A city’s primary school segregation is closely related to its residential segregation. However, in education systems that allow primary school choice, parental behaviour often boosts school segregation beyond the segregation determined by the families’ place of residence. Taking up previous research, the paper starts by addressing the extent to which parental choice impacts school segregation in a large German city in North Rhine-Westphalia, a German federal state where primary school choice was introduced several years ago. It goes on to analyse which school characteristics are of importance for parents not wishing their children to attend the nearest school, thus boosting school segregation. In doing so, data is used that allows the precise determination of the extent to which children do not attend their nearest school and under which conditions. It becomes clear that, in addition to residential patterns, parental school choice is a significant driver of the uneven distribution of pupils, with the decisions of middle- and upper-middle-class parents particularly contributing to the socio-economic segregation of schoolchildren. A look at various forms of ethnic and religious segregation reveals ambivalent results, inter alia a high level of segregation of Muslim children.

中文翻译：

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小学自由选择背景下的小学隔离——不仅仅是居住隔离的反映？


一个城市的小学隔离与居住隔离密切相关。然而，在允许小学选择的教育系统中，家长的行为往往会加剧学校隔离，超出家庭居住地决定的隔离范围。该论文借鉴了之前的研究成果，首先讨论了德国北莱茵-威斯特法伦州一座大城市中家长的选择对学校隔离的影响程度。北莱茵-威斯特法伦州是德国联邦州，几年前就在该州引入了小学选择制度。它还分析了哪些学校特征对于不希望孩子就近就读的家长来说很重要，从而加剧了学校隔离。在此过程中，使用的数据可以精确确定儿童不上最近学校的程度以及在何种情况下。很明显，除了居住模式之外，家长的学校选择也是学生分布不均的一个重要驱动因素，中上阶层家长的决定尤其会导致学童的社会经济隔离。对各种形式的种族和宗教隔离的观察揭示了矛盾的结果，尤其是对穆斯林儿童的高度隔离。