Learnings of policy enactment: student perspectives on social justice in Zurich's selective secondary school admissions

How does school policy enactment shape students' understandings of social justice? This paper addresses this question by offering a novel perspective on student voice and social justice within selective school admissions policy. Drawing on an ethnography with eight students aged 13-15 affected by a selective secondary school admissions policy to Zurich's Gymnasia, this paper strengthens calls within education policy studies to emphasize student voice. Using a theoretical lens shaped by Ball's policy enactment theory and Fraser's theory of social justice, it places student voice within the enactments of four groups of policy actors involved in this school transition: headmasters, teachers, parents, and students. Our findings show how policy actors' enactments of this selective admissions policy institutionalized a normative ideal of parental engagement that assumes socioeconomically privileged, German-speaking parents with knowledge about the Swiss education system. Influenced by reflections on their own and peers' familial backgrounds, students incorporated these enactments into personal understandings of social justice, which involved both compliance with and critique of this policy. We highlight students' awareness of the structural and institutional influences shaping their educational trajectories and challenge the widespread notion of meritocracy within student narratives. We argue that these students' perspectives provide inspiration for reflecting on students' experiences navigating selective transitions elsewhere.