Black and White Unite or Flight? The racialised dimension of schooling and parental choice

Abstract In the late 1980s UK education witnessed a few highly publicised, controversial and contentious cases of white parents successfully campaigning to have their children educated in predominantly white schools. Since then educational reforms have sought to give parents even greater choice of school, while discussion around white parental choice and ‘race’ has remained largely silent. This paper reopens that debate by examining the extent to which ‘race’ is a factor in white parents' choice of school. It draws on the quantitative and qualitative findings of the Parental and School Choice Interaction (PASCI) Study, a 3‐year longitudinal investigation into the interaction between parental choice of school and school decision‐making, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The paper concludes by discussing the complex picture arising from the data and the implications of the findings for education policy.