Parental responsibilisation and camouflaging class-based inequalities: an ethnography of a highly selective educational transition

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the study of mechanisms of parental responsibilisation and involvement that solidify unequal educational opportunities and camouflage these, especially from pupils. Drawing on data from Zurich, the biggest city in Switzerland, the authors find that parental responsibilisation plays a crucial role in ensuring that class-based educational inequalities remain unrecognised by pupils at the selective educational transition from primary to secondary education after sixth grade. This article uses an ethnography with children and their families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in Zurich to analyse the impact of parents’ and teachers’ practices on pupils’ understanding of educational and other inequalities. The children were preparing for the highly selective entrance exam in the hope of transitioning to the most prestigious secondary school track, the only one that grants unrestricted access to university. The paper argues that class-based inequalities are both intentionally and unintentionally camouflaged from pupils in two ways: first, through the normalisation of strong parental involvement in their children’s education, which is presented as the norm, and second, through parents’ and teachers’ practices of hiding the impact that parental involvement, which differs by social class, has on children’s chances at this transition. Language-based educational inequalities are negotiated in primary schools and families and recognised by pupils, but class-based educational inequalities remain largely unrecognised by pupils. This reinforces their belief in a meritocratic transition that offers almost equal chances for all.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental responsibility
• educational transitions
• equal educational opportunities
• meritocracy
• selection
• social class

Introduction

Mrs Grainer¹ was a very active sixth grade teacher at a primary school in Zurich. She was interviewed about the highly selective transition from primary school to Gymnasium, the most prestigious secondary school track in Zurich and the only one which grants unrestricted access to university within the state-funded school system. She said,

I have the feeling that the parents in our class are not aware of the responsibility that they have. So, that they should go there [information evenings of various Gymnasia], inform themselves, take the child with them. [Instead, t]hey simply let the children do their own thing.² (2021_12_20_Interview)

She taught in a class with predominantly socioeconomically underprivileged children for whom Swiss-German is a second language. During ethnographic research with one of Mrs Grainer’s pupils and field visits in her classroom, the first author observed how the teacher tried to compensate for some of the various disadvantages her pupils have at the transition to Gymnasium due to their parents’ lack of German skills and knowledge of the Swiss school system, as Mrs Grainer described the reasons for their disadvantage. This transition is highly selective: in the Canton of Zurich, only about 15% of all pupils transfer from primary school directly to Gymnasium, the highest-ability secondary school track (Kanton Zurich, 2022). The selection to this track is based on the mean of (a) a central entrance examination (CEE) that tests the subjects German and maths in High German and (b) school grades in German and maths in sixth grade. When interviewed, Mrs Grainer was very aware of the pupils’ disadvantages and the parents’ difficulties in supporting and managing their children’s transition, because these mostly require German skills. Nevertheless, she stressed how her pupils’ parents were unaware of their responsibilities at this transition and consequently do not fulfil them in the way expected by the school.

The opening quotation echoes international research that has focused on the increasing responsibilisation of parents and their involvement in their children’s schooling and educational success. This strand of research highlights how neoliberal education reforms have shifted responsibilities from the state and the school towards parents and families, often resulting in intensified parental involvement at home and in interaction with schools (e.g. Colvin & Knight, 2023; Reay, 2005; Vincent, 2017; Vincent & Ball, 2007). Central issues include policies that responsibilise parents (e.g. Gomolla & Kollender, 2022; Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2014) and the role of social class and migration background in parental involvement (e.g. Anthony-Newman, 2020; Crozier, 2019; Kingston, 2021). The middle-class notion of parental involvement in the child’s education and parent-school interactions are increasingly becoming normalised as the benchmark for all parents, but not all have the same resources. Because of this, the parental involvement expected by educational administrators and schools often contributes to the reproduction of social inequality in education (e.g. Golden et al., 2021; Proctor et al., 2020; Vincent, 2017).

Thus far, much attention has been given to the role of parents and teachers, whereas children are rarely included in the analysis as active agents. As a result, research on parenting, education, and class, has developed a limited understanding of how children respond to parental responsibilisation and educational involvement (Golden et al., 2021). This article contributes to these ongoing discussions by examining how class- and language-based inequalities shape parental involvement at a selective educational transition in Switzerland and the impact this has on pupils’ understanding of educational inequalities. We draw on data from a six-month long ethnography in Zurich with seven socioeconomically diverse families whose children aspire to go to Gymnasium to investigate not only teachers’ expectations and parents’ practices but also pupils’ views. The article offers a nuanced understanding of how class-based inequalities are both intentionally and unintentionally camouflaged from pupils while language-based educational inequalities are negotiated in schools and at home and recognised by the pupils. We also show how pupils themselves are coproducers of middle-class-oriented parental responsibilisation.

Our paper is guided by three interrelated questions that focus on the transition to Gymnasium: First, how do parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds respond to parental responsibilisation? Second, which role do teachers play in parental responsibilisation? Thirdly, what impact does the interplay between parental and teachers' practices have on pupils’ perceptions of social and educational inequalities?

The paper proceeds in five sections. We begin by explaining the literature on parental responsibilisation and parental involvement in education. We then provide an overview of the research context. Third, we describe our study design. In the fourth section, we present the findings from our ethnography, based on the research questions above. We conclude with a discussion of how class differences are camouflaged at the transition to Gymnasium and what consequences this may have for pupils.

Current state of research – parental responsibilisation for their children’s education

Across many countries in North America, Asia, and Europe, although varying strongly between nation states, a general shift towards neoliberal logics and rhetoric has been identified in education policies and outcome-based education reforms in recent decades (Ball, 2016).³ This neoliberal shift is also evident in parental responsibilisation for children’s education and the intensification of education-related parental involvement both at home and in parent – school interactions. States have increasingly shifted responsibility for a child’s school success to the parents through competition and treat parents as “citizen-customer parents” in charge of choosing the “right school” or private tutoring and supplementary learning activities for their children (e.g. Brown, 2022; Campbell et al., 2009; Doherty & Dooley, 2018; Kromidas, 2022). In such circumstances, being involved with children’s education and helping with homework is increasingly seen as a prerequisite of “good parenthood”, and in particular of “good motherhood” (Crozier, 2019; Jergus et al., 2018; Vincent, 2017).

