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In 2016, the Chilean Ministry of Education implemented the new School Admission System (SAS) designed with the goal of equalizing access to schools for the most disadvantaged families and reduce educational segregation. Yet it is not clear if the SAS is sensitive to socio-cultural minorities and their particular conditions. Hence, in this article we explore the school choice experiences of parents from three socio-cultural minorities under the new SAS: Mapuche – indigenous families, Latin American migrant parents, and parents with children with disabilities. Using an intersectional theoretical approach and a qualitative research design, we show that while in some cases the implementation of SAS impedes previous discriminatory processes, in others this new system alone has not yet overcome long-established and inherent educational inequalities in Chilean education. Besides, SAS has also resulted in new challenges in the school choice processes of these parents. Their experiences with the SAS express the intersection of different axis of inequality, according to the conditions and historicities of each group of families. Finally, we reflect on the challenges that the policy faces in regard to develop an educational policy that is fairer to all families, in the context of the unequal and marketized Chilean educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, conducted within the interpretive paradigm, aimed to understand how democratic education is constructed around the theme of 'responsible and active citizen' in the national core curriculum in Northern Cyprus. An in-depth document analysis was conducted, to examine the extent to which the learning outcomes across the curriculum are aligned with the competence descriptors in the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC). This framework was used as a guide and a tool to obtain a European and global perspective. The findings revealed that there is alignment, to a certain degree, between the learning outcomes and the RFCDC competences. This confirms that some of the major concepts of democratic education are incorporated in the core curriculum. The findings also indicated that in this curriculum, democratic education focuses on knowledge and engagement at a basic level. In doing so, it undermines the experiential side of citizenship learning, and active participation in democratic life. The study also sheds light on the use and nature of the RFCDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]