ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors look at the reasons parents gave for not choosing certain schools and the factors that they felt influenced their rejection of certain schools and certain types of school. They also look briefly at whether other children in the family, especially older children, may have an effect upon knowledge and views about reputations of schools. The authors explore what parents meant when they said they did or did not choose a school on the grounds of its 'discipline', an issue that was frequently raised in the interviews either spontaneously or through prompting by us. They present their discursive and qualitative analysis of 'discipline' and how parents understood the notion. Poor discipline and/or bad reputation are not necessarily the obverse of performance or results or even atmosphere/ethos but are possibly independent factors. The child's sex was felt to have affected the choice of school for half of the parents.