A large body of research has examined the relevance of social class for parental responsibilisation and educational involvement. Scholars in this field often adopt Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus; economic, cultural, and social capital; and field (Bourdieu, 1986, 1977; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979) as theoretical tools (e.g. Barg, 2019; Irwin & Elley, 2011; Posey-Maddox, 2013; Reay, 2020). According to Bourdieu (1986), economic capital is the ownership of financial resources, which can be exchanged for goods and services. Cultural capital is differentiated into three subforms: incorporated or embodied capital (e.g. linguistic skills), objectified capital (e.g. cultural goods such as books), and institutionalised capital (e.g. educational qualifications). Social capital is defined as people’s potential and current resources which they have through personal relationships and durable networks. Differences in the extent and composition of these forms of capital lead to widely differing degrees of parental involvement in children’s education, parents’ interpretations of parental responsibility, and parent – teacher interactions. Research has thoroughly documented how this in turn can contribute to the reproduction of social inequality in education (e.g. Bendixsen & Danielsen, 2020; Golden et al., 2021).

In influential work on class differences in childrearing practices in the USA, Lareau grounds her research in Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and habitus (2011/2003). She examines parents’ educational involvement at home and school and argues that middle-class parents perform “concerted cultivation” as a parenting style and closely monitor their children’s institutional experiences. Middle-class parents try to “activate their cultural and social capital” (p. 180) to benefit their children, and such parents have the confidence to criticise and intervene in their children’s schooling (p. 181). In contrast, working-class parents are more reluctant to do so, and pass the responsibility to professionals. Lareau points out that the differences in these practices are related to classed institutional standards: schools are shaped by middle-class values (p. 255). Therefore, middle-class parents’ practices in their children’s education correspond with teachers’ expectations, and the relationship between teachers, school professionals, and parents can be seen as characterised by equality (see also Bendixsen & Danielsen, 2020). In contrast, working-class and poor families’ engagement with their children’s education is misinterpreted, not valued, or less effective in such classed institutions, even though they might be just as involved as middle-class families (Cabus & Ariës, 2017; Crozier, 2019, p. 318). In this way, not only is the middle-class-oriented notion of “good parenting” normalised as a benchmark for all, with working-class parents being encouraged to behave in middle-class ways, but parenting is unjustifiably portrayed as a context-free skill without acknowledging that working-class and poor parents face substantially greater challenges than middle-class families (Holloway & Pimlott-Wilson, 2014, 2019; Vincent, 2017).

Research on parental responsibilisation and involvement also examines the intersections of social class and migrant background, revealing a complex interplay between class and migration background (Anthony-Newman, 2020; Conus & Fahrni, 2019; Gillborn et al., 2012; Rollock et al., 2015; Vincent, 2017). Conus and Fahrni (2019), for example, used ethnographic data to study the parent – school interactions of migrant parents with low socioeconomic status in a primary school in Switzerland. They showed how these migrant parents were confronted not only with classed institutions but also with an unfamiliar school culture. They expected teachers to initiate interactions between the school and parents, but the teachers expected the opposite – resulting in teachers seeing migrant parents as not interested in their children’s education. However, as Anthony-Newman’s (2020) qualitative study with immigrant parents in Canada demonstrated, migrant parents differ in their evaluation and recognition of parental involvement depending on not only their cultural but also their social capital. Parents with high levels of cultural capital (in terms of their education level and English language skills) who had been able to build new networks in Canada – or in Bourdieu’s term who had valuable social capital – communicated more often and more effectively with the school and were more satisfied with their children’s schooling (Anthony-Newman, 2020).

In contrast to this rich body of research focusing on the parents, little is known about how children perceive the links between parenting, education, and class. In one of the few studies using children’s voices, Phillippo et al. (2021) examined high school admission policies in Chicago. In doing so, they also touched on the issue of parental involvement in education. They showed that children applying to high schools believed that admission outcomes depended entirely on pupils’ merit even when they recognised that some children had more parental support for their application and access to fee-based preparatory courses because of their parents’ resources (Phillippo et al., 2021).

Building on this body of scholarship, this article examines the perspectives of parents, teachers, and pupils to study mechanisms of parental responsibilisation and involvement that solidify unequal educational opportunities and camouflage these, especially for pupils. The authors unpack how primary school pupils are active in making their parents responsible for their educational transition and also demonstrate how their view of class-based inequalities at this transition is shaped by parental responsibilisation and involvement.

Transition to Gymnasium in Zurich, Switzerland

In Switzerland, all pupils attend primary school in their neighbourhood, starting at kindergarten at age 4 and finishing at sixth grade at around age 12. Pupils are then divided into different secondary school tracks according to their academic ability. The transition to secondary education is regulated differently in each canton (the equivalent of a state within the Swiss confederation), because education is governed at the cantonal level.⁴ In the Swiss education system, this transition after sixth grade is a key juncture at which social inequalities are reproduced (Hofstetter, 2017; Hupka-Brunner et al., 2016; SKBF, 2018). A high-performing pupil from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background has a probability of transitioning to Gymnasium of around 45%; this is only about half as high as that of a similarly high-performing pupil from a socioeconomically privileged background, around 90% (SKBF, 2018, p. 159). The correlation between school performance and socioeconomic background in Switzerland is among the highest of all OECD countries, as research with PISA data has shown (Becker & Schoch, 2018). Research indicates that educational inequalities among pupils with a migration background can usually be explained by the fact that their parents have a low social status in Switzerland: social class is thus particularly pivotal in generating inequality (Becker et al., 2013). Nevertheless, proficiency in the German language has a considerable impact on the educational chances of migrant pupils (Becker et al., 2013).

