Introduction

Over the previous four decades, the worldwide education system has witnessed “the globalization of school choice” (Forsey et al., 2008). Although school choice policies vary across different countries for local economic, political, and cultural reasons, they commonly serve as a “neoliberal imperative” (Liu & Apple, 2018). The term “neoliberalism” refers to a complicated and contradictory relationship among individuals, communities and the government (Connell, 2013). In school choice studies specifically, one “neoliberal consensus” (Angus, 2015) is that schools are expected to be responsive to market discipline and compete with each other to be chosen by parents. Market competition, rather than government regulation, is seen as an effective way of promoting education quality.

School choice policies are a key element of the neoliberal education policy complex. Advocates of school choice policies proclaim that introducing deregulation, privatization, marketization, and competition makes school systems more efficient, equal, and creative (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Friedman, 1962). However, critics point to the growing body of research that demonstrates that school choice policies aggravate social segregation and educational inequality (see for example, Apple, 2001; Ball et al., 2012; Bernal, 2005; Hill, 2003). These studies reveal the harsh “neoliberal reality” in which the school choice policy favors socioeconomically advantaged families (Feinberg & Lubiensky, 2008).

Compared with the number of critical studies that have been conducted, there has been little research on the alternatives to school choice programs. Fortunately, an increasing number of effectual antineoliberal activities have become available for scrutiny (Ferman, 2017). Many case studies have illustrated how grassroots groups involving communities, parents, teachers, and students have resisted market-based reforms to maintain education as a public good. While the specific milieus of activists differ from each other, the key players have all challenged neoliberal policies and established alternatives. Unlike grassroots movements, the Synchronous Admission Reform (SAR) in China provides a rare case of a state-led antineoliberal program.

Synchronous Admission Reform is rooted in the Chinese notion of “Gongmintongzhao”. In Chinese, “gong” refers to public schools, “min” refers to minban schools, and “tongzhao” refers to the “simultaneous admission of students.” As the Chinese notion suggests, the rationale for the SAR is the promotion of the high-quality, balanced development of both public and minban schools and the provisioning of students with an equal opportunity to attend quality schools (MoE, 2019a; SC, 2019). This new school choice reform contradicted neoliberal logic, as it limited parents’ autonomy and placed school admission under government control rather than under market rules. Additionally, it highlighted egalitarianism and critiqued the neoliberal discourse of meritocracy that posits that individuals should be responsible for their own failures (Zhong, 2024; Dai & Tan, 2023).

How do parents choose elite schools in the new context of the SAR, which is imprinted with anti-neoliberalism and egalitarianism? Has the SAR restructured the school choice market as expected? To what extent has the SAR weakened elite school choice? To answer these questions, we problematize neoliberal ideology and examine the actual effects of anti-neoliberal programs (Apple, 2009, 2012). We analyze the SAR as an antineoliberal education reform that is still in the early stages of building “a new ecology of compulsory education” (MoE, 2019b). Applying Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990, 1998a) social practice theory to the Chinese context, we develop the concept of a “school choice strategy” to examine how middle-class parents navigate elite school choice through the new admission mechanism.

A specific definition of an “elite school” is necessary, as “the notion of an ‘elite school’ must be historicised and spatialised” (Kenway & Koh, 2015). In this paper, we use the term “elite school” interchangeably with the terms “good school” and “key school,” which are also frequently used by Chinese scholars (Dong & Li, 2019; Wu, 2014; Zhou et al., 2020). In the nonstate sector, China’s “good schools” or “key schools” generally select high academic performance students, charge high tuition fees, and house well-equipped classrooms. In response to pragmatic parents’ major concerns about children’s academic excellence, these schools place due consideration in students’ achievements in an exam-oriented system. In this paper, elite schools refer to both public and minban junior high schools with a high enrollment rate into key senior high schools.

“Minban school” is another key notion. Many English-language studies use the concepts of “minban school” and “private school” interchangeably (see, for example, Mok, 1997; Wang & Chan, 2015). We agree with Yuan Zheng’s (2017) meticulous distinction between “private school” and “minban school” and solely adopt his definition of the latter. In general, private schools are schools that are funded wholly by private sponsorship and owned by private entities or individuals. Yuan (2017) argued that, owing to the participation of state-owned education units, the ownership of minban schools is more complex. In addition, unlike some Western private schools that operate in a free market, minban schools are strictly regulated by the Chinese government (Zhao & Qiu, 2012). In this regard, it is not appropriate to use “private school” as an alternative term for “minban school.”

