selection practices developed by some schools in response to the competition generated by market policies. It is expected that the additional resources for the attention of disadvantaged students can make disadvantaged students more ‘attractive’ for some schools operating in competitive environments. However, it should be noted that needs-based funding is a very heterogeneous policy instrument. Within this line of reform, one of the most widespread and most extensively researched regulatory options is formula funding, in which the estimation for the allocation of resources to schools includes variables related to the social and educational profile of the student population (Caldwell et al., 1999; Levačić & Ross, 1999). However, there are other options of a more targeted nature, which take the form of additional allocations of resources focused exclusively on a subgroup of schools or students identified as disadvantaged (OECD, 2017b). Compensatory financing policies have a long-standing tradition both in the Flemish and the French-speaking communities of Belgium. In the early 2000s, both communities adopted school funding schemes that sought to respond to the inequalities associated with the high levels of school choice and the important role of private subsidized providers. In the case of the Flemish community, the last reform approved in 2008 established that the value of the basic allocation assigned to all publicly funded schools is adjusted according to the ratio of disadvantaged students (De Witte et  al., 2019; Flemish Department of Education and Training, 2014). Similarly, in the French-speaking community, schools are classified based on the average socioeconomic level of their students, and additional resources are assigned accordingly. Unlike the Flemish case, the program is conditioned to the promotion of pedagogical actions aimed at improving equality of opportunities (Friant, 2016). More recently, England and Chile have also adopted targeted funding schemes to prevent and correct the concentration of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in certain schools. This is the case of the Pupil Premium program,

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implemented in 2011 in England, which established that any publicly-funded school (including Academies and Free Schools) would receive additional funding based on the number of students identified as socially disadvantaged. The program seeks not only to compensate for the differences in the academic performance of students associated with their socioeconomic status, but also to discourage selection practices developed by some schools, reduce school segregation, and encourage the creation of Free Schools in less-favored areas (West, 2015). However, the evidence on the effectiveness of the program is still limited and, to some extent, controversial. Although the differences in academic performance linked to the socioeconomic origin of the students have decreased, and a moderate reduction in school segregation has been observed, some authors have questioned whether these changes can necessarily be attributed to the Pupil Premium. For instance, Gorard et al. (2019) argue that the observed changes are partially explained because of methodological limitations and measurement problems. Following a similar logic, in 2008, Chile approved the Preferential School Subsidy program (SEP, due to its acronym in Spanish), which established an additional per capita subsidy for those students identified as socially vulnerable, and which allocated extraordinary resources for those schools with a high proportion of disadvantaged students (Mizala & Torche, 2013). It should be noted that one of the most distinctive elements of the SEP is its voluntary nature, as well as the fact that the participation of the schools is conditioned to different requirements, such as the elimination of add-on tuition fees for socially disadvantaged students and the effective end of students’ selection practices (Santiago et al., 2017). Some authors argue that these characteristics of the program, and especially its voluntary nature, may explain its low effectiveness in the reduction of school segregation. Elacqua and Santos (2013) argue that the additional funds granted by the SEP are insufficient to counteract the incentives that many subsidized schools face not to enroll socially disadvantaged students in a context of competition. Likewise, Valenzuela et  al. (2015) observe that the effects of the SEP on school segregation have been very moderate. According to these authors, this is largely because, although the SEP has allowed the migration of an important part of vulnerable students from the public sector to the private-subsidized one, a significant proportion of middle-class students have also migrated from private-subsidized to private schools that do not participate in the program. 5.3.1.2 Regulation of Add-on Tuition Fees The regulation of economic contributions to schools made by families is another of the reform options adopted to avoid the socially more regressive effects of markets in education. Policies such as the prohibition of add-on tuition fees or the establishment of tuition caps, frequently accompanied by an increase in public financing, are proposed as regulatory strategies aimed at reducing access barriers and favoring the diversification of the social composition of schools. These regulatory changes are expected to enable the access of disadvantaged social groups to private subsidized

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schools, thus mitigating the dynamics of (self-)exclusion derived from economic barriers (Boeskens, 2016; Ladd, 2002). Likewise, these regulatory options allow harmonizing the level of resources available to schools, hence preventing differences in terms of social composition from translating into unequal educational opportunities (OECD, 2012b). One example of this reform approach can be found in Sweden. In the mid-1990s, a policy of eliminating add-on tuition fees in the subsidized private sector was adopted. It is important to note that, originally, the public funding received by private schools was equivalent to 85% of per-student funding allocated to public schools, under the expectation that subsidized schools could cover the difference by charging fees (Klitgaard, 2008; Miron, 1996). Nonetheless, in 1996 a reform was passed forcing all subsidized private schools to eliminate add-on tuition fees, with the aim of reducing the barriers to entry to subsidized education. This regulatory change was accompanied by an increase in the public funding allocated to private subsidized schools, through which the State financed public and private subsidized schools equivalently (Lachance, 2019; Wiborg, 2015). More recently, Chile has also adopted a policy that prohibits add-on tuition fees. The Inclusion Law, approved in 2015, represents the culmination of the commitment to eliminate school fees initiated with the SEP policy mentioned above. The Inclusion Law abolishes add-on tuition fees in all schools that receive public funding. To this end, a gradual increase in the public subsidy per student has been established, which must be accompanied by the progressive elimination of fees by private subsidized schools until 2025, when all schools are supposed to be free (Treviño, 2018; Silva & Urzúa, 2018). However, this graduality provision in the implementation of the reform was critical to guarantee its budgetary and political viability, as well as to muffle private providers’ and families’ resistance (Zancajo, 2019).