The data presented in this article was collected in Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city. In Zurich, the transition to the secondary school tracks is highly selective, with strict assessment procedures for Gymnasium (Combet, 2019). Pupils face immense competition during this time of transition (see also Hafner et al., 2022). Most pupils transfer to Sekundarschule⁵ (grades 7–9) with no formal assessment. Only pupils with good school grades sign up for the CEE for Gymnasium (grades 7–12) after sixth grade. Of these, only 50% pass the CEE, resulting in 20.3% of all seventh-grade pupils in the City of Zurich attending Gymnasium (Kanton Zurich, 2022, p. 6). However, there are significant socioeconomic inequalities between the different urban school districts and a strong socioeconomic imbalance of access rates to Gymnasium within the City of Zurich: the proportion of pupils transferring from primary school to Gymnasium in 2022 ranged from 35.9% in the district of Zürichberg to 9.8% in the district of Schwamendingen (Kanton Zürich, 2022). These percentages mirror the socioeconomic data provided by the social index⁷ for these school districts: Zürichberg has the strongest socioeconomic position in the city and Schwamendingen the weakest (Kanton Zürich, 2019).

One characteristic of the school system in Zurich that is important to the transition is the administrative division of the school system. This division is also an important factor for the parents’ responsibilisation at this transition, as we show in the next section. The primary schools and the Sekundarschulen are organised and managed by the municipalities, but the Gymnasia are managed by the canton. Consequently, primary schools consider the transition to Gymnasium, in contrast to the transition to Sekundarschule, to be partly the families’ private matter. This means that registering for the CEE, gathering information about the various Gymnasia, and signing children up for trial days are solely the responsibilities of the parents. The differing administrations of primary school and Gymnasium also result in primary school not covering all the topics that pupils need to know for the CEE in regular classes, because primary schools chiefly prepare for Sekundarschule; consequently, extracurricular preparation is necessary for the CEE. In this environment, fee-based private supplementary tutoring (PST) has witnessed a boom, especially among high-achieving pupils in cantons with highly selective educational systems such as Zurich (Hof & Wolter, 2014). The few studies in Switzerland focusing on PST indicate that intensive and costly CEE preparation programmes further increase the chances of pupils from well-off families (Moser et al., 2011; Zumbuehl et al., 2022). Zurich’s state-funded schools have to offer free-of-cost courses for CEE preparation, but these are less intensive than the private courses. In addition, a non-profit initiative named Go for it! offers free-of-cost intensive preparation programmes for selected pupils from low-income families (Bauer & Landolt, 2022).

An ethnographic study of an unequal transition

To better understand inequalities at the transition to Gymnasium in Zurich, the first author undertook an ethnographic study (Breidenstein et al., 2020) that provided “thick descriptions” (Geertz, 1973) of seven families with children at this transition. The ethnographic perspective enables a profound understanding of practices in schools and families, of interactions between these, and thus of the mechanisms underlying the formation of educational inequalities at the highly selective transition to Gymnasium. It also allows the researcher to connect different angles and perspectives by incorporating different types of data, such as fieldnotes from participant observations made in schools and the pupils’ homes and interviews with various actors.

The data was collected between October 2021 and March 2022. The interviews with the headmasters of primary schools and the president of the Go for it! private initiative served as contact points for recruiting participants. Seven sixth-grade pupils were selected to comprise a mixed sample concerning socioeconomic status, migration background, gender, and the kind of CEE preparation programme they attended. The seven pupils also attended six different schools with varying degrees of socioeconomic diversity (see Table 1). The first author initially met each child with their parents at their home to get to know them, where the pupils and their parents gave their written consent to participate. Participant observation was conducted at several places: in the primary schools, at CEE preparation classes, while pupils hung out with friends, and at home studying with parents. This depended on where and when the author was allowed to join the pupils and their families. Overall, the first author conducted 50 participant observations, resulting in around 150 pages of field notes.

Table 1. Overview of the pupils participating in the ethnographic study.

Pupil, CEE result and preparation	Social class (Highest education of parents)	Migration background Pupil’s first language(s)	School	Interview parents
Eliano Failed Go for it!	Working-class (Upper secondary school)	Parents migrated (Portugal) German as second language	Socioeconomically mixed	Mother
Sunil Failed Go for it! Extra tutoring	Working-class (Upper secondary school)	Migrated as 5-year-old (Sri Lanka) German as second language	Socioeconomically mixed	None
Amara Failed School course	Working-class (Post-secondary non-tertiary education)	Parents migrated (Germany and Nigeria) German as first language	Socioeconomically disadvantaged	Mother (single mother)
Emil Passed School course	(Upper) middle-class (Master’s degree)	Swiss German as first language	Socioeconomically mixed	Father and Mother
Ida Passed Private courses School course	(Upper) middle-class (Doctorate)	Parents migrated (Italy and Sweden) German, Italian and Swedish as first languages	Socioeconomically privileged	Mother
Madita Passed Private courses	(Upper) middle-class (Bachelor’s degree)	Parents migrated (Germany) German as first language	Socioeconomically mixed	Father and Mother
Ronja Passed School course	(Upper) middle-class (Bachelor’s degree)	Swiss German as first language	Socioeconomically mixed	Mother

Additionally, the first author conducted semi-structured interviews with all the pupils’ sixth-grade teachers (six interviews), the pupils’ parents (six interviews), some of the headmasters of the schools involved in the study (two interviews), and the Go for it! president (three interviews). Furthermore, episodic interviews (Flick, 2019) with the seven pupils (seven interviews) were conducted after the CEE results were published. The episodic interviews allowed a combination of open narrative prompts and specific questions about semantic knowledge (Flick, 2019) related to unequal educational opportunities at educational transitions. The interviews were transcribed. All data were analysed with a grounded theory coding process following Charmaz (2006) and were initially inductively open-coded. During the second step, focused coding, several more abstract key categories were identified that focused on the three main actor groups: the pupils, the parents, and the teachers. This paper focuses on the key categories that address the issue of inequality at the transition to Gymnasium.