Background on the synchronous admission reform

The rise of elite Minban schools in China

The SAR was developed in response to “the triumph of minban school and the retreat of public school” under the broader context of China’s educational marketization, which began in the 1980s (Fan, 2020). As marketization is related to various educational reforms, we pay particular attention to the reforms in the key school system, school-running system, and school admission system, which jointly shape the context for the SAR.

In 1978, the central government initiated the key school system to quickly produce a group of high-quality public schools. Focused on obtaining state educational funding and qualified teachers, key schools quickly achieved high upward enrollment rates and became prized by parents. Nevertheless, along with the formation of the key school system, quality stratification covertly emerged among compulsory schools (Wang, 2008; Wu & Shen, 2006). The key school system structured an incipient educational market by distinguishing “key schools” from ordinary schools. Then, some parents acutely recognized the interschool distinction in the key school system and developed a preference for sending their children to key schools.

If the key school system was established to concentrate limited educational resources, the school running-system reform was intended to supplement the government’s educational funding. From the 1980s to the 1990s, the government issued lists of policies to encourage state-owned enterprises, social groups, and individuals to invest in and run minban schools (CC, 1985; SCE, 1987; SC, 1993). Since minban schools can charge high tuition and fees, many good public schools engage in investing and establishing nonstate schools, and some have transformed themselves into “converted schools” (Schulte, 2017; Wang, 2008; Wu, 2014), which are quasipublic and quasiprivate. Specifically, converted schools kept the resources of state schools while enjoying nonstate schools’ autonomy in terms of admission and fees.

Furthermore, in 2002, to alleviate public school choice fever, the then-Minister of Education Zhou Ji advocated granting minban schools greater autonomy over student admission than public schools have. From then on, “no choice in public schools, choice allowed in minban schools” (Ding, 2004) became the guiding principle of compulsory education admissions. While the title “converted schools” was abolished in 2006 (NPC, 2006), most converted schools chose to stay in the nonstate sector. These minban schools not only retained the high-quality resources that the old purely privately owned minban schools lacked, but they also enjoyed the “admission autonomy” (Yang, 2019) that the public schools lacked. Possessing these two priorities, these new minban schools soon began to outperform their public counterparts and dominate the local compulsory educational market (Qi & Zheng, 2019).

Elite minban schools typically charge high tuition fees, making it difficult, if not impossible, for working-class families to afford these schools. In some cities in contemporary China, elite minban schools have become a place for high-quality students from middle-class families (Cheng, 2009; Sun & Cheng, 2020). In these cities, elite minban schools and middle-class families have nearly monopolized high-quality education; the neoliberal market has eroded the public nature of compulsory schooling and furtively transformed public education into a private good (Shao & Zhang, 2013).

Changes in the admission mechanism

As mentioned above, “admission autonomy” is among the key factors that give rise to elite minban schools. However, no explanation for “admission autonomy” has ever been offered in official documents, and this ambiguity left minban schools room to establish an independent and marketized admission system. The pre-SAR admission mechanism, which involves minban schools’ independent admission system and public schools’ proximate-based and test-free admission system (NPC, 1986), is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
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Pre-SAR system (drawn by the authors).

As Fig. 1 shows, minban schools exercise their “admission autonomy” in three ways. First, minban schools start the admission process earlier than public schools do. Second, while public schools use proximate-based admission, minban schools have unlimited catchments. Third, although the 2006 Compulsory Education Law stipulated that all compulsory schools should implement no-test enrollment, minban schools disguise their admission tests through activities such as summer camps. Via high-stakes tests, elite minban schools are able to select the cream of the crop.

Parents also exploit this admission mechanism and have discovered two ways to reach elite schools. The first avenue is to navigate the proximate-based public school admission system, and the second is to compete in the highly selective minban school admission system.

After realizing that admission autonomy is the crux of the neoliberal choice market, the Chinese government initiated the SAR to limit minban schools’ admission autonomy and recast their admission system. As shown in Fig. 2, the reform has mainly reduced the number of minban school catchments and imposed a computer lottery system.

Fig. 2
Fig. 2
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The Synchronous admission system (drawn by the authors).

The new admission mechanism introduces elite minban schools into the same proximate-based and test-free admission system as public schools have (SC, 2019). Elite minban school choice has been narrowed by four aspects. First, elite minban schools are now required to conduct enrollment during the same period as public schools, whereas they previously recruited students earlier than public schools did. In the past, many families applied to multiple schools and finalized their choice through a comparison of their admitted private options with their assigned public school. They then had to decide between pursuing private school admission or accepting placement in a nearby public school. Second, rather than repeatedly taking minban school admission tests, families now have only two chances to participate in the computer lottery. If students fail the lottery system twice, they are randomly allocated to a local public school. Third, the geographical scope of school choice has also been reduced. In the first round, students can choose only among the minban schools in their local school district. In the second round, their options become limited to the schools in their municipality. Fourth, the computer lottery system inactivates the influence of families’ economic, social and cultural capital, such as their scores, certificates, networks, power, and money (Bourdieu, 1986; Wu, 2014).