5.3.2 School Choice 5.3.2.1 Controlled Choice Systems and Centralization of Admission Processes Over the last few decades, several education systems have adopted controlled choice systems as a regulatory strategy to improve their equity outcomes. As in the case of funding reforms, this is a very heterogeneous line of reform as it includes any model of school choice and allocation of places explicitly aimed at combining families’ capacity of choice with an equitable distribution of students according to their socioeconomic and/or educational background (Musset, 2012; Cantillon, 2017). Despite the diversity of school choice models that can be considered as controlled, they are all aimed to promote equity and obey some common principles that generally entail a certain unification of admission criteria and procedures. Controlled school choice systems are adopted, among other reasons, to minimize the discretion

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of the schools in terms of student admission and thus to avoid selective or discriminatory practices. Over the last few years, both the French-speaking community of Belgium and Chile have advanced in implementing centralized and controlled school choice systems. Departing from totally decentralized school choice models, both educational systems have promoted centralized systems for families’ preferences expressions, together with the adoption of common prioritization criteria in case of over-demand, and the establishment of quotas granting preferential access to low socioeconomic status students. In the case of the French-speaking community of Belgium, this transformation is the result of multiple regulatory changes adopted between 2007 and 2010 in a climate of political tension derived from the resistance coming from private providers and families, who perceived the changes as an attack on freedom of instruction and choice. This lack of social legitimacy has led to the proliferation of opportunistic behaviors and irregular practices on the part of both families and schools (Cantillon, 2013; Danhier & Friant, 2019; Chap. 8 of this volume). In Chile, the centralization of the school choice and admission system has been channeled through the creation of the new School Admission System. Adopted in the context of the 2015 Inclusion Law, the new system establishes a single procedure for expressing preferences through a digital platform managed by the Ministry of Education. In addition, the new controlled choice system sets a prioritization of 15% of the places in each school for socially disadvantaged students (Carrasco et  al., 2021). As in the case of the French-speaking community of Belgium, the adoption of these measures generated controversy, a polarized public debate and an opposition movement led by families’ representatives and private subsidized providers (Bellei, 2016; Chap. 10 of this volume). In terms of effectiveness, both the Belgian and Chilean reform experiences sound a note of caution. In the case of the French-speaking community of Belgium, the reform has not only not put an end to school segregation, but segregation has remained stable, while in Chile, the first evaluations of the new admission system show that the drop in segregation has been very moderate. In both cases, and according to some authors, the limited impact of the reforms can be partially explained by the fact that the regulatory changes only affect situations of overdemand, but they do not have any influence on the choice preferences of families from different social groups, which continue to be strongly marked by socioeconomic origin (Danhier & Friant, 2019; Carrasco & Honey, 2019; Sillard et al., 2018; see also Chap. 8 of this volume). 5.3.2.2 Priority Access for Vulnerable Students The prioritization of disadvantaged students in the school admission process is another line of reform with the potential to mitigate the most negative impact of market mechanisms in education on equity (Elacqua et al., 2018; OECD, 2012b). Often, this prioritization policy takes the form of quota systems, which seek to control the distribution of certain social groups in schools, avoiding their under- or

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over-representation regarding the rest of the schools in the same area or the sociodemographic composition of the territory. Priority access for certain social groups has been the strategy adopted by the Flemish community of Belgium to promote a more diverse and balanced social school composition. Initially, the prioritization of disadvantaged students was voluntary; however, since 2011, local education authorities have been allowed to set mandatory quotas regarding the ratio of advantaged to disadvantaged students. In addition, the new regulation establishes that, in the case of overdemand, prioritization criteria must be applied aimed at guaranteeing a certain correspondence between the social composition of the school and that of the area where it is located (Cantillon, 2011; OECD, 2015).

5.3.3 Entry of Private Providers 5.3.3.1 Authorization of New Providers Based on Educational Planning Criteria In the last few years, different education systems have opted for the inclusion of educational planning criteria in the authorization processes of private subsidized providers, as part of their efforts to promote a more balanced distribution of students. These reforms do not entail the suppression of social demand as a criterion to authorize new providers, but imply that the existence of a minimum level of social demand is an insufficient condition for the authorization of a new provider. Thus, the public financing of private schools is ultimately subject to satisfying the needs and/or priorities identified by the educational authorities in relation to the existing school supply in a specific territory. The use of educational planning criteria and the greater role of the education administration in the configuration of the educational supply do not only guarantee greater efficiency and sustainability in the use of resources, but also allow reducing situations of overdemand, which are highly conducive to school segregation dynamics. In many education systems, the inclusion of educational planning criteria has been mainly based on quantitative variables regarding the volume and distribution of school places in each local area. The regulatory reform of charter schools adopted in California in 2019 constitutes one of the most recent experiences regarding this line of reform. In this US state, the original regulation obliged local districts to authorize and fund any charter school that met a series of basic requirements. This liberalization process led to an uncontrolled growth of charter schools, with the consequent loss of control on the part of public authorities, and increased economic pressure on local districts (Fensterwald, 2019; Luna, 2019). The new legislation adopted in 2019 included the list of circumstances that allow local districts to reject the authorization of a new charter school. These include, but are not limited to, the possibility that the new charter school would duplicate or undermine the existing educational supply, as well as the possibility that the opening of a new school would

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put the district under financial strain by unnecessarily increasing local spending (CTA, 2019; CCSA, 2019). Similarly, in the 1990s, Sweden conducted a review of the authorization criteria for new private subsidized providers. The new regulation established that a new private subsidized school could not be authorized if it may negatively affect the educational schools in the surrounding area. This ‘no harm’ principle (Sahlgren, 2016), is aimed both at protecting public schools and avoiding market failures – such as the lack of school places derived from the sudden closure of a private subsidized school. In other education systems, the adoption of educational planning criteria also incorporates qualitative considerations. This is the case of the Netherlands, where the authorization of new private subsidized school has historically been subject to the demonstration that a specific educational orientation or philosophy is not being satisfied by the already existing education supply in the area (Maussen & Vermeulen, 2015).2 The diversity and plurality of the educational supply are also one of the key criteria in the selection system for private providers in Ireland, where over the last decade, the Ministry of Education has been acquiring a more proactive role in the configuration of the educational supply. Nowadays, the creation of new subsidized private schools is not initiated by the providers themselves, but led by the educational administration, which identifies those areas requiring an increase in the educational offer and, on this basis, opens public calls to which different providers can apply (Irish Department for Education and Skills, 2020). The contribution to the plurality of the educational offer is one of the decisive criterion for the selection of providers used by the educational authorities, and needs to be understood as a response to the growing religious pluralism in Irish society (Rougier & Honohan, 2015). Along similar lines, the Inclusion Law approved in Chile in 2015 combines considerations of the existing educational offer of both a quantitative and qualitative nature. Thus, new private providers can only receive public funding if a deficit of school places in the territory, or the absence of other schools with a similar project in the area, area demonstrated (Ministry of Education of Chile, 2015).

