The study is made in Nacka, a suburb of the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, and focuses on “the parental school choice" that takes place when children start in first grade at the age of six. 

New differences in the number of pupils attending various municipal schools have appeared after reforms in the early 1990s giving parents free choice of elementary school for their children. Some schools are located in areas where most children have a middle class background, while others are placed in less attractive surroundings where the parents have a lower educational status, and are more often immigrants. Parents living in the latter kind of surroundings can now send their children to schools further off, but located in more attractive areas. This leads to some schools get an increasing number of pupils and others gets a decreasing. The income of schools in Sweden is largely based on the number of pupils; the idea behind the reform is that schools with a good educational quality should be rewarded by the system. But other factors also influence the parent’s choice; bad rumors, good reputations, the number of children with immigrant background, the physical surroundings and social atmosphere where the school is located, and maybe also ethnical prejudice. My study concerns the grounds upon which school the parents choose the first school for their children in a part of Nacka municipality. The study is based on staff interviews from a school located in a socio-economically disfavored area as well as interviews and questionnaire surveys with parents having a choice between the nearby school and a school located in a more wealthy area. I found that the parent’s primary criterion when choosing schools is still proximity. When looking at the group that has opted out the most nearby schools however, the reputation of the local school – the spreading of bad rumors – proved to be a major influence. An example from the answers I received is the following:

I chose a school based on the number of immigrants in it, my child should have a safe schooling, it’s said that schools with a lot of immigrants have an atmosphere that is much tougher, I’ve heard from others, that the “apartment complex” school is a tougher school to attend. (Interview Lisa, verbal, March 2010)

Many parents obviously prefer not to have their children attend a school located in a socio-economic disfavored area with a large low-income and/or immigrant population. They are worried that their children will have trouble even getting the final grade from primary school, which is a precondition to entering the secondary, “gymnasium” level.