Arguably, China’s school choice policy should not be conflated with the neoliberal frameworks prevalent in Western contexts. The government has retained decisive regulatory authority over school admission mechanisms (Mok, 2021), including both rigorous enforcement of proximate-based admissions in public sectors and dynamic interventions in private sectors. The post-1980s policy evolution reveals a state-supervised neoliberal experiment. While neoliberal elements (e.g., admission autonomy) were strategically incorporated to support minban schools and develop a competitive market, the state maintained its control over the system (Chan & Wang, 2009). Unlike a market or quasimarket in the Western context, the education market in China is a state-governed market created and regulated by the government’s administrative measures (Mok, 2008). When minban schools threaten public schools and educational equity, the government reconfigures the role of the neoliberal elements. In this sense, the SAR serves as the government’s measure for counterbalancing the negative effects of the school choice system, which incorporates neoliberal elements.

Understanding school choice strategies: a bourdieusian perspective

While many school choice studies have examined parents’ school choice preferences and strategies (e.g., Burgess et al., 2015; Ellison & Aloe, 2019; Poikolainen, 2012), few have considered parents’ structural constraints. Unlike parents in countries with politically support for school choice, parents in China acutely feel such structural restrictions, as school choice is discouraged and strictly limited. We agree with Lareau et al. (2021) that a double vision encompassing both strategies and structural constraints is necessary. Through these limitations, this study is aimed at providing empirical details of how parents maneuver around these limitations.

This study positions school choice as a strategic practice and process (Kosunen & Seppänen, 2015). In sociological studies of education, Bourdieusian perspectives stand out as a catalyst for examining school choice strategies in Chinese and Western contexts (Yoon, 2020). Rather than reciting the plethora of studies here, we focus on Stephen Ball’s (1993, 2003) and Wu Xiaoxin’s (2014) works, which set examples for the use of Bourdieusian habitus and capital theory, respectively.

Stephen Ball innovatively links the concept of “class” with those of “choice” and “strategy.” In his early work, Ball focused mainly on the educational market’s role as “a strategy of class advantage” (Ball, 1993, p. 4). A decade later, Ball (2003) took a further step by integrating Weberian social exclusion theory and Bourdieuan habitus theory into a theoretical framework of “choice and strategy.” First, choices and strategies are based on bounded rationalities. Second, choices and strategies are associated with shifting resources, capacities, and evaluation systems. Third, choice is related to collective effects, such as social closure, exclusion, and reproduction.

In addition, drawing on the works of Bourdieu, Wu Xiaoxin places a greater reliance on capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986). With respect to the middle-class conversion strategy, Wu (2014) insightfully revealed how Chinese middle-class families achieve their choices by employing various types of capital and activating capital conversion and accumulation (see also, Liu & Apple, 2016). Parent strategies include buying houses, purchasing after-class educational services, making donations, paying choice fees, investing in zhankeng (place-holding) classes, using guanxi (networks), taking cultural trips, etc.

Here, we have two correlated theoretical positions on “school choice strategy” that each have a different focus. Those based on habitus theory perceive school choice as a class strategy and consider the changing social effects of school choice. The approach based on capital theory sheds light on the conversion strategy of school choice and focuses on the transformation of capital within parental choice practices.

As we examine the changes in Chinese middle-class parents’ school choice strategies under SAR in this paper, we combine these two positions and examine the term “school choice strategy.” Arguably, the fusion of these two positions is essentially a reiteration of Bourdieu’s well-known formula of “[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice” (1984, p. 101). We agree with Harvey et al. (2020) that the implications of strategy can be fully understood only when Bourdieuan conceptions are used in conjunction. In the following, we examine the term “school choice strategy” within the scope of the Bourdieusian formula.

The term “school choice strategy” consists of the Bourdieusian concepts of “choice” and “strategy,” which are both related to habitus. According to Bourdieu (1990), choice is situated at the core of habitus. This choice is regulated and constrained both by habitus and the conformity between habitus and the field. When habitus encounters an unfamiliar field, the range of school choice and its approaches change. Strategy is then developed to adjust and enable choice in particular fields. In this sense, choice and strategy involve agents’ reflexivity on their situation in specific fields.