5.4 Discussion and Conclusion The debate on the relationship between markets in education and school segregation is present in most educational systems with a history of pro-market policies – such as public financing for private providers or high levels of school choice. In different countries, this debate has penetrated the political agenda and, therefore, regulatory reforms have been adopted with the aim of reducing the impact of the market on school segregation. These are reforms that seek to combine two objectives that, at least to date, have proven difficult to reconcile. On the one hand, the promotion of  Since June 2021, and given the difficulties in determining the degree of uniqueness of a certain school’s philosophy, the criteria related to these issues have ceased to be decisive in the supplier authorization processes (Association of Dutch Municipalities, 2020). 2

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more diverse educational systems as a means to provide families with greater capacity to choose their children’s education and to ensure freedom of instruction  – understood as the possibility for the private initiative to establish its own educational offer. On the other hand, these reforms aim at guaranteeing higher levels of equity in educational systems and try to ensure that public regulation is capable of compensating, or at least not amplifying, already existing social inequalities. The reform processes analyzed in this chapter show how the problematization of markets in education is, to a large extent, associated with markets being seen as a driver of educational inequalities. However, as we have shown, the axes of inequality and the factors that have triggered such processes of problematization vary across contexts. While in some countries the emphasis has been placed on the unequal distribution of students according to their ethnic origin, in others, socioeconomic segregation has been more relevant in the debate. Likewise, the source and origin of problematization processes also present important differences. In some countries, international comparisons and assessments (e.g., PISA) have been decisive in triggering off a debate on the consequences of markets in education for equity, while in other contexts, locally-produced research has had a greater catalytic effect. The educational reforms in an attempt to curb the role of markets in school segregation tend to focus on three main areas of intervention. First, we have identified reforms that focus on financing policies aimed at providing more resources to schools that enroll socially disadvantaged students. These policy initiatives have a twofold objective: (a) compensating for the social stratification between public and private schools, which results from school choice and other school competition policies, and (b) incentivizing private subsidized schools to enroll a higher percentage of low socioeconomic status students. In the second place, we also identify a series of reforms aimed at reinforcing the regulation of school choice processes. These are reforms that aim to promote a more balanced distribution of students, reduce the negative effects that the choice strategies of middle-class families have on school segregation, and avoid selective practices by schools during admission processes. Thirdly, reforms in ​​licensing new educational providers. This type of regulatory change has occurred in educational systems where, traditionally, social demand has been the main criterion in authorizing the establishment of new private subsidized schools, or in making decisions on the public financing of private schools. The reform approach pivots on granting a greater role to educational planning criteria than to social demand. Although a number of educational systems are committed to reforming their pro-­ market regulatory frameworks, it is necessary to bear in mind that the effectiveness of the regulatory strategy to curb the dynamics of school segregation is still open to debate. In fact, the existing empirical evidence on the capacity of these regulatory reforms to reduce or compensate for the negative effects of the market on equity remains very limited – partly because these reform experiences are relatively recent. Furthermore, where evidence is available, it suggests that the impact of such reforms on reducing inequality is generally very modest – or even null. The limited effectiveness of reforms is explained, in part, by the fact that segregation is often the

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result of subtle (or even irregular and therefore covert) behaviors that are not easily affected by public regulatory processes. This is, for example, the case of the fee-­ charging or student selection practices that persist in various educational systems despite their formal prohibition. We conclude with some reflections on the political and practical implications of this reform agenda. Firstly, the available evidence confirms the importance of developing reforms of a systemic nature – that is, reform strategies that allow influencing in different regulatory domains in a concerted manner. The mechanisms through which markets in education generate or increase educational inequalities are multidimensional and the result of complex interactions between agents operating from the demand and the supply sides. Consequently, reforms excessively focused on a specific dimension may be insufficient to correct the educational inequalities generated by pro-market policies. Secondly, the predominant reform approach observed in most cases analyzed consists of providing the State with a greater capacity for intervention and a more relevant role in the governance of market forces in education. We refer here to interventions involving the implementation of controlled and centralized choice systems or the inclusion of educational planning criteria in the authorization of new private subsidized providers. In contrast, incentive-based regulatory strategies aimed at ensuring that families and students exercise ‘real choice’ seem to have more limited diffusion. Thirdly, it should be noted that school segregation is closely related to residential segregation. Although the relationship between these two phenomena is complex and does not manifest itself univocally, it cannot be ignored that school segregation is directly affected by extra-educational factors such as the general increase in housing inequality and the worsening of socioeconomic spatial segregation documented for many urban areas (Bonal et  al., 2019; Boterman, 2019). It follows from this that the fight against school segregation requires coordinated public policies that transcend the school environment. It should also be noted that the effectiveness of regulatory reforms can be undermined by the gap between regulation and enactment that is common in complex policy systems such as education. These are systems in which the actors involved have a wide margin to reinterpret, dilute and even avoid the implementation of certain reform mandates (Maroy & van Zanten, 2007). The cases of French-speaking Belgium and Chile illustrate the complex political economy and challenging enactment of desegregation policies (Chaps. 8 and 10 of this volume). Albeit their differences, in both cases, policy initiatives aimed to reduce school segregation faced important opposition at the political level, but also active resistance from private providers and families at the time of implementation. As a result of this, desegregation reforms followed erratic courses in these two contexts. Finally, two main lessons can be drawn from the experiences of French-speaking Belgium and Chile –two cases that are the focus of this volume but that also feature among the most analyzed in the academic literature. First, the need to anticipate strategies to navigate the complex political economy of these reforms and the implementation challenges this entails. Beyond the challenges it poses over the process of policy change, the controversy over desegregation policies is likely to impact their social legitimacy. As Cantillon (2011) stresses, the lack of social legitimization of

