Social Inequalities in Educational Choice at the Transition from Primary to Secondary Education: A Matter of Rational Calculation?

On the basis of these analyses, we cannot say that cultural and social resources have no role to play at all in the process of individual educational decision-making. What this study shows is that these do not enable us to explain the effect of parental SES on educational choice. In the absence of such evidence and in the light of the patterns found in the pupils’ accounts, we think to find some support for a view of educational decision-making as being the result of rational calculation. In this calculation parents take their own situation as a point of reference, considering the (educational) resources on which they can rely

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