The Right Choice: The decision making process of high school selection

Choosing a secondary school can be a complex, emotive, arbitrary, high-stakes and difficult process. Most parents have already received from the media, politicians and educationists the message that education determines their child's life chances.  The pressure to make the best educational choice grows. Yet, parents typically have little information about what will be best for their child.  The criteria used in the decision making process are therefore frequently haphazard.

Secondary schools are set within a market system, albeit a market which is strongly politically regulated.  Parental choice, open enrolment, devolved budgets and formula funding set the framework of market discipline.  Student numbers overwhelmingly determine school budgets.  The education market is now driven by the self-interest of parents, as consumers choosing a school that will provide the maximum advantage for their children. Principals, as producers, have to make decisions that are based on ensuring that their schools thrive, or at best survive, in the marketplace.  This shift to school choice represents a real paradigm shift in education policy.