ABSTRACT
Legislation in the early 1980s that enabled parents to choose schools outside of their designated attendance areas brought a type of "open enrollment" system to British schools. This chapter examines some of the effects of that reform on the provision of secondary schooling in Scotland. The analysis employs documents from the Scottish Office and data from four of the biennial Scottish Young Peoples' Surveys. The chapter also examines the extent that the reform has taken hold and its effect on school segregation in local communities. The analysis shows also that parents disproportionately chose schools that served pupils with above-average levels of socioeconomic status. The extent of segregation of middle- and working-class pupils was estimated for each year for the 54 Scottish communities that had at least two secondary schools. The incidence of choice in a community was positively related to the annual increase in segregation, and when entered into the model explained about half of the annual increase in segregation.