Table 1 offers an overview of the pupils and their families presented in this paper. The terms “upper-middle class”, “middle class”, and “working class” are used to describe families’ positions in the social field of school and education. The parents’ highest educational qualification and their current occupation were used to help determine their position. Therefore, both cultural and economic capital influenced the class positions ascribed.

Findings

On a Wednesday evening at the beginning of the 2021–2022 school year, the first author attended an information event for the transition to Sekundarschule and Gymnasium organised by one of the seven school district administrations in Zurich. At the entrance, staff from the school district administrations handed every parent an information sheet titled “Exam preparation courses Gymnasium (CEE)” with information on the free CEE preparation courses offered by the state-funded primary schools. On the handout, a diagram showed what pupils and parents needed to succeed at the CEE (2021_08_23_Fieldnotes). The box on the diagram labelled “parents” indicated “supporting, motivating, giving moral and intellectual support, and setting the stage for success at the CEE at home”. This was similarly emphasised by the Gymnasia. Throughout the information sessions and events hosted by the six state-funded Gymnasia in Zurich, which start after sixth grade, the crucial role of parents in success at the CEE was repeatedly stressed. During these information sessions, the headmasters of the Gymnasia made parents directly responsible by advising them about their duty to support their children intellectually during the transition and to manage their children’s transition. At the age of the transition (11–12 years), children are still dependent on their parents to navigate this transition, register for the exam, and organise preparation courses.

Our data shows that most parents accepted the responsibilities that the educational system attributes to them and became engaged with their children’s education, albeit in diverse ways that depended on their available time, and especially their economic and cultural capital (and to a lesser extent their social capital), as well as their children’s needs. Notably, it is not only middle-class families who believe it is their responsibility to become involved in their children’s school careers but also working-class families (cf. Irwin & Elley, 2011; Cabus & Ariës, 2017). In the following three subsections, we demonstrate how parental responsibilisation and parents’ and teachers’ reactions to this influence pupils’ perceptions of inequalities and camouflage educational inequalities at the transition to Gymnasium.

“Parents set the stage for success at the CEE at home” – how parents respond to responsibilisation

The first task for which parents are held responsible at the transition to Gymnasium is the management of the transition registering their children for CEE preparation programmes and attending information events at various Gymnasia. Sunil’s parents did not have the linguistic and educational skills, both cultural capital, to help their son prepare for the CEE directly, as they did not speak German and had no tertiary education, but they did research and enrolled Sunil in one support programme designed for pupils from disadvantaged families and two group tutoring groups that were offered by teachers from the Sri Lankan community, which he could attend free of cost. They used their social capital – their networks in their community – to find these programmes as other parents and family members had recommended them. This shows that this community is important social capital for Sunil's parents in terms of their son’s CEE preparation. Sunil explained why it was very important for his parents that he attend Gymnasium, saying, “they just want a good . . . how can I say, that I’m going to a better kind of school”. This hints at their wish for upward social mobility for their son, which may stem in part from the fact that they did not have university-qualifying school certificates. To his annoyance, his parents also insisted that he study every day during the half-term holiday before the exam, only allowing him to play football after he had studied for three hours (2022_03_01_Fieldnotes_Sunil). Motivating the child to learn and even pushing them to do so can be understood as another facet of managing the transition. This shows that although Sunil’s parents were not able to navigate the system easily due to language barriers, they nevertheless found ways to support him, first by utilising their social capital, i.e. their network in the Sri Lankan community to find preparation support for their son (cf. Anthony-Newman, 2020) and second by motivating and pushing him to learn.

Unlike Sunil’s parents, Ida’s mother would have had the relevant cultural capital that Sunil’s parents were partly missing: the linguistic skills and the educational background to support her daughter not only by managing her transition but also by studying with her for the CEE. But she explained that, as a full-time surgeon, she did not have the time to study with Ida to prepare her for the CEE. Therefore, she employed a similar strategy as Sunil’s parents and intensively researched preparatory courses. Thanks to her economic capital, she was able to pay for three private CEE preparation courses for her daughter. Nevertheless, she still had a guilty conscience about her responsibilities:

I also blamed myself for never being at home and not having enough time to really give her what she needed [i.e. studying with her, as mentioned before]. (Ida’s mother, middle class)

Parents did not always consider their managing their children’s transition and booking preparation courses as acting sufficiently responsibly and supportively. This shows not only how parents with children at the transition to Gymnasium internalise neoliberal parenting values by accepting the duties that schools and the system attribute to them but also the great pressure that parents can perceive when being responsibilised (Vincent, 2017). As with her mother, Ida similarly stressed the importance of parents who “are also home a lot, so they tend to work from home, or at least one adult who can help is at home”. She emphasised in the first meeting with the first author that she was different from the other pupils in her class with stay-at-home or part-time-working mums, since her mother was rarely at home. Consequently, Ida was alone most afternoons and did not always do enough schoolwork in fifth grade because no adult was around to tell her or help her to learn (2021_11_25_Fieldnotes_Ida). She thus held her mother responsible for both disciplining her to learn and for studying with her, and as a result, made her mother responsible for the fact that, from her perspective, she had a more difficult time at the CEE than her classmates.

