Social Investment or Social Closure: Education Reform in Contemporary Europe

The past two decades have seen intensive reform of the structure of European educational systems, often involving the introduction of 'marketing' policies such as school choice, school independence, and the involvement of private (including for-profit) actors. At the same time, in many countries, per student and aggregate funding from the state have increased often as apart of a broader 'social investment' program. Have these former policies counteracted or supported the latter? That is, have parents by exercising choice, and schools by removing themselves from local control, created 'social closure' even as 'social investment' increases. I examine this question using novel datasets of school performance and composition at the micro-level in England and Sweden. I find that even as social investment policies improved average performance in England and decreased variation across schools, residential sorting by parents often worked in the other direction, dispersing performance and composition across schools - social investment accompanied by social closure. In Sweden, despite longstanding ideological support for social equality, school reforms led to rapid dispersion in school performance and weakened public support for state intervention.