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desegregation measures can trigger covert or explicit processes of resistance that compromise their proper implementation and, in turn, their effectiveness. Therefore, those regulatory reforms that are not accompanied by adequate monitoring and control mechanisms may find limited success in promoting greater educational equity. Second, in contexts with a long-standing tradition of school segregation and social stratification among schools, desegregation policies, in order to reach their full potential, must go beyond distributive measures and consider the cultural dimension of school segregation. As the cases of French-speaking Belgium and Chile illustrate, promoting inclusion within the education system requires more than the balanced distribution of students. Redistributive measures should be accompanied by support measures for schools and teachers to develop their work in more diverse contexts.

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Wiborg, S. (2015). Privatizing education: Free school policy in Sweden and England. Comparative Education Review, 59(3), 473–497. World Bank. (2004). World development report 2004: Making services work for poor people. World Bank Group. World Bank. (2007). El diseño institucional de un sistema efectivo de aseguramiento de la calidad de la educación en Chile [The institutional design of an effective system of education quality assurance in Chile]. Available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCHILEINSPANISH/ Resources/EducacionChile.pdf World Bank. (2018). World development report 2018: Learning to realize education promise. World Bank Group. Zancajo, A. (2019). Drivers and hurdles to the regulation of education markets: The political economy of Chilean reform (National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education Working Paper 239). Teachers College, Columbia University. Available at: https://ncspe.tc.columbia. edu/working-­papers/files/WP239.pdf Zancajo, A. (2020). Schools in the marketplace: Analysis of school supply responses in the Chilean education market. Educational Policy, 34(1), 43–64. Zancajo, A., & Bonal, X. (2020). Education markets and school segregation: A mechanism-based explanation. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. (Advance online publication). https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2020.1858272 Adrián Zancajo is a ‘Ramón y Cajal’ researcher at the Department of Sociology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research focuses on education privatization and markets, school segregation and educational inequalities. In these areas, he has developed different research lines, including the political economy of education privatisation reforms, the enactment of pro-market policies in education, and the causes and consequences of school segregation.  

Clara Fontdevila is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the School of Education of the University of Glasgow. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her areas of interest are the political economy of education reform and the global governance of education. Currently, she leads a project on the institutionalization and expansion of large-scale assessments into the Global South.  

Antoni Verger is a Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a research fellow at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). His research examines educational reform processes through the lenses of comparative and global policy studies. Over recent years, he has specialized in the study of privatization, school autonomy and accountability reforms.  

Chapter 6

Privatisation, School Markets and Socioeconomic Segregation: An International Overview Gabriel Gutiérrez

Abstract  Several educational systems have introduced market-oriented reforms in the last two decades. Recent research has suggested that these schemes may increase the socioeconomic segregation of the school systems, especially when designed to boost between-school competition (Verger A, Fontdevila C, Zancajo A, The privatization of education: a political economy of global education reform. International perspectives on education reform. Teachers College Press, 2016). From an international comparative perspective, this chapter explores how between-school socioeconomic segregation has changed in 33 school systems in the last two decades and its association with features of the educational markets. Drawing on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) records from 2000 and 2018, the analysis provides segregation (dissimilarity) measures for countries with heterogeneous levels of private provision, academic selectivity, and school fees. The findings stress that the segregation of socioeconomically disadvantaged students remains a significant challenge for most educational systems. However, the estimations suggest no clear relationship between the evolution of school market features under analysis and changes in socioeconomic segregation. The complexities of reducing the ­system segmentation and its relation to school reform are discussed in the conclusions.

This article was funded by the Associative Research Programme ANID PIA CIE160007 and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/N000676/1 and ES/ T008911/1). G. Gutiérrez (*) Faculty of Education, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile Center for Educational Justice, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 V. Dupriez et al. (eds.), Educational Markets and Segregation, Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36147-0_6

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6.1 Introduction Education research has warned about the increasing privatisation of school systems and how they have adopted market-like rules of operation (Verger et  al., 2016). Indeed, in recent decades, several countries began to introduce a series of reforms that sought to expand the ability of families to choose schools, encourage private participation and increase levels of school autonomy (Hogan & Thompson, 2020). Proponents argue that these measures would provide the education system with greater diversity, boost the quality of educational provision and open up opportunities for neglected groups (Feinberg & Lubienski, 2008; Patrinos et  al., 2009). However, the results of these schemes are controversial, as such policies have shown modest impacts on learning outcomes (Dumay & Dupriez, 2014; Epple et al., 2017) and have been associated with increases in the academic and social stratification of education systems (Ladd & Fiske, 2001; Bonal & Bellei, 2020). However, the ways in which these schemes have been implemented are heterogeneous, with different levels of depth and scope (Musset, 2012). While private participation takes place in some systems in a context of robust regulatory frameworks, in others, these providers have enjoyed broad autonomy or weak supervisory systems. These policies have implied an accelerated transformation of education systems, straining traditional public schools that have had to adapt to the privatisation scenario and have been forced to adopt strategies and behaviours of private actors (Rowe, 2020). In other cases, some widespread practices in predominantly public systems (e.g. student selection) have been reinforced or re-signified by incorporating private logics. From an international perspective, this chapter analyses the evolution (2000–2018) of the levels of socioeconomic segregation in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its relationship with the processes of privatisation of school systems. In particular, it looks at how the separation of students between schools is associated with increased participation of private education providers, the use of student selection and the charging of co-payments. These devices have been identified as contributing to the socioeconomic segregation of education systems (Verger et al., 2020). Data from PISA allow us to observe changes in a period that has been intensive in implementing privatisation reforms in many education systems (Verger et  al., 2017). Given that the evolution of education systems is diverse and responds to heterogeneous historical and socio-cultural configurations, the focus of this paper is to describe an overview, highlighting common and particular factors that account for the evolution of segregation in a period characterised by the introduction of policies that have blurred the boundaries between public and private spaces (Gutiérrez et al., 2022). Apart from the introduction, the chapter is organised into four sections. First, it reviews research that theoretically or empirically links the socioeconomic segregation of education systems to three devices: the involvement of private providers, the use of co-payment mechanisms and student selection practices. Second, the index used to measure segregation is presented, and the treatment of the data. Third, results on the evolution of segregation between 2000 and 2018 are presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn from the findings, emphasising continuities and discontinuities over time and across countries.