This shows how studying and practicing with the child for the CEE at home is the second task for which parents are held responsible by their children and teachers and consequently often feel responsible for. The parents’ learning support was provided in various ways, as the examples of Amara and Emil show. Amara’s mother was a single parent of four children and did not go to Gymnasium herself and hence had an educational background that made it more challenging for her to study with her daughter. Nevertheless, she supported her daughter with the preparation when her daughter could no longer cope with the tasks alone. She supported her daughter’s CEE preparation even though she was “not a fan” of the Gymnasium, as she put it, calling it out of touch with everyday life (“alltagsfremd”), and her time resources were limited due to her full-time job. She described her involvement as a mutual learning process in which they both tried to figure out the answers together:

Sometimes it’s just that I have to sit down with her and I don’t know everything either. We’re Googling and we’re thinking together, it’s also a process. I can explain some things to her well … but yes, it is a lot of time that I invest. (Amara’s mother, working class)

She first let Amara “do her own thing”, as Amara’s teacher put it, only helping when she thought help was needed. Similar to Ida’s mother, Amara’s mother experienced time constraints when it came to supporting her daughter at the transition but did not know that private preparation courses exist (2022_03_23_Fieldnotes_Amara) and would have had difficulties affording these due to her more limited economic capital. In contrast, Emil’s mother, who was a university graduate, assumed the role of the strict teacher, giving clear instructions on how and when Emil had to study and strongly supervising his learning process. It was particularly evident that she felt responsible for personally preparing her son for the CEE on an afternoon shortly before the exam, where she and Emil studied together while the first author was with the family at home:

Emil points to his exercise material and says that he doesn’t understand why people book private prep courses [for the CEE]; after all, you could work through all this material “for free” at home. His mother laughs. “Well, it’s not free”, she tells him, adding that if you calculated how much of her time she had invested in his preparation, then her support was actually quite expensive. He looks down at the worksheets. She has “truly invested a lot”, she adds, looking at me. (2022_03_03_Fieldnotes_Emil)

This scene indicates how she invested several hours over the course of six months in addition to her full-time job to prepare Emil for the CEE. However, in this scene we not only see a mother practising “intensive mothering/parenting”⁸ (Shirani et al., 2011), but we also see that her son takes this for granted. Similarly to Ida, Emil also considered parental support and dedicated time as both important and normal. Consequently, upper-middle-class pupils in particular are coproducers of parental responsibilisation. The interviews conducted with them after the publication of the CEE results showed that they saw it as their parents’ responsibility to learn with them and to discipline them to learn. When asked about whether all pupils have the same chances, Ronja, a girl from a middle-class background, described parents’ help and involvement in the transition as crucial for children’s success or failure:

My best friend’s brother just didn’t pass, because he, his parents couldn’t help him either . . . and then he had to learn it himself somehow, mostly didn’t feel like it, he mostly didn’t feel like learning, so they didn’t tell him: you have to learn now. (Ronja, middle class)

She made the parents responsible for the friend’s brother’s failure at the CEE, mentioning that he did not pass because he lacked his parents’ help and disciplining. We have shown how parents reacted to their perceived responsibilisation differently according to their means. The organisation of the school system and the transition play an important role in parental responsibilisation in Zurich, but pupils also coproduce the narrative of the “responsible parent”.

Not all parents in Zurich had the feeling that they could support their children in a meaningful way. As mentioned earlier with Sunil’s parents, being able to speak German, the language spoken at school, plays an important role in how and how much parents can support their children. Additionally, the parents’ educational background is pivotal for their ability to study with their children. Eliano’s mother, who came to Switzerland 13 years ago, has no tertiary or vocational education and worked full-time as a cashier, explained this when asked about her role at the transition:

Since I don’t understand German, I can’t help much. I just observe the situation, and when there are parent–teacher conferences, I try to see if he is doing well, if he can concentrate. But I really can’t do much because I don’t speak German. (Eliano’s mother, working class)

She perceived her agency as limited by her lack of German skills, although she still tried to ensure that Eliano made sufficient progress in school. The combination of her lacking German skills and her limited knowledge of the Swiss education system, which she mentioned later in the same interview, strongly limited her ability to navigate and support her son at the transition to Gymnasium (cf. Conus & Fahrni, 2019). Additionally, her educational background made it difficult for her to assist her son academically with the CEE preparation, as Eliano frequently mentioned: “she can’t really help me with the schoolwork, of course not with German but not with maths either”. In her case the different dimensions of cultural capital – her linguistic skills and her education level – came into play. This left a gap that Eliano’s teacher, similarly to Amara’s teacher and the Go for it! programme, tried to fill, as the next section shows.

“We are doing the parents’ job” – teachers and an education initiative counteracting inequalities

Teachers and initiatives supporting pupils at the transition to the Gymnasium play an important role both in making parents responsible and in resisting unequal educational chances. Go for it! offers an intensive free-of-cost CEE preparation course for low-income families, many of whom use German as their second language. According to its own website, the initiative is dedicated to “promot[ing] equal opportunities for pupils from socially disadvantaged families when transferring from primary school to Gymnasium”. At the yearly assembly that the first author attended, the problem was raised by the presidents that too few primary school teachers recommend talented yet disadvantaged pupils for the programme. The president suggested that

it should be made clear to teachers, some of whom see the course as competition or an affront to their work, that we are not doing the teachers’ job, but doing the parents’ job. (2022_05_04_Fieldnotes_Go for it!)

