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Department of Sociology
Research Project

Admission Impossible? School Choice in European Cities.

The research project “Admission Impossible? School choice in European cities”, funded by the Research Council of Norway, examines school policy in 14 Western European cities, and delves into issues related to admission to, and segregation in, upper secondary schools in Norway.

Et par sko foran en rekke piler som viser i ulike retninger
A school choice consists of many considerations and constraints.
Photo:
pexels.com

Main content

Aims of the project

What motivates parents and students to choose different schools? How are social and ethnic inequalities reproduced in such choices, and how has the composition of pupils at different schools developed over time? And what about politicians? How do they try to control the choice of school and pupil composition through various intake schemes, local school boundaries and the like? How much room for maneuver do politicians at municipal and county level perceive they have in relation to such issues? What are the political conflicts about intake schemes, and which organizations try to influence school policy? And not least, what do students themselves think about the intake system? These are some of the research questions that form the basis of the project “Admission Impossible”? School Choice in European Cities”.

The project aims to produce knowledge that can be useful for understanding dilemmas and political conflicts that arise in school policy, and will also contribute knowledge about the development of segregation in schools over time. 

Approach

The project consists of three integrated sub-projects: 1) School policy in 14 Western European cities, 2) Students' experiences with and opinions on choice of upper secondary schools in Norwegian cities, and 3) Register-based analysis of segregation in upper secondary schools in Norway. Click on the menu below to read more about each project. 

Subproject 1

This sub-project is based on interviews with politicians, bureaucrats and representatives of stakeholder organizations in the field of education (such as teacher, parent and private school organizations). Through case studies, we examine school policy in 14 Western European cities, in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France and England, respectively. Here we focus on how school choice is governed through intake schemes and school districts, and what political conflict lines are raised through such issues. We want to shed light on how politicians and bureaucrats reflect on the issue of facilitating choice on the one hand, while possibly wanting to limit social and ethnic inequalities in schools on the other. We are also interested in politicians' self-perceived room for maneuver in the school field at the municipal and county level, and how they experience the collaboration between the political field and the school administration. In Norway, we have so far conducted 41 interviews in Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger. The results have not yet been published, but will be posted on this website as soon as they are available. 

Subproject 2 

This sub-project sheds light on how students in Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim experience choosing an upper secondary school, what is important to them in their choice, and what opinions they have about admission schemes and school policy. The project is based on different types of data: 

  1. We have conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with 48 students in upper secondary schools in the winter/spring of 2022/2023. The students attend schools with either relatively high or relatively low grade point averages. In the interviews, we asked them how they experienced the process of choosing an upper secondary school, what was important to them in their choice, what they think about the social environment at the various schools in the city, what kind of fellow pupils they would like to have, and what they think about the admissions system and school policy in their county. 
  2. We conducted 12 focus group interviews with upper secondary schools students who attend schools with either relatively high or relatively low grade point averages. Among other things, we focused on what the students think about the different schools in the city, i.e. what distinguishes the schools from each other and what characterizes the different school environments. Furthermore, we have asked to what extent the pupils have experienced pressure on their grades, and what thoughts they have about the transition from secondary school to upper secondary school. 
  3. We conducted a survey among upper secondary school pupils in Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim in spring 2023. The survey is about what was important to the students when they were choosing an upper secondary school, what considerations were decisive for the choice, to what extent the grade point average at the various schools was important to them, and more generally what the students think about the admissions system and school policy issues. In Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim, we collaborated with the county administration to reach out to students, while in Oslo the survey was distributed through direct contact with the upper secondary schools. Bergen provided the best data, with 13 out of 14 upper secondary schools choosing to participate in the survey. In Bergen, 1,715 students completed the survey, resulting in a response rate of 47%. In Stavanger, 684 students completed the survey (response rate 28%). In Trondheim, 718 students completed the survey (response rate 28%). While in Oslo, 872 students completed the survey (response rate 13%). See our documentation report for more information. 

The results of the survey conducted in Bergen have been published in a key figures report. For the other cities, we will not be publishing descriptive results of the survey because the data is not representative of all students in upper secondary schools. In particular, vocational students are severely underrepresented in the Oslo, Stavanger and Trondheim data material. Nevertheless, the data is useful for future quantitative analyses, such as analyses of the environments at the schools that participated in the survey. 

More qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data material will be published and posted on the website in the future. 

Subproject 3

In subproject 3, we seek to uncover the effects of different types of intake schemes in upper secondary school. The issues to be investigated include three main areas:
 

  1. Academic performance, where the focus is on whether different types of admission schemes can lead to an increased concentration of high- and low-achieving students in different schools.
  2. Ethnic segregation, where the aim is to identify the effects of changing admissions requirements for upper secondary schools in Norwegian cities by generating and using indices of immigrant density at the school level.
  3. Segregation based on socio-economic background, where the study focuses on whether admission schemes could potentially have affected the concentration of family resources such as income/wealth and parental education in upper secondary education.

In subproject 3, the data material we are working with consists of longitudinal administrative data provided by Statistics Norway (SSB). This data contains individual information on demographics, health, social benefits, work activity, income and wealth, as well as detailed information on individual educational pathways and school performance. The data also allows individuals to be linked to their families, schools and areas of residence, enabling contextual factors and conditions to be identified.

Researchers

The four-year project (2021 - 2025) is affiliated with the University of Bergen. The leader of the project is Prof. Susanne Wiborg (UCL London) and Prof. Thomas Lorentzen (University of Bergen). The research team also consists of Assoc. Prof. Katharina Sass (University of Bergen) and Dr. Karin Edmark (Stockholm University), as well as PhD student Anders Tonning Rong (University of Bergen) and researcher Sarah Christin Aga (University of Bergen). 

Here you can read more about the members of the project.