Bourdieusian strategy is not based on rational calculation but is rather an intuitive product of habitus (Bourdieu, 1998a; Mouzelis, 2008) and a “product of a practical sense, of a particular social game” (Bourdieu, 1985a, p. 112). Strategy is always a double game that “acts in conformity with one’s interests while giving the appearance of obeying the rules” (Bourdieu, 1985a, p. 113). Not only is it related to habitus, but strategy is also related to field and capital. According to Bourdieu, strategy is about the exercise of power, while capital represents power over the field (Bourdieu, 1985b). The successful implementation of strategy relies on an agent holding the required capital and appropriately converting and accumulating capital (Harvey et al., 2020).

In summary, the school choice strategy indicates how parents convert and apply multiple types of capital to achieve their preference choices in a particular field of school choice. School choice strategy adjusts to the changing conformity between habitus, field rules, and individuals’ capital accumulation. Since strategy embodies the interplay between field structures and the habitus of individuals and collectives, it implies how parents respond to SAR and offers clues about the effects of SAR on parental choice.

Methodology

The data were drawn from a study conducted in Lake City (pseudo), which is a principal municipality in coastal China. Over the past decade, elite minban schools in Lake City have become “hotcakes” and halved the local schooling market. Lake City has been compared to Beijing and Shanghai for its parental frenzy over elite schools and general educational anxiety. Nevertheless, school choice differs between Lake City and Beijing and Shanghai. In the latter two cities, either the elite public schools maintained clear superiority or the elite minban schools maintained dominance. In Lake City, the elite public and minban junior high schools maintain parity in educational excellence. While, in theory, this equilibrium expands parental options, it paradoxically intensifies the level of decision-making complexity. In many cases, parents need to prepare for both admission pathways.

Initially, we adopted snowball sampling and online recruitment to invite parents who had chosen junior high school for their children using the new admission mechanism (Waters, 2015). The first author informed four specific gatekeepers from different school districts of our research design, and these gatekeepers introduced the initial interviewees to this study. We retained multigeographical choice stories, which reflect a diversity of parents’ choice experiences and opinions. The first author recruited 43 parents in total for the study. With respect to middle-class parents’ distinct school choice experience, screening the participants yielded 10 parents.

The key screening criteria, which follow, were based on studies of the Chinese middle class by Li (2010) and Li and Wang (2017):

  1. (1)

    An annual household income of RMB ¥ 200,000 and above (the 2018 per capita disposable income of households in Lake City was 54,348 yuan),

  2. (2)

    a parental education level of at least secondary school qualification, and

  3. (3)

    A professional or managerial position as a parental occupation.

Table 1 summarizes the information about the choices made by the selected interviewees, whose names are presented as pseudonyms.

Table 1 Selected Interviewees’ Decision-making Processes.
Full size table

Five families relied on the lottery system and their combined ownership of a catchment house. The other half of the sample used only the lottery system. Four parents failed the first-round lottery and then sent their children to nearby public schools in the second round. Three parents succeeded in the first-round lottery and sent their children to local elite minban schools. The others drew lots in the second round and sent their children to elite minban schools in other school districts. No students were randomly allocated to nearby public schools. These parents provided a detailed and rich account of school choice under the SAR. More importantly, they lived in different school districts and applied various choice strategies.

Notably, the first author is a native of Lake City and witnessed the rise of elite minban schools and the change in school choice policy that occurred in Lake City. The first author’s insider status benefited his access to interviewees, who readily engaged with him because of their shared experiences. However, the first author had not experienced school choice. His working-class family could neither afford a catchment house nor pay high tuition fees for elite minban schools. He went to nearby ordinary public schools.

Being simultaneously an insider and outsider, the first author believes that middle-class parents have distinct stories, which offer multiple windows into their school choice experiences (Mishler, 1986; Reissman, 1997). This belief influenced our decision to utilize narrative interviewing and invite parents to share their “small stories” (Bamberg, 2006a, 2006b) and perceptions of the SAR. The first author’s outsider status enabled him to act as an ignorant and inquisitive listener with an open mind and allowed the parents to follow their “self-generating schema” (Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2000). Motivated by the request to describe their school choice experiences and share their views on the SAR, the interviewers offered informative accounts of both their initial plans and later changes, as well as their feelings regarding the reform.

Because of the risk of COVID-19, the first author completed all of the interviews via the Chinese instant messaging app WeChat. Online interviews were an effective alternative to face-to-face interviews. Since most of our interviewees made time for interviews during their workdays, the semistructured interviews were conducted in two rounds. The second round was for parents who did not offer sufficient information that conformed to the grid used in the interview design. Each interview lasted from 55 to 70 minutes. The first author also interviewed educational bureau staff, principals, and teachers in the corresponding school districts for triangulation. The participants were encouraged to read and revise the Chinese transcripts of their stories. They all approved the accounts used in the study. In strict accordance with research ethics, we removed personally identifying information and used pseudonyms to indicate both the schools and the participants.

