Diversity and freedom: reducing school segregation while respecting school choice

In recent years, school segregation has become a growing problem for the quality, equity and freedom of education in Spain. We define school segregation as the concentration of a certain type of student in the same schools. Excessive segregation (or, put another way, low diversity) in schools can become a problem for equality of opportunity and the efficiency of the education system, generating higher failure and dropout rates among students and making it harder to manage highly complex schools, thus wasting resources and talent.

The data show that socio-economic segregation in Spain is very high in primary education (behind only Turkey and Lithuania) and around the OECD average in secondary education. Segregation in the Community of Madrid has grown very significantly, and it is now the most segregated region in Spain and one of the most segregated regions in the entire OECD. Data from the international TIMSS study for the 4th year of primary school (analysed for Spain for the first time in this article) and from PISA for the 4th year of ESO (widely studied for years) also show enormous variation across regions. Likewise, segregation by national origin is, compared with the OECD average, similar in primary and lower in ESO, although it is high in some regions such as the Basque Country or Andalusia.

The concept of freedom in education includes (and must reconcile) freedom of school choice with equality of opportunity, both for families to exercise that freedom and for all children to be able to choose freely what they want to be and do in their lives. We propose broadening the partial definition of educational freedom that is usually used, to include both “choosing education” and the need to “educate so that (everyone) is free”. On the one hand, the freedom to choose a school, a recognised right, is only for a few if families do not have real equality of opportunity to choose. On the other hand, children are not free to choose the course of their lives and to participate fully in a democratic society if they do not have the same opportunities that a quality education gives them.

Various studies show that, beyond the residential structure of cities and regions and the dual public/state-subsidised network, education policies play an essential role in school segregation. Considering the difficulties of the debate and setting aside the most ideologically irreconcilable issues, we put forward a viable proposal to start reducing school segregation, respecting the existence of state-subsidised schools and committing to a reasonable space of choice for families.

EsadeEcPol and Save the Children propose action in eight areas where it is possible to simultaneously reduce school segregation and respect (and even, for the most vulnerable, expand) families’ ability to choose: (i) increasing positive discrimination for socio-economic groups in admission criteria; (ii) promoting a dual place-reservation system adjusted to the local context; (iii) improving information and support for families; (iv) addressing the management of enrolment of students who join during the school year; (v) providing schools with sufficient funding and oversight to prevent them from charging fees; (vi) committing to a system of improvement, innovation and support policies to desegregate and achieve the highest possible quality in all schools; (vii) replacing the place-allocation algorithm (the “Boston Mechanism”) with more efficient and equitable alternative models; (viii) improving what public schools offer (extended school day, school meals, among others).

In recent months, political polarisation has permeated the education debate, turning it once again into a hostage of partisan struggle. The quality of the debate has become even poorer, so we run the risk of continuing to oversimplify complex problems and to overuse false and seemingly irreconcilable dichotomies (diversity-freedom) and battles over legitimacy (public-state-subsidised). In this context, Madrid will hold regional elections on 4 May in which school segregation and freedom of choice will play a central role in the campaign. The proposal in this article raises the possibility of countering the polarisation of the debate with a series of concrete, practical measures that can make it possible to start tackling the problem itself and break the political deadlock.