10 July 2019

Education reforms that allow new educational providers to supply schooling into a state system can improve parental satisfaction and raise learning outcomes through consumer choice.

School choice can be initiated through top-down government reforms or through bottom-up approaches that are spontaneous and self-organised. Such programmes yield many individual and societal benefits, especially for disadvantaged students. Empowering parents through school choice increases parental involvement and produces accountability.

Parents from all socioeconomic backgrounds are capable of making informed choices using a range of methods to identify the schooling most appropriate for their children.

Unexpected school choice in post-Soviet Estonia offers a glimpse of how historical legacies can mitigate educational inequality.