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6.2 Socioeconomic Segregation and School Markets 6.2.1 The Problem of Social Segregation in Schools The socioeconomic segregation of schools has been a concern in recent decades. Two aspects are the most discussed. On the one hand, the impact that the social composition of the school has on the educational outcomes of students. On the other hand, the effect of the separation of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds on social cohesion. Regarding educational outcomes, studies have warned that the social composition of schools may have effects on various processes and actors in school communities. For example, it has been suggested that the concentration of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is associated with low teacher expectations of student achievement, home study hours, teacher effectiveness and students’ educational aspirations (Brault et al., 2014; Belfi et al., 2015). Other studies on the so-called ‘peer effect’ have focused on analysing the influence of peer socioeconomic status on learning outcomes. Although this is a controversial subject theoretically and empirically, research predominantly suggests that peers’ socioeconomic status may be an important factor in school outcomes (Van Ewijk & Sleegers, 2010). Some of these effects may persist in the long term and affect the likelihood of enrolment, retention and graduation from higher education (Bifulco et al., 2011). The effects of the social composition of schools are not only limited to educational outcomes but may also constitute a threat to social cohesion (Putnam, 2000). This risk arises from the impossibility for students from different backgrounds to meet and learn from others who do not belong to the same social, cultural and/or ethnic groups (Borgonovi & Pokropek, 2017). Social segregation in school implies lower development of citizenship competencies, especially in systems that implement practices of early selection or sorting of students based on academic ability (Janmaat, 2011). It may also be associated with the lower development of skills and attitudes necessary for social cohesion (Molina, 2021). Greater social integration is particularly beneficial for socioeconomically advantaged students as they develop pro-social attitudes (such as generosity and egalitarianism) and are less likely to develop discriminatory attitudes (Rao, 2019).

6.2.2 Privatisation and the Reconfiguration of Education Systems Privatisation is a complex and multi-faceted process. Its configuration varies across education systems both because of historical tradition and the adoption of recent market-oriented policies. Numerous initiatives to promote private participation have been implemented in recent decades and have contributed to blurring the boundaries between public and private spaces, shaping hybrid models of education provision (Mockler et al., 2020; Gutiérrez et al., 2022). The incorporation of private providers

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into the traditionally state-dominated domains is known as the process of exogenous privatisation (Ball & Youdell, 2007). Although nuanced in their scope and regulatory framework, various education systems have gradually been populated by schools with a particular denomination: charter schools, private subsidised schools, independent schools, charter schools and foundation schools, among others. All of them respond to initiatives framed within policies of total or partial public funding for private schools. In the context of privatisation processes, the coexistence between private and public schools has often led to the formation of educational quasi-markets. In these schemes, three attributes are expected to mediate interactions between schools (Dumay & Dupriez, 2014). First, families have the possibility to choose schools. This implies that schools must compete to attract students. Second, schools have important levels of autonomy to differentiate themselves from other providers and respond to the families’ expectations that choose them. Finally, funding is linked to enrolment. This implies an incentive to attract and retain students not to lose funding. In practice, these attributes have been implemented with an unequal emphasis in the various education systems. The mere presence of private providers does not imply a design that stimulates competition between schools. The level of competition between schools will vary significantly depending on the instruments used to shape school quasi-markets (Verger et al., 2020). The OECD (2012) distinguishes between three types of funding for private secondary schools. First, where there are monetary transfers to private schools but not necessarily linked to demand-side subsidies (or via vouchers). For example, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, and Switzerland use models in which private providers are education providers without generating a school market based on demand-side subsidies. A second option is that of education systems (Germany, Israel, Slovakia, Belgium) that have implemented voucher models specifically to increase choice for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Finally, education systems that use voucher models that are not limited to poor students (Chile, Estonia, Poland, Portugal, Spain). Voucher models targeting specific groups have a lower potential to promote competition between schools than those without targeting (OECD, 2012). The level of competition generated by the funding system will also depend on which schools are funded. While in most systems, these models include both private and public schools, in certain contexts, this scheme is restricted to the public system (e.g., Italy). School quasi-markets often include private grant-aided schools and public schools, which become new players in the market they cannot shy away from. The adoption by public schools of styles and strategies of private market agencies is called an endogenous privatisation process (Ball & Youdell, 2007). These schemes may include using school performance indicators to facilitate school choice, performance-­based incentive systems, or co-payment adoption in the public sector, among other initiatives. Endogenous privatisation can also occur within primarily public systems by introducing private logics into their operation. (e.g., accountability systems or performance-based incentives) or the re-signification of some of their practices. Both exogenous and endogenous privatisation processes have reshaped

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the way education provision is understood and are seen by some as an inevitable trend (Rizvi, 2016) or a process that, after certain thresholds of private participation, is very difficult to reverse (Verger et al., 2017).

