Location3 Education3: place, choice, constraint in London1

In this paper we draw on three studies of social class change amongst the middle classes undertaken in London over the last 25 years to reflect on the changing values expressed by respondents to school choice. We argue that there has been a hardening of attitudes to school performance and a loss of middle-class autonomy towards schooling. Increasingly we note a concern to navigate the few areas of privilege in a school system designed for working class children but now expected to cater for a vastly increased and educationally-anxious middle class. We specifically address the way in which choice of school has become enshrined in legislation but has itself become constrained by the lack of places in popular schools. We argue that the consequence has been to diminish the amount of choice and ensure that 'distance from school' becomes the sole arbiter of access to most popular schools. Thus an attempt at widening access to education has in effect restricted it to those able to access the housing markets nearest to the most popular schools. Taken together with a series of policy interventions designed to circumvent middle-class families playing the system, this has in effect reduced the element of choice by forcing most parents to play for the 'safe option' in the fear of being allocated to something worse. We conclude by suggesting that this policy is unsustainable in the longer term and suggest that the government policy of building new Academies is a means of re-engineering London's system of secondary education to reflect the aspirations of those living in its recently gentrified areas.