With most attendees nodding in agreement, the president of the initiative thus highlighted the responsibility the parents held in the current system. She admitted that some parents could not fulfil these responsibilities, which is why they offered this programme: to fill the gap by taking on tasks that the system attributes to the parents so as to equalise opportunities. The various challenges that arise for pupils whose parents can barely manage their children’s transition as expected of them are well known to Go for it!. Besides offering the preparation course that is held on Wednesdays and every second week on Saturdays, Go for it! also supported the pupils in registering for the CEE. It is hard for parents to navigate the registration site when they do not speak German, since it is, similarly to the information events for the Gymnasia, only available in German. The pupils often do not manage the registration on their own. Eliano, whose mother was quoted earlier, told me a few weeks before the registration deadline how crucial Go for it!’s support was. He explained

yesterday I logged into the CEE website. Unfortunately, the registration did not work. I have, there it said, social something number, I looked at my health insurance card, then it said, it does not work. I’ll try that with [teacher at Go for it!] since I can’t do that alone. (2021_12_16_Fieldnotes_Eliano)

It is not just practical support and learning support that Go for it! offers: it also tried to familiarise the pupils with the Gymnasium, something their parents typically did not do, perhaps because the Gymnasium was an unfamiliar place to them. The course was held in a building adjacent to one of the Gymnasia, so that the pupils could experience a Gymnasium environment. Furthermore, on the Wednesday before the CEE, the teacher also showed the pupils around the venerable main buildings of the Gymnasium where they would sit the CEE, so that they would be more at ease there during the high-stakes exam (2022_03_02_Fieldnotes_Sunil/Eliano). Emil, Ida, Madita, and Ronja, all from upper-middle class and middle-class families, were all sent to trial days and/or to Gymnasium information evenings by their parents; in contrast, none of the working-class pupils I encountered during the four months before the CEE had the opportunity to become as comfortable with the unfamiliar educational space of the Gymnasium.

Sixth-grade teachers sometimes fulfilled roles similar to those of the Go for it! teachers. The field visits in the primary school classrooms and the interviews with the teachers and pupils showed how some of the teachers of disadvantaged pupils tried to counteract the reproduction of inequalities at the transition by undertaking tasks that were not officially their responsibility. They were willing to work longer than they were paid for to enhance the chances of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. This could be observed particularly in Amara’s class in one of Zurich’s socioeconomically underprivileged neighbourhoods. Their teacher, Mrs Grainer, undertook several management tasks that parents were expected to perform. She similarly helped with the registration, packed CEE boxes for her pupils with everything they needed, such as a document-proof pen and sweets, and showed them the building where the CEE takes place on Google Street View (2022_03_01_Fieldnotes_Amara). Mrs Grainer was very eager to support her pupils in various ways and tried to compensate for the transition-relevant cultural, and economic capital that their parents mostly lacked. She not only supported the pupils and their families but also informed parents about the educational path of Gymnasium. She encouraged them to consider it for their children, thus showing the greater dependency of the disadvantaged families who had not attended Gymnasium themselves on her guidance at this transition (cf. Seghers et al., 2021). She explained her influence:

We held a parents’ evening . . . and we also talked about the Gymnasium. We introduced it, we said, “what does your child actually need to be allowed to participate in the free CEE prep course offered by the school district?” . . . And we have a strong influence as teachers on the parents, I have a feeling. (Amara’s teacher, socioeconomically disadvantaged school)

She also emphasised that this was her duty, saying that “as a teacher we have to be fully supportive”.

At the same time, she kept reminding pupils in class about the duties their parents have: She told them to visit the Gymnasium with their parents before the exam or to ask their parents for help with the CEE registration (2022_02_08_Fieldnotes_Amara). In this way, Mrs Grainer also produced an image of a “good parent” and held the parents responsible in the eyes of the pupils. They were made aware that their parents did not act as required by their teacher.

Another example of teachers’ strong involvement is Eliano’s teacher, Mrs Bingas. Eliano is a boy from a working-class background whose mother tongue is not German. Mrs Bingas stressed several times during my visits to her classroom that Eliano had to work much harder than the pupils with middle-class parents in his class because he “cannot rely on parental help” due to his mother’s missing German language skills (2022_01_28_Interview). She persuaded Eliano to sit the CEE, recommended him for the Go for it! course, supported him with personalised learning equipment for the CEE and motivational Post-it notes. The first author similarly observed this with Ronja’s and Emil’s mothers, who also compiled exercise material for their children.

I then later see on Eliano’s desk a plastic folder with maybe 30 worksheets on the use of the different cases – one of his weak points. On top is a Post-it note: “Dear Eliano, try to solve as many exercises as you can. Ask me if you don’t understand something”. (2022_01_28_Fieldnotes_Eliano)

Both Go for it! and some of the sixth-grade teachers took over some of the parental tasks of managing the transition and supporting the learning process of their pupils. They often introduced the Gymnasium to the pupils in the first place, while at the same time reproducing parental responsibilisation and constructing the “good parent” in the classroom.

“It always depends on how well you practice” – influence on the pupils’ perception of inequalities

In the following, we show how both parents’ and teachers’ reactions to parental responsibilisation and the organisation of the transition influence how pupils perceive inequalities at the transition to Gymnasium. A few important practices of parents and, with slight variation, of teachers strongly influence pupils’ perception of inequalities and privilege in Zurich and have the power to camouflage class inequalities at this educational transition. Additionally, the normalisation of intensive parental involvement and preparation support as a result of the responsibilisation camouflages class-based inequalities.

Parents tend to emphasise the meritocratic nature of the transition and strengthen the children’s belief that success at the CEE depends solely upon their hard work. Some parents in our sample were not explicit about their role in creating unequal opportunities at the transition by helping their child prepare or paying for multiple preparation courses. Madita’s parents were both university graduates and worked in the managements of multinational companies. They booked two private preparation courses for their daughter, disciplined her to study for the CEE and had her grandmother, who is a Gymnasium teacher, study with her each week and in the holidays. In their interview, they stressed that the CEE was the “right form of selection”, accentuating the meritocratic element of the transition. Any kind of advantage enjoyed by their daughter or unequal chances were never mentioned in the interview, but they were sometimes briefly referred to in their daughter’s absence over a coffee after my meetings with Madita. Madita studied hard and eventually passed the CEE. When I visited the family after the results were sent out, her mother mentioned that they would all fly to Abu Dhabi for a one-week vacation as a reward for Madita’s hard work, which had paid off with the CEE success, while hugging her smiling daughter tightly (2022_03_22_Fieldnotes_Madita). Madita mirrored these meritocratic beliefs in an interview, stressing the need to “practise well”. She attended a diverse school in Schwamendingen, and only two of her classmates passed the CEE. When asked about whether all children had equal chances at this transition, she explained:

So, the same chances . . . there are always smarter children, so to say, and a little bit worse children, and there are always different children who do that [the exam] and it always depends on how well you practice, so if you haven’t practised at all, then it’s just hard to pass the exam. (Madita, upper middle-class)

Madita did not question educational inequality in the City of Zurich when assuming that there were more Gymnasia in the privileged Zürichberg district (where 35.9% transfer to Gymnasium) because there were more intelligent children there:

Maybe it’s just that down in the city, I say, there are more children or more, I don’t know, or more smarter children, I can’t say, and here [in Schwamendingen] just more children who just want to do the Sekundarschule and then just an apprenticeship. (Madita, upper middle-class)

By using the term “just”, she devalued the apprenticeship and did not question the fact that this was the path the majority of children take in the socioeconomically underprivileged district of Schwamendingen. She simply assumed that children in Schwamendingen prefer the Sekundarschule over Gymnasium.

Other parents were more explicit about the differences their involvement made but actively camouflaged it. Ronja’s mother, for example, tried to hide from her daughter the difference it made that she, a social worker with a university degree, intensively helped Ronja prepare for the CEE. She defended this in the interview, slightly criticising “the system”:

Well, I don’t think she could have done it without my support, but I don’t think she’s that aware of it, fortunately. I think she assumes that everything actually happened by her own efforts, and I think that’s okay, absolutely, and it also took most of her efforts, but I would say that in this system that we have here, Ronja wouldn’t have managed it without my support. (Ronja’s mother, middle class)

Ronja passed the exam one month later and emphasised in the interview afterwards that you have to be both smart and hardworking to excel in the CEE and obtain a place at Gymnasium. When asked why she passed the exam, she stated, “I prepared well and had good marks”. And she certainly studied hard, as the first author observed. She never mentioned her mother helping or disciplining her. Parental support is predominantly seen as both essential and normal at the transition and pupils also responsibilise their parents as we have shown. Pupils who received strong support from their parents mostly do not understand it as a privilege or a source of unequal opportunities. This normalisation of strong parental involvement and support that is rooted in parental responsibilisation also camouflages class-based inequalities.

Teachers also influenced pupils’ perceptions of socioeconomic inequalities and class differences by camouflaging them in primary schools, as our ethnographic data show. They did not address inequalities in the classroom but instead stressed the meritocratic nature of the CEE by stating that pupils just have to study hard enough to pass. This was especially the case in socioeconomically more homogeneous classrooms, where socioeconomic inequalities were not as visible. Ida, who lives in a rather homogeneously privileged neighbourhood, currently “attend[s] one of the best [primary] schools here in Zurich” as she puts it. She emphasised that everyone from her class would be a suitable candidate for the Gymnasium in a city where only around 20% per year attend Gymnasium (Kanton Zürich, 2022): “because I think all of them have the potential, at least from our class”. Ida sees this as stemming from the intelligence of the pupils at her school. Forty percent of her class passed the CEE eventually. The headmaster of her school stressed that the Gymnasium is “the right way” for many children at their school, emphasising that “We have really strong children”. Ida repeatedly heard that children in her school were exceptionally intelligent children and therefore deserved to go to Gymnasium; hence, the headmaster and teachers actively camouflaged class-based inequalities at the transition from her. The sense of entitlement to go to Gymnasium was evident in many situations that the first author observed at her school. During a lunch break I spent with Ida and three of her friends in a café, I noted this:

While we are at the Coop Supermarket buying sweets, I asked the girls whether they have registered for the CEE yet. Suddenly, they shouted in confusion. Emily: “I’m going to the Piz Bernina Gymnasium”., Lotta screamed: “Me too!”. Johanna exclaimed: “Hah! I’ll go to Eiger Gymnasium, that’s the best”, while Ida looked at me and told me that she had registered at Matterhorn Gymnasium. Emily and Johanna did not even speak in the subjunctive. The question is more which Gymnasium to choose than whether they pass and get in at all. (2022_02_22_Fieldnotes_Ida)

Amara’s class and school was very different from Ida’s school, as in Amara’s class almost all pupils had German as their second language and a working-class background. Many parents often did not have postsecondary education. Not a single pupil in Amara’s entire school passed the CEE. Amara studied for the CEE in the holidays, at weekends, and after school. When asked what others who passed might have done differently, she answered: “I think maybe they learned more or better”. She learned in school from Mrs Grainer and other teachers that you need to have excellent grades and be hardworking to pass the CEE. Teachers thus legitimised existing inequalities by stressing the objective and meritocratic nature of the examinations that provide the basis for selection (see also Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979). Consequently, Amara sought the fault for her failure at the CEE in herself. Furthermore, and in contrast to Sunil and Eliano, who attended socioeconomically very diverse schools and were slightly more aware of other children receiving more help from their parents, Amara had no children in her class who visited fee-based preparation classes or who had parents who had attended Gymnasia themselves. The class-based differences in parental support were invisible to Amara. This left her even less aware of general social class differences at the transition. It is mostly class-based educational inequalities that are hard to see for pupils and that are camouflaged by parents and teachers at home and at school. The inequalities arising from language difficulties of pupils with a migration background, creating more difficult conditions for pupils whose native language is not German, are addressed by teachers, discussed in the Go for it! course, and an evident marker of inequality in the classroom. Pupils often received extra attention from their teachers due to their grammatical difficulties and more limited vocabulary, just as Eliano did with his problems with the use of grammatical cases. This made these differences visible to pupils and something they discussed when talking about others or with each other. Ronja, similarly to Emil, Ida, Sunil, and Eliano, considered the CEE to be not entirely fair and recognised the language-based inequalities and unequal chances for pupils who were not German native speakers. She explained that

those who don’t speak German so well . . . I think that’s a bit unfair that they have the same exam and then it’s just, yes, that’s the only thing that would be a bit unfair. (Ronja, middle class)