6.2.3 The Role of Private Participation in the Social Segregation of Education Systems Apart from the territorial distribution of students,1 the segregation of students according to socioeconomic status is partly determined by the introduction of private providers in the framework of a school choice system. The proponents of these schemes argue that private provision brings diversity to education systems, enabling projects with diverse pedagogical and value-based emphases to meet parents’ expectations (Chubb & Moe, 1990). These models are inherently based on the idea of homogeneity, as the dynamics of improving education systems are mobilised to the extent that parents seeking the same thing are grouped in the same schools. Meanwhile, families’ preferences have been shown to be linked to their socioeconomic status (Hastings et al., 2005). Thus, the attributes on which different social groups base their choices increase students’ social separation. On the other hand, families also seek social differentiation and consider the social composition of schools when choosing (Raveaud & Van Zanten, 2007; Rowe & Lubienski, 2017). Finally, separation is also produced by the generation of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the choice process. An unequal choice scenario determines this. Poorer families are disadvantaged in some systems. They have more difficulty processing and interpreting the available information (West et al., 1998; Allen et al., 2014) or experience limitations in travelling to better quality schools (OECD, 2012). Moreover, schools are not evenly distributed across the territory, affecting the choice of families and particularly socioeconomically disadvantaged groups (Burgess et al., 2011).

6.2.4 The Role of Student Selection in Socioeconomic Segregation Student selection is also a factor that can increase the segmentation of education systems. These practices are of concern because students’ academic attributes are partially explained by their socioeconomic background (Chmielewski, 2014). Thus, selecting based on academic ability often means ‘cream-skimming’ based on socioeconomic background. Similarly, socio-cultural attributes (religion, adherence

 School and residential segregation correspond to two interrelated phenomena. Although relevant, this chapter does not focus on residential factors but on attributes of the education system that could influence the socioeconomic segregation of schools. 1

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to a particular philosophy etc.) may also be associated with families’ socioeconomic status. While in some cases, the admissions process operates under public regulations and known criteria, in other cases, this process may take place at the school level, leaving room for discrimination and arbitrariness in acceptance (West, 2006). Given the competitive pressures of school markets and accountability policies, schools have incentives to try to control the social composition of the school (Carrasco et al., 2017). Selection based on academic ability is the most widespread and is not exclusive to education systems with high private provision. While some countries with mainly public provision use tracking systems between schools that differentiate between technical/vocational and academic training (Germany, Austria, Hungary), others do so by determining, within the school, the type of courses students can access (United States, France). In the former, selection tends to occur at an earlier age (Dupriez & Dumay, 2006). Such tracking models can also be applied in countries with more significant private provisions (Belgium, Netherlands). Although less studied, the private logics of school choice and selectivity may also be present in primarily public systems (Lundahl, 2016; Kosunen et al., 2016). Selection based on socio-cultural considerations is much less frequent in predominantly public systems. It is usually found in denominational institutions that enjoy a certain level of autonomy to prioritise the admission of students of the same faith. While in some countries, these criteria are known and regulated through admission codes, they operate more autonomously in others. For example, Allen and West (2009) interpret the under-representation of ethnic and social groups in London’s denominational schools as a combined effect of family self-selection and admissions criteria allowing discretion in accepting applicants. The importance of admissions rules is also endorsed by Perry-Hazan (2019), who compares admissions to Jewish faith schools in England, Belgium and Israel and concludes that some legal and regulatory frameworks facilitate discrimination against applicants. Selection, however, may also be guided by considerations other than religious ones. Although more infrequent, private providers may offer projects with non-traditional educational emphases and set admission criteria. For example, in the Netherlands, a significant proportion of establishments adhere to non-traditional pedagogical principles or philosophies, such as Montessori, Parkhurst, Waldorf or Steiner. These schools may reject applications from students who do not adhere to their principles (OECD, 2017).

6.2.5 The Role of Co-payment in Socioeconomic Segregation Currently, family fees are not a widespread mechanism in industrialised countries. Instead, it is more common among education systems with low public spending on education and seeking to use private resources to finance education provision or increase coverage partially (Tooley & Dixon, 2006). Chile and South Africa, for example, implemented schemes in the early 1990s that allowed government-funded

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private schools to charge fees to families, arguing the desirability of additional resources. While in South Africa, fees began to be reversed in 2006, in Chile, their use was restricted (under a voluntary scheme) in 2008 and later (2016) started to be gradually (and mandatorily) eliminated. In both cases, reversing these measures was motivated by equity considerations and the segregating potential of such instruments (Ahmed & Yusuf Sayed, 2009; Gutiérrez & Carrasco, 2021). Although often justified as a strategy to increase school coverage, co-payment policies risk excluding students from poorer families or acting as a barrier to school choice. For this reason, several education systems (Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda) have implemented plans to eliminate (totally or partially) the use of fees over the last decades (Borkum, 2012). The risk inherent in this mechanism is to segment the education system according to families’ ability to pay. In this context, most countries (including those with high private subsidised provision) have express regulations declaring school education to be free. In Belgium, for example, free education has constitutional status. Similarly, in Denmark, education is explicitly defined as free of charge and excludes the possibility of incorporating for-profit institutions. In several cases, parents have room to contribute additional resources to the school, usually associated with other activities or projects (England, Netherlands). Although the use of fees is in the minority among OECD countries, there are some exceptions. Australia, for example, has a significant level of private provision of education (in private or independent schools) that is significantly funded by families (who pay, on average, 50% of the cost). The rest of the funding comes from the state (Lye & Hirschberg, 2017). South Korea, meanwhile, also has high levels of private provision and authorises the use of co-payment, but the amount of co-­ payment is small, and the main funding remains from the government (Exley, 2020). As with selective mechanisms, charging fees also poses additional risks in scenarios of low regulation or oversight of standards. For example, recent reports have suggested that some Spanish charter schools (‘escuelas concertadas’) have de facto made the parents’ monetary contributions compulsory, although they originally had a voluntary character (Bonal, 2012).

