School Choice and Private Schooling : A comparative case-study between Greece and Sweden

Sammanfattning: Over the past three decades, privatization and school choice have been introduced and embodied in the vocabulary of several national education policies. Although free education has been constituted, private schooling has been steadily growing its presence over the last years in Greece and Sweden. Parents are asked to choose among different school alternatives in an attempt to find the school that ‘fits them the best’. This study aiming to examine the phenomenon of private schooling and the factors that affect parental school choice, outlined a comprehensive framework of the national policies about private schools and school choice in both countries. Furthermore, the Human Capital, Human Rights and Capability approaches consisted the theoretical background of the study and framed the analysis of its research findings. The case study design of the research provided an in-depth exploration of the two national contexts, enriching the study with empirical data. Twenty semi-structured interviews with education professionals and parents from both countries shed light on the reasons behind the school choice towards private schools. Regarding the findings of the research, several kinds of educational inequalities and social segregation were identified because of the fact that not all parents have access to school choice under equal terms.