Educational Choice and Cultural Capital: Examining Social Stratification within an Institutionalized Dialogue between Family and School

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of social class on families’ and teachers’ decision-making within an institutionalized family–school dialogue in France. The dialogue decides which upper secondary school track a student will attend and consists of three main steps: (1) family’s school track request; (2) staff meeting’s subsequent school track proposition; and (3) family’s optional rejection of the staff’s proposition. Using national longitudinal data, I find that parents’ cultural capital importantly mediates secondary effects (i.e. social class effects that remain after controlling for school performance) on families’ requests and their rejections of staffs’ propositions. Social class effects on staffs’ propositions are accounted for by families’ requests and student school performance. Moreover families and teachers appear to choose grade retention to avoid enrolment in a lower track.