We analyzed the parental accounts using initial and axial coding procedures (Charmaz, 2006; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Many in vivo codes, such as luck(y), victim, streaming test, and catchment house, were collected, and the relationships between these different codes were examined. We then formed the three categories that best captured the range of parents’ school choice strategies under the SAR.

Parental strategies of elite school choice under the SAR

Chinese middle-class parents adjusted their school choice strategies under the SAR. The three strategies are categorized as “buying a house and/or converting ‘luck’,” “promoting intraschool distinctions,” and “repairing the mismatch of cultural capital.” They are, in essence, a habitus-driven response to the changing field of school choice (Bourdieu, 1993).

Buying a house and/or converting “luck”

On the eve of the SAR, the “game rule” (Archer et al., 2007) of school choice could be defined as proximate-based admission for public schools and admission autonomy for minban schools (see Fig. 1). Under this game rule, the elite school choice strategies are manifest in the choices of middle-class parents to buy a house in the public school system and/or employ various types of capital (e.g., scores, certificates, networks, power, and money) in the minban school system (Wu, 2014; Wu & Shen, 2006). In our study, five families prepared a catchment house and considered a minban school as their top choice and a public school as their safe second choice. The other families intended to obtain a place in minban schools by applying multiple types of capital.

With the SAR having changed the game rule to “proximate enrollment and computer lottery for all schools,” the above strategies, workable family capital and parents’ choice ranges also changed accordingly (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Reay, 2004). Particularly in the case of minban school choice, the computer lottery system invalidated parents’ previous choice of capital options (Wu, 2014). Under the SAR, “luck” is a path only for choosing minban schools. In this context, the decision to purchase a catchment house is more dependable. One of the interviewers, Ellen, concluded her story of choice experience with the phrase the “house never lies.” However, not all middle-class families can afford a catchment house. Parents such as Lynn, who did not own a catchment house, were dependent on luck.

We do not have that much money to buy a house…near a quality public school…too expensive. It (buying a catchment house) has become more expensive since the implementation of the SAR. I could only pray to various gods. Luckily, I succeeded in the second round. Although that school was far from my home…it was a real elite school…This was a gamble…I was lucky.

Lynn’s story reveals that the SAR, perhaps not intentionally, raises house prices and places a higher demand on parents’ “economic capital” (Bourdieu, 1986). Families who cannot afford a catchment house can only opt for the “risky gamble” of elite minban school choice and pin their hopes on luck. Crucially, “betting on luck” does not equate to passive inaction while awaiting outcomes. Some parents, such as Bay, have developed a tactic to “improve their luck.”

If you want to be admitted to an elite minban school through the Synchronous Admission Mechanism, you should be aware of the number of students and elite minban schools in each district. I live in School District A…There are only two elite minban schools…too many students…difficult…School District B is similar…School District C is different…There are more elite minban schools…but fewer families can afford them. The SAR stipulated that in the first round, families could choose only schools in the districts [we] live in. Under these circumstances, in the first round, I deliberately joined the lottery of School District A’s best minban school. If I were to win a place, that would be nice…If not, it doesn’t matter…I could definitely get a place in School District C.

As expected, Bay ultimately acquired a place in an elite minban school in School District C. In fact, Bay’s tactic was not a rational product, as he showed in his account. Rather, Bay admitted that he worked out the tactic “automatically.” Although the game rules changed, Bay still felt an instinctive sense of familiarity with “play[ing] the game” (Archer et al., 2007). Bay’s strategy of improving his luck is manifest in his middle-class “sense of game” (Bourdieu, 1990), in which, although you must obey the rules, you can still use the rules to gain an advantage (Lingard & Christie, 2003). Mary shared a strategy similar to Bay’s. While Bay devised his plan on his own, Mary attributed her luck to a friend who worked on a local educational board.

I don’t have a (catchment) house, but I am not worried at all…My friend, who works in […] educational board, has good knowledge of school choice. He helped me make a plan.

Bay and Mary’s stories show that parents who know the information pertaining to the students and school distribution in each district can be “luckier” than their counterparts. In Bourdieusian thinking, the social actors who have a good command of the rules of the game can behave like “fish in the water” (Bourdieu, 1990). This finding also suggests that luck, rather than being something uncontrollable, can accumulate through the conversion of other types of capital, such as “information capital” (Stiglitz, 1982) and network capital (social capital) (Bourdieu, 1986; Ruan, 2017).

