Parental Preferences and Choice of Secondary School. An Exploratory Microeconomic Case Study in Southern England

This paper provides a UK high resolution microeconometric study of parental preferences and the choice process for secondary schools. Given the particular geographical features of the region, first preference almost entirely related to one of tow state schools, which is a situation that perhaps better reflects the real nature of the options faced by most parents in the UK. In constrast to earlier work, distance and access considerations were explicitly incorporated in the preference and choice models estimated and found to be a significant influence on parental decisions.