6.3 International Comparisons of Socioeconomic Segregation of School Systems Relatively few studies compare levels of socioeconomic segregation between school systems. Gorard and Smith (2004) analyse data from 15 European countries participating in PISA 2000 and conclude that Germany, Greece and Belgium show the highest levels of social segregation (by type of parental occupation), while the Nordic countries exhibited the lowest levels. This study highlights that segregation appears to be associated with the level of academic selection, in particular, the use of tracks that divide students according to performance. Jenkins et al. (2008) offered

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similar conclusions when comparing social segregation in the English system with that of 26 other industrialised countries. In addition, they indicate that higher levels of school choice do not appear to be associated with higher levels of socioeconomic segregation (although the authors caution that their measurement of parental choice is limited). Recently, other studies have addressed inter-temporal changes in the levels of segregation in education systems. Gutiérrez et al. (2020) observe trends in socioeconomic segregation between 2000 and 2015 for OECD countries with comparable information in PISA and conclude that little change is observed in most education systems and interpret the lack of change as a result of structural factors of education systems (such as tracking) or countries (residential segregation). Chmielweski and Savage (2015) used data from the PISA test (and other historical records) to compare the evolution (1970–2015) of socioeconomic segregation of schools in the United States and several Latin American countries. The authors find little evidence of increased segregation over time and point out that the observed changes (mainly referring to socioeconomically disadvantaged groups) seem to be more associated with the expansion of coverage at the secondary level and decreases in average school enrolment than with the implementation of educational vouchers. Moreover, they point out that in Chile, the segregation of the system was already at high levels in 1970, before the implementation of the privatisation reform. These results are endorsed by Krüger (2019), who indicates that Latin American countries appear to be more segregated compared to those belonging to the OECD or other areas. Although with nuances, depending on the social group observed and country, this study also suggests moderate changes in the levels of segregation in the education systems analysed. This chapter advances these studies in two respects. First, it extends the time range of comparisons to 2018 (the latest available PISA measurement). Second, it analyses the association between inter-temporal changes in the level of segregation and three institutional devices in the framework of educational markets: private participation, the use of co-payment and academic and socio-cultural selection practices.

6.4 Analysis, Data and Methods Previous research has pointed out that the involvement of private providers, the use of student selection systems and the charging of fees can be catalysts for socioeconomic segregation. Several studies have highlighted the importance of these factors in  local contexts (Bonal & Bellei, 2020; Verger et  al., 2020), particularly when school market designs promote competition between schools. In this section, we present the data and analysis used to account for the extent to which the use of these devices has varied over time and their relationship to levels of segregation in different education systems.

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6.4.1 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) This chapter uses data collected in the framework of the PISA test in the years 2000 and 2018. Where appropriate, in the case of countries that did not participate in one of these measurement years, data from the 2003 and 2015 cycles have been imputed. Not all education systems taking the PISA test have comparable data over time. These cases have been excluded from some sections of this paper, either because of high non-response rates in the principals’ questionnaire or because of changes in the sample selection of students and/or schools. The “Economic, Social and Cultural Status” (ESCS) index developed by OECD (2012) is used to estimate the segregation of school systems. This is a composite variable (latent) of parents’ highest educational level, the type of parental employment, and the resources available in the household. For a detailed description of the construction of the ESCS index, see OECD (2015). The information to classify schools as private or characterise their level of co-­ payment and selectivity comes from the school principals’ questionnaire administered in addition to the test. Following the technical recommendations of OECD (2012), the data do not report the proportion of private, selective or co-paying schools but rather the percentage of students enrolled in schools that meet these criteria. This is relevant since PISA data are representative of the education system at the student level and not at the school level. As mentioned above, the privatisation process can occur in both its endogenous and exogenous dimensions. Thus, the analyses presented will include all publicly funded schools. This paper follows the OECD definition that classifies government-­ dependent private schools as those that are managed by a private body and receive more than 50% of their funding from the government. Co-paying schools correspond to those publicly funded schools in which parents’ financial contributions constitute more than 10% of the school’s total budget.2 These analyses do not elaborate on the possibility of schools receiving funding from external non-­governmental entities. Selectivity is operationalised in the aforementioned dimensions (i.e., ‘Academic’ and ‘Socio-cultural’). A school is assumed to be academically selective when its principal states that the school always considers the student’s academic performance in defining admission. This can include schools in contexts where the regulatory framework defines the separation of students according to ability or performance (tracking) as well as those that carry out selective processes autonomously. On the other hand, socio-culturally selective schools are understood to be those where the principal states that parents are always required to adhere to the school’s

 Given the diversity of forms that co-payment (and parents’ financial and non-financial contributions) takes, this limit (10% of the budget from families’ financial contributions) has been set to try to reflect more adequately the differences between systems where there is substantial co-payment and others where schools receive occasional and small contributions in the framework of publicly funded systems. 2

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educational project to define admission to the school. This may include identification with a particular religious creed, educational approach, or philosophy. The analyses account for education systems at the national level. However, in the case of Belgium, information is presented separately for the French-speaking and Flemish communities. Although PISA data have the advantage of providing comparable information over time and across education systems, they are not without limitations. On the one hand, the data correspond to information reported by principals about specific practices and characteristics of their schools. These may be influenced by contingent debates in their national contexts and by the subjectivities of the principals themselves. Moreover, given that these are sample data, the confidence intervals associated with the segregation estimates are relatively wide, implying that slight variations in segregation levels are not detected. Finally, the results are representative of 15-year-old students in each education system and do not account for the whole school stage.

6.4.2 Segregation Index Strategies to measure the segregation of education systems have been discussed at length. This paper uses Duncan’s index, which accounts for the dissimilarity dimension. This means that the index measures how different the composition of each school is from a larger unit (in the focus of this paper, the national education system is used). Thus, each school would be expected to have the same socioeconomic composition as the national level to achieve full integration. By construction, Duncan’s index necessitates using a binary variable to observe the segregation of social groups. Thus, it requires an arbitrary definition of who will be considered “poor and rich” in the analyses. To address this restriction, the analyses are presented using different thresholds. Therefore, the segregation of socioeconomically disadvantaged students is assessed by considering the lowest 10% or 20% SES (10th and 20th percentile, respectively). In contrast, the segregation of socioeconomically advantaged students is assessed by looking at the top 20% or the top 10% in SES (80th and 90th percentile, respectively). Additionally, the median is used to divide students into two equivalent groups. Duncan’s index has two main strengths. On the one hand, it is a widely used measure in studies of school segregation, so its estimates are easily comparable with other work. On the other hand, it is a simple to interpret measure. The index varies between zero and one. Thus, a perfectly integrated system will have a value of zero, while an entirely segregated system will have a value of one. The result can be interpreted as the proportion of students from the minority group that would have to be removed to achieve system integration. Although Duncan’s index fulfils most of the properties described to measure segregation adequately, it has limitations concerning the ‘transfer principle’. A detailed discussion of the properties of different segregation indices can be found in Allen and Vignoles (2007).