Furthermore, “luck” can also be enhanced through economic capital. Lara’s experience offers an example of this:

I have a house near the […] school (an elite public school). However, it was not bought by myself or my husband. My husband’s grandparents own it. It never occurred to me that this small, shabby house would play a decisive role in my child’s school admission…It’s also a kind of luck…My husband and I don’t need to work hard to buy a catchment house.

Lara felt lucky because her husband’s grandparents handed down a catchment house. The above accounts reveal that although some types of capital seem to be invalid (i.e., networks) or more difficult to obtain (i.e., a catchment house) under SAR, they continue to play a part in another way—through the conversion of luck.

Promoting intraschool distinction

In general, the behavior of choosing a school is a “distinctive” practice (Bourdieu, 1984) that reflects the social distinction of middle-class parents. Unlike privileged Western parents who pursue class distinctions (see for example, Auðardóttir & Kosunen, 2020; Ayling, 2019), Chinese middle-class parents attach more importance to the distinction that arises from academic ability. The student’s score serves as symbolic goods that are utilized as “the ideal weapon in strategies of distinction” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 68). In China, “distinction” is a first strategy in school choice. Families equip their children with the institutionalized cultural capital (e.g., certificates) valued by elite schools (Wu, 2014). This cultural capital differentiates children from their competitors. “Distinction” is also the goal of school choice. Parents choose schools that “exclude” (Ball, 2003) students with poor academic ability and learning habits.

Before the SAR, “distinction” was exercised through school selection by admission test. The admission test ensured that most of the students enrolled in elite minban schools were high-achieving students. Families’ pursuits of distinction are accomplished through successful choices at the school level. During this period, the strategy of “interschool distinction” was heavily used. Our findings reveal that under SAR, middle-class parents’ distinction strategies have entered a micro level. A new form of “class market” has emerged, and consequently, a new strategy of “intraschool distinction” has also emerged as a response to the changing field. Since the SAR abolished minban schools’ admission tests, the overall quality of these students was reduced. Parents such as Elaine argued that internal streaming was necessary to promote peer quality through the allocation of high-achieving and poorly performing students to different classes. As she noted,

SAR canceled the (admission) test…there were many…umm…poor students enrolled in the school…I don’t want my daughter to study with those guys. Streaming is necessary…it plays the same role as admission tests…In the past, we just needed to choose a school. Now, we need to choose the class. I am happy that minban school A set up a streaming test…Now, my daughter is in a “competition class” (a key class)…I am relieved.

Like Elaine, Sharp expected his child to be able to study in a “suitable environment.” He argued that streaming serves as an imperative substitute for the admission test. Elaine and Sharp’s preference for intradistinction conforms to their expectations that elite minban schools offer their children good learning circumstances. Prior to the SAR, the admission test functioned in the school choice context to honor children’s capital scores. Since the SAR removed these tests, parents such as Elain and Sharp called for streaming tests to accomplish “ordination” (Bourdieu, 1998b). Moreover, in his narrative, Sharp denigrated students with poor academic performance as “environmental pollution,” as those students typically “have bad learning and living habits.” The metaphor “pollution” is indicative of parents’ anxieties about their children “mix[ing] with the wrong crowd” (Ball, 2003).

Against the backdrop of Elaine’s and Sharp’s accounts, what do the parents of children who perform poorly think of the intradistinction? Kathy, whose child is now studying in elite minban school C, offered an answer.

I was glad when I drew the admission lottery…but soon, I was unhappy…I admit that without the SAR, my boy wouldn’t have the chance to study in this school…We were lucky, but we were [lucky victims]…The teaching content here is too difficult for my boy…The class that my son in is good, but not that suitable for him…I wouldn’t say I like streaming…It was humiliating…but now, my boy needs it…I need to see streaming from another angle…Streaming protects average students.

Kathy observed that it is difficult for her son to study with elite students. Although Kathy disliked streaming, she saw how it might help her son. Sharp’s term “suitable environment” also surfaced in Kathy’s account. She was aware that the difficult class was not a good match for her son. The above three accounts involve the separation of the “bidirectional disgust expression” (Lawler, 2005) of middle-class parents in English literature. The parents of “good students” are not worried about their children being excluded but are concerned only with poor performance students “contaminating” (Ball, 2003) their children’s learning environment. The parents of “poor students” state their worries conversely.

