How Parents Choose Schools Under Market-Oriented Education Policy: A Mixed-Methods Study from Diyarbakır

In brief

This doctoral study examines how parents in the city of Diyarbakır choose primary and lower secondary schools in a system where enrolment is formally tied to home address. A survey of 460 parents showed that most had actively researched schools, and that a third had placed their child in a public school other than the one assigned to their address. Interviews with 21 parents suggest that families increasingly treat schooling as an investment in their children’s future and that better-off families also choose schools by the social profile of their pupils and parents. The author concludes that market-oriented policy has turned school choice into a mechanism that reproduces social inequality, while noting that parents do not accept the logic of competition uncritically.

Research problem and aims

Since the 1980s, Turkish education policy has expanded private provision and placed growing emphasis on competition, examinations and school performance. The thesis asks how these policies shape parents’ decisions when they choose schools, whether these decisions differ by families’ socio-economic circumstances, and what the consequences are for equality of opportunity. Its seven research questions cover the conditions that shape parents’ choices, their responses to market-oriented policy, differences by socio-economic background, the transformation of the education system, the effects of privatisation on equity, and differences in parents’ attitudes by demographic characteristics.

Conceptual framework

The thesis draws on critical accounts of neoliberal education policy and on human capital and rational choice theories, which it treats as the intellectual foundations of school choice policies. It relies on international research on parents as consumers in education markets, particularly the work of Stephen Ball, Sharon Gewirtz, Diane Reay and Carol Vincent, and on Turkish studies of residential segregation, private schooling and school choice under the address-based enrolment system.

Method

The study used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. The quantitative population consisted of 13,750 parents of pupils in 16 schools (one public and one private primary school and one public and one private lower secondary school in each of the four central districts of Bağlar, Kayapınar, Sur and Yenişehir) in the 2024–25 school year. Public schools were selected to reflect different neighbourhoods and social profiles; private schools were chosen on criteria such as fees and reputation. A proportional stratified sample by district and school type was drawn, and 460 parents completed online forms. The instruments were a school choice questionnaire and a 25-item Perceptions of Neoliberal Education Policies Scale, both developed by the author. Factor analyses on a pilot sample of 317 parents produced six dimensions: competitiveness in education, privatisation and choice, consumer-based education, investment and status, economic segregation, and access and equality. In the second phase, 21 parents who had volunteered after the survey were interviewed face to face, and the transcripts were content analysed.

Key findings

Active choice is now common. About a quarter of parents (24.6%) sent their child to the assigned public school without researching alternatives. A third (32.8%) researched schools and then enrolled their child in a school other than the one assigned by address, 13.9% enrolled in the assigned school and later moved, and 28.7% chose a private school after gathering information. The author notes that private school parents (29.1% of the sample) are over-represented relative to their share nationally, probably because of who chose to respond.

Parents rely on people rather than published data. The most frequently used sources of information were conversations with teachers, principals and school counsellors (62.4%), with friends, neighbours and other families (52.2%), and school visits (45.4%). No parent selected examination results as a source.

Academic reputation and proximity dominate the criteria. The school’s academic performance was the factor parents most often placed among their top five (75.4%), followed by a strong teaching staff (57.4%), proximity to home (46.7%) and safety (38.7%). Academic success was also the goal parents most often held for their children’s education (76.7%). In the interviews, the quality of individual teachers was a recurring theme: several parents described seeking out a particular class teacher, and some described changing their address, or using the address of acquaintances, to reach a preferred public school.

Investment is accepted; competition less so. Parents strongly agreed that education is a long-term investment and that spending on their child’s education will raise future income, but showed more reserve about statements claiming that competition between schools improves quality. Total scale scores did not differ by parents’ gender, employment status, family income or father’s education, but the author reports differences by age, marital status and mother’s education level.

Choice and social segregation. Combining the two phases, the author concludes that higher-income families can reach better-resourced public or private schools, while lower-income families are largely confined to the options allocated by address. Some middle- and upper-class parents said they wanted their child to be educated in a social environment suited to “their own circle”, which the author interprets as evidence that school choice is institutionalising social segregation. At the same time, some parents who could afford private schooling said they did not see it as necessary and argued that good education should be provided for all children through the public system.

Limitations and implications

The author limits the findings to parents of primary and lower secondary pupils in central Diyarbakır in 2024–25. Readers should also note that the survey was voluntary and online, that private school families are over-represented, and that the main scale was developed for this study. The absence of differences by family income in the quantitative data sits uneasily with the strong conclusions about class-based inequality, which rest mainly on the interviews and on the author’s integration of the two phases. Among the author’s recommendations are a transparent school profile information system run by the Ministry of National Education, positive discrimination in teacher incentives, infrastructure and resources for schools in disadvantaged areas, a review of indirect incentives for private schools in favour of strengthening public ones, and more participatory school governance through parent bodies and local education councils. The author also proposes future research on how pupils themselves experience these inequalities.

Why it matters internationally

School choice research has been dominated by studies from England, the United States, Chile and other systems with explicit market mechanisms such as vouchers or open enrolment. This study shows similar parental strategies emerging in a centralised system where enrolment is formally fixed by address: families research schools through personal networks, select teachers rather than only schools, and work around catchment rules. It also adds evidence from Diyarbakır, a large city in south-eastern Turkey, and it shows that a parent’s own account of choosing “rationally” can sit alongside decisions made on reputation or a personal connection.

@phdthesis{saylik2025,
  author = {Saylık, Faruk},
  title  = {Ebeveynlerin okul seçim süreçlerinin Türkiye'de uygulanan neoliberal eğitim politikaları temelinde çözümlenmesi},
  note   = {[An analysis of parents' school choice processes based on neoliberal education policies implemented in Turkey] Council of Higher Education National Thesis Center, Thesis No. 953265},
  school = {Ankara University},
  year   = {2025}
}