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Although the values fluctuate between zero and one, this is a purely theoretical parameter. It is reasonable to expect education systems to have baseline segregation resulting from differences in socioeconomic composition between geographical areas within countries. Some authors have suggested that “high levels” of segregation would occur above .60 (Massey & Denton, 1988). Other authors use the concept of “hyper-segregation” for values above this threshold (Glaeser & Vigdor, 2001). Segregation estimates have been calculated using Balanced Repeated Replication (BRR), a standard method proposed in the PISA framework for estimating standard errors and confidence intervals (OECD, 2015).

6.5 Results 6.5.1 Analysis of Segregation Trends and Their Link to School Markets Table 6.1 shows the change in segregation levels between 2000 and 2018 using five thresholds. This means that the segregation of the poorest students in the system has been estimated by considering the lowest 10% and 20% of socioeconomic status. In contrast, the segregation of the advantaged groups has been calculated using the top 20% and 10% in the ESCS index (80th and 90th percentile in Table 6.1). Three conclusions can be drawn from the data. First, there is a clear distinction between education systems with high and low levels of segregation. In both periods, Chile, Hungary, Slovakia, and Mexico stand out for their high levels of segregation, reaching levels of hyper-segregation at some thresholds. In contrast, countries such as Norway, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland show levels below the OECD average at most of the thresholds under analysis. Second, a significant fraction of education systems is distinguished by higher levels of segregation at the extremes of the socioeconomic distribution. Fourteen of the 33 education systems included in this analysis have higher segregation values at both distribution ends (2018). This attribute is particularly pronounced in education systems such as Austria, Hungary, Italy, Mexico and Slovakia. However, segregation is more pronounced in only one of these social groups in other countries. Thus, for example, Chile shows levels of hyper-segregation of elite students, while the other social groups show relative homogeneity in their levels of segregation. In contrast, Belgium (French-speaking) shows more pronounced social segregation for poorer students. Exceptionally, Belgium (Flemish), Portugal, New Zealand, Iceland and Great Britain3 are cases where there are no major differences in the levels of segregation of different social groups. Third, countries that exhibit statistically significant differences from the OECD average do so at most thresholds in almost all cases. This suggests that these are  Due to sample limitations, Great Britain is presented as a unit.

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Table 6.1  Socioeconomic segregation of school systems (2000–2018)

Australia Austria Belgium (Fl) Belgium (Fr) Canada Chile Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Great Britain Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Israel Italy Japan (2003) Korea Luxembourg Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Poland Portugal Spain Slovak Republic Sweden Switzerland Turkey (2003) United States OECD Average

2000 Percentile 10 20 .45 .42 .48 .43 .43 .36 .46 .41 .43 .36L H .56 .52H .45 .40 .42 .34L .30L .29L .43 .40 .54H .43H .45 .40 .44 .38 .59H .53H .39 .34L .38L .32L .53H .47H .43 .40 .46 .42 .47 .39 .37L .36 .55H .50H .42 .34L L .39 .35L L .36 .31L .49 .44H .43 .37 .43 .40 .52H .46H .32L .28L .45 .40 .51 .43 .54 .43 .45 .39

50 .40 .38 .30L .44H .32L .51H .40 .30L .28L .39 .40 .38 .34 .50H .30L .31L .43H .39 .41 .36 .34 .49H .32L .33L .26L .43H .35 .40 .41H .28L .36 .43 .36 .37

80 .45 .45 .37L .48H .38L .60H .45H .37L .32L .44 .47H .41 .42 .56H .35L .35L .47 .45 .43 .40 .38L .56H .35L .37L .30L .51H .42 .46 .46H .31L .43 .52 .42 .42

90 .54 .51 .42L .49 .44L .67H .52H .42L .42L .48 .53 .49 .50 .60H .37L .42L .51 .54H .46 .46 .44L .63H .41 .43L .37L .54H .49 .53H .52H .37L .48 .62 .48 .48

2018 Percentile 10 20 .51H† .44H † .47 .40 .45 .40 .50H† .42 .4lL† .34L H .52 .49H H† .50 .43 .41L† .37 .34L .29L † .48 .43 .52H† .45H .44 .37 .48† .41 .60H† .51H .39 .35 .38L† .32L .51H† .46H .50H†* .43H† .46† .42 .41L† .38 .39L .40 .65H†* .56H† .45† .38 .41L .37 .36L† .29L L .40 .37* .47 .40 .44† .39 .62H†* .47H .40L .33L † .44 .38 .46 .40 .49† .40 .46 .40

50 .41H .39 .40* .41 .31L .47H .39 .32L .31L .40 .40 .36 .37 .46H .30L .30L .41H .37 .37 .32L .44H* .45H .38 .33L .29L .36 .39 .37 .42H .31L .36 .39 .40 .37

80 .42 .45† .42 .41 .33L* .59H† .47H† .33L .35L .42 .45 .43 .40 .53H† .31L .34L .40 .40 .39 .35L .44 .52H† .42 .33L .33L .41* .44 .41 .5H† .35L .45H† .51H .44 .42

90 .47† .48† .45 .46 .37L†* .65H† .53H .38L† .39L† .46 .47† .47 .44 .56H† .33L .38L† .49† .46† .43 .39L .41L .62H† .45 .39L .39L† .48† .47 .45† .56H† .38L† .48† .6H† .47 .46

Note: Asterisks (*) indicate statistically significant differences (p