These accounts present parents’ enduring habitus of score-based exclusion and protection. Since the previous “ordination ritual” (school admission test) was abolished, the parents quickly found the streaming test to be a substitute. Moreover, while the intradistinction strategy is exercised in a traditional top-down manner, parents under the SAR proactively urge the schools to practice streaming. Teacher Shawn’s account confirms the following: “The current situation is…parents complain…teachers also complain. Parents now are concerned about streaming…A private school without streamed classes would be less attractive.” This shows that, while the SAR strives to make the school choice field less score oriented, the enduring exclusionary stance of parents negates the SAR’s efforts and maintains stratification in the educational market (Ball, 2003).

Repairing the mismatch in culture capital

Purchasing extra educational services from private tutoring institutions is not a new phenomenon in China (Xue, 2015; Zhang, 2014). Previous studies have illustrated that engaging in academic tutoring is a cultural capital accumulation strategy (Wu, 2014). The concept of “accumulation” demonstrates the process through which children obtain the cultural capital that elite schools value. In this context, academic tutoring can be perceived as a strategy for fitting children’s cultural capital with the value system of elite schools. Successful school choice implies that the children hold sufficient and appropriate cultural capital.

As the SAR canceled admission tests, school choice is no longer constrained to the “ordination” (Bourdieu, 1998b) of identifying and allocating “appropriate” students to “appropriate” schools. Previous analyses of intradistinction strategies have suggested that the SAR causes novel anxiety in parents in regard to mismatches between their children and their schools. In the new game under the SAR, attending private tutoring is more than a simple accumulation strategy but rather serves as a strategy for repairing cultural capital mismatches. In parents’ words, it is a “filling the gap” strategy. Nell offered the following illustration:

My son is a good student…He received an offer from one of the best elite minban schools before the SAR. However, he now studies in a public school…It’s also a good school. I don’t think it can provide as sufficient academic training as the minban school does, however. Minban schools…There is more training on examinations. In Zhongkao, we need to compete with all the elite students around the city. I’ll never let the (public) school’s mediocre education encumber my son. We need private tutoring…to fill the gap…to compete with other elite students.

Nell kept a careful eye on the imagined gap between her son and the students at elite minban schools. Discontented with the inadequate services in public schools, Nell felt that extra tutoring was necessary. Kathy expressed her demand to fill the gap for a different reason.

It is hard for my son to study with those good students (in elite minban school C). On the first weekend of the new term…he came back…told me that he felt stupid…when other kids actively raised their hands to answer the teachers’ questions…He was trying to understand what the teacher said. I was heartbroken when I heard my son say this. I hope he can study happily. However, studying in China is arduous…We have to attend more supplementary tutoring…We are pushed.

On the basis of her son’s feedback on the first week of his studies, Kathy realized that it was difficult for her son to interact with elite students in the same class. The wide disparity in academic performance at this school haunted Kathy and her son. Thus, Kathy purchased tutoring services for her son so that he could keep pace with elite students in his class. Nell and Kathy’s stories present cases of an elite student studying in an average school and an average student studying in an elite school, respectively.

In addition to the mismatch between students’ institutionalized cultural capital (score) and the schools’ educational quality, there is a disparity between parents’ aspirations of embodied cultural capital and the schools’ training objectives (Bourdieu, 1986). Ronald expected his son to be admitted to an international school to study abroad in the future. After a failure in the first round of the lottery, he feared that his son would be randomly allocated. He reluctantly sent his son to a nearby public school. Ronald was resentful toward the SAR because it destroyed his plans. To repair this mismatch, he registered his son for an after-school international educational service.

In the SAR era, families purchase supplementary academic tutoring to fill in the gaps in their children’s training. Because the SAR reduced the range of parental choice, it has become more difficult for parents to select a “suitable” school for their children. The consequent disunity has driven parents to use academic tutoring as a strategy for repairing mismatches. As such, the former parental strategy of “attending supplementary tutoring for facilitating school choice” transitioned to “attending supplementary tutoring for remedying school choice.”

Discussion and conclusion

School choice, as a key aspect of the neoliberal education policy complex, has been encouraged and expanded in many Western countries in recent decades. This study sheds light on China’s recent school choice reform, which follows an antineoliberal approach by limiting parents’ elite school choice. This study examines how the SAR changes the schooling market and how Chinese middle-class parents choose elite schools in the context of an antineoliberal program.

The findings indicate a two-step reconstruction of the school choice market. In the first step, the SAR weakened the neoliberal elements of school choice policy by limiting minban schools’ enrollment autonomy. The SAR involves minban schools in the same nearby and test-free admission system as public schools use. SAR urges elite minban schools to serve public interests rather than respond to market discipline. Constraining the admissions autonomy of minban schools also limits parents’ choice autonomy. The SAR significantly reduces parental choice ranges and tools and increases the difficulty of decision-making regarding which route to take to gain admission to an elite school.

