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In 2015, Amsterdam implemented a centralised primary school admissions policy, constraining school choice after a long history of highly autonomous schools and free parental choice which has resulted, in part, in the city's segregated schooling environment. Introduced out of concerns of inequality for parents and disorganisation by schools, this policy implemented a uniform choosing procedure and a distance-based priority mechanism. Drawing on interviews with school directors and municipal education officials, this paper examines how schools seek to maintain their legitimacy in a highly segregated school choice environment undergoing constrained change. The Amsterdam case serves as a unique example of local education officials confronting the well-documented negative effects of school choice through policies controlling school choice in an era of global school choice expansion.

In 2015, Amsterdam implemented a centralised primary school admissions policy, constraining school choice after a long history of highly autonomous schools and free parental choice which has resulted, in part, in the city's segregated schooling environment. Introduced out of concerns of inequality for parents and disorganisation by schools, this policy implemented a uniform choosing procedure and a distance-based priority mechanism. Drawing on interviews with school directors and municipal education officials, this paper examines how schools seek to maintain their legitimacy in a highly segregated school choice environment undergoing constrained change. The Amsterdam case serves as a unique example of local education officials confronting the well-documented negative effects of school choice through policies controlling school choice in an era of global school choice expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In school choice literature, class-based strategies for social reproduction of the middle classes are often the central explanatory framework. While race, ethnicity and other social categories are increasingly included in the analysis, they are often treated as secondary to class. Drawing on interviews from a racially and socio-culturally mixed sample of middle-class parents in Pretoria and Amsterdam, this study aims to contribute to existing theories on school choice and social reproduction through a comparison of contrasting cases. It takes the dominant theoretical framework of middle-class strategizing as a starting point to explain parental practices of school choice. The comparative analysis finds some remarkable homologies of school choice in Pretoria and Amsterdam, but also points to specific local and historical complexity and specificity of parents' motivations. In both contexts, parents call on intersecting aspects of their identity beyond their classed position. While we acknowledge the relevance of social class, we suggest that middle-class parents' school choice should be understood as 'strategies of action' emanating from classed and racial (dis)positions but also cultural and religious repertoires rooted in a multidimensional tool-kit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School segregation and residential segregation are generally highly correlated. Cities in the Netherlands are considered to be moderately segregated residentially, while the educational landscape is choice-based but publicly funded. This article analyses how school and residential segregation are interrelated in the educational landscape of Dutch cities. Drawing on individual register data about all primary school pupils in the 10 largest cities, it demonstrates that segregation by ethnicity and social class is generally high, but that the patterns differ strongly between cities. By hypothetically allocating children to the nearest schools, this article demonstrates that even in a highly choice-based school context school segregation is to a large extent the effect of residential patterns. The role of residential trends, notably gentrification, is therefore crucial for understanding the differences in current trends of school segregation across Dutch urban contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]