However, things did follow the expectations held during the first step. Deviations form expectations occurred as parents joined the game in the second step. Faced with new field rules, parents changed their strategies (1) from “buying a house and/or employing various types of capital” to “buying a house and/or converting luck”, (2) from “utilizing interschool distinction” to “promoting intraschool distinction”, and (3) from “accumulating cultural capital” to “repairing the mismatch of cultural capital.”

These strategies imply that although the SAR moderated the rules of the game, it failed to change the larger “social world” featured through neoliberalism. Many parents reported that while the SAR prevented children from competing for junior school admission, it did not exempt them from competing for senior high school and college admission. China’s senior high school and college admissions were, to some extent, meritocratic accountability systems that evaluated individuals through their academic performance. When children are encouraged to go to high-quality senior high schools and universities, parents believe that school choice can promote children’s academic performance. Thus, rather than giving up on choosing schools, parents employed new choice strategies. This explains why the parents do not give up school choice as the SAR aspires but rather adopt alternative strategies. The strategies confirm parents’ habitus of score-based “exclusion” (Ball, 2003) and “distinction” (Bourdieu, 1984), as well as parents’ complicity with the broader neoliberal context.

Parents’ entrenched habitus bestows meaning to the field (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The above strategies have forged a new, more capital-demanding and subtly segregated choice market. First, since the computer lottery system promoted uncertainties in minban school choice, choosing elite public schools by catchment house became the more popular strategy. Rising housing prices place greater demands on parents’ economic capital.

Second, “luck” suggests a more subtle operation of parent capital. Although parents such as Bay and Mary attributed their school choice success to luck, their success is actually based on their embodied cultural capital (i.e., utilizing rules) and social capital (i.e., connections with staff in the educational bureau). Rather than being uncontrollable, “luck” can be actively promoted. When parents label their capital operation as luck, systematic inequality is obscured.

Third, intraschool distinction contributes to subtle segregation. The SAR was expected to reallocate quality students from elite minban schools into public schools and relieve the level of student segregation. Streaming in schools reinvigorated segregation and made it more invisible. Notably, academic segregation in schools could not be achieved solely by parents but rather by collusion between parents and elite minban schools. As the findings imply, elite minban schools actively cater to parents’ requirements for intraschool distinction.

Indeed, parents’ choice strategies are not employed in isolation. Rather, different strategies are employed simultaneously. When one strategy does not work, parents can use other strategies. For example, while Nell bet on luck and participated in elite minban school admission, she also prepared a catchment house near a good public school. When her son failed in the computer lottery system, she immediately adopted the strategy of repairing the mismatch of cultural capital. Parent school choice is conducted at the intersections between these different strategies. Moreover, parents’ use of strategies relates to their capital. The larger and richer the capital is, the more strategies that parents can employ.

Implications and limitations

Focusing on China’s recent school choice reform, this study sheds light on the design and enactment of the SAR as an antineoliberal project. This study contributes to global school choice research and offers guidance to policy-makers in two ways. First, echoing the scholarship that emphasizes the importance of not applying Bourdieusian social practice theory in isolation (Harvey et al., 2020), this study shows that school choice strategy is neither a passive product of the reform nor a personalized plan developed by families. The study reflects a logic of practice that is historically produced through the interplay between the school market (involving the school choice mechanism), middle-class habitus, and families’ capacities for capital accumulation and conversion (Bourdieu, 1990). Second, the implementation of the anti-neoliberal school choice program cannot rely solely on changes in school choice policy but rather needs to consider changes to the larger social context that lead to micro parental practices.

In addition, this study is limited by at least three aspects. First, considering China’s population size and geographical diversity, this study is only capable of determining how parents in Lake City choose schools under the SAR, rather than representing a basic trend across the entire province or country. Second, as it is solely based on interview data, this study cannot offer a comprehensive analysis of the interactions that occur among parents, students, schools, and government agencies under the SAR. Third, this study describes and analyzes rather than evaluating the enactment of the SAR. This is because the SAR is still in its early stages, and policy improvements may occur. It is difficult and, to some extent inappropriate at this point for us to assert the effectiveness of this anti-neoliberal project.

In the future, the following questions remain open to exploration: What changes may occur in parents’ school selection strategies under long-term policy implementation? What are the long-term effects of the SAR on educational inequality? How do structural factors such as population, region, the hukou system, and the schooling market influence parents’ school choice strategies? How can the emotional dimensions of parents’ school choice strategies be understood? How do parents’ emotions influence their decision-making and school choice practices?