Camouflaging class – parental responsibilisation and meritocracy

This paper has shown how the interplay of parental responsibilisation, parents’ reaction to it, and teachers’ attempts to compensate for unequal chances result in the camouflaging of class-based educational inequalities from sixth-grade pupils. Parental involvement in their children’s transition to Gymnasium and intensive parenting seem to be the norm in Zurich, paralleling the findings of research in other countries (cf. Vincent, 2017; Crozier, 2019). In Zurich, the responsibilisation and strong involvement of parents occurs in response to an exam-based and ostensibly purely meritocratic transition. All parents, regardless of class and migration background, try to assume the role of “responsible parents” and manage their children’s transition even though they experience varied challenges and limitations due to time, language competencies, and social class (cf. Bendixsen & Danielsen, 2020; Crozier, 2019). These various limitations mean that some can enhance their children’s chances more than others (cf. Lareau, 2003/2011). It is mostly parents who speak German, know the educational system (i.e. know the transition procedure and therefore understand that parents have to manage their child’s transition) and have the educational background to be able to study with their child or the economic capital to pay for private CEE courses who can fulfil the responsibilities attributed to them. Our findings thus echo existing research that demonstrates that parental involvement is a key factor in how especially cultural, and economic capital translate into unequal educational participation, particularly at educational transitions (cf. Golden et al., 2021; Anthony-Newman, 2020).

The paper sheds light on the role of the teachers and pupils in the responsibilisation of parents. We have demonstrated how teachers are, in some cases, strongly committed to supporting disadvantaged pupils in various ways and can partly counteract unequal opportunities. At the same time, we showed with Mrs Grainer how teachers might not challenge the pivotal role of parents at this transition but further responsibilise them: sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. The current organisation of the transition in Zurich means that the opportunities of pupils who do not speak German at home and are underprivileged in terms of social class are very dependent on their teachers: if they have teachers who do not particularly support them and “partly take over the parents’ tasks”, their chances are significantly worse.

By including the perspectives of the pupils, we can demonstrate how class-based inequalities at the transition to secondary schooling are camouflaged from pupils: first, through parental responsibilisation which causes a normalisation of intensive parental involvement and second, through parents’ and teachers’ practices of consciously and unconsciously camouflaging inequalities and emphasising the meritocratic nature of the CEE. Firstly, we show how especially middle-class and upper-middle-class pupils see intensive parental involvement as normal which further camouflages inequalities. Students perceive the transition as rather just and meritocratic. This was especially true for children attending rather homogenously privileged or underprivileged schools as they were less exposed to socioeconomic differences in their classroom. At the same time, inequalities arising from speaking German as a second language and migration background were evident in the classrooms and discussed among the pupils. They mostly considered having German as a second language as a disadvantage at the transition. Furthermore, we showed that it is not only the specific organisation of the transition and teachers and schools that responsibilise parents at this transition, but also pupils. These are the most important contributions of our research.

But, as mentioned, it is not only the normalisation of intensive parental involvement that camouflages class-based inequalities. Secondly, particularly (upper) middle-class parents seem to camouflage class-based educational inequalities partly to motivate their children to study harder by emphasising the meritocratic nature of the CEE and partly to enhance their self-esteem. Often unconsciously, teachers similarly camouflaged unequal opportunities based on class at the transition when stressing the intelligence of pupils but silencing their privileges, as is the case in Ida’s classrooms, or when emphasising the meritocratic nature of the CEE, as parents do to motivate their pupils and to give them agency for upward social mobility, as seen in Amara’s classroom. Through this camouflaging, parents and teachers enhance the meritocratic beliefs of pupils in Zurich. Consequently, the fact that not everyone has the same opportunities is no longer visible to the pupils, as the examples of Ronja, Madita, Ida, and Amara have shown. The view of society that is conveyed to them at this transition is one of a society with almost equal educational opportunities for all: a meritocracy. Although both international and Swiss literature discusses the importance of the intersection of social class, migration background, and language skills intensively (Anthony-Newman, 2020; Becker et al., 2013; Conus & Fahrni, 2019; Vincent, 2017), the only inequality-generating factor actually made evident to and discussed by the pupils was German as a second language. This is critical because the transition can also teach them about their places in the educational space and in society and naturalise unequal distributions of educational success in society. That way pupils can understand these unequal distributions as given, not questioning why so many more pupils from socioeconomically privileged families transfer to Gymnasium.

We hope that this paper has illustrated the importance of discussing ways to alter the current system of the transition to Gymnasium in Zurich. The early tracking intensifies social reproduction of educational inequalities, as various studies have shown (Felouzis & Charmillot, 2023; Van de Werfhorst, 2019). But as the demolition of the tracking after sixth grade in Zurich is politically not very likely at the moment and no political priority (VSoS, 2023), we suggest adjustments to the current transition system that would improve the equality of educational chances in Zurich. Less responsibility should lie on the parents to manage the transition, the registration and preparation of the CEE so that teachers do not have to take up these tasks to support their pupil. It would be desirable that all public primary schools prepare all pupils who aspire to transfer to Gymnasium effectively for the CEE by completely aligning what is tested in the CEE with the curriculum taught in the normal school lessons. Additionally, the funding for the public schools’ preparatory courses should be increased and the quality of the courses improved, so that the courses can be more extensive and all children can get sufficient additional training for the CEE instead of receiving teaching to the test as is often the case today due to the limited course length and a high pupil-teacher ratio (City of Zurich, Education Authority, 2023). Additionally, we suggest that information events about the different secondary school types, the CEE and topics and preparatory courses should be held in different languages in all schools at the end of fifth grade. By doing so, the chances of pupils to attend Gymnasium can be rendered a little less dependent either on their parents’ language skills, their ability to support them and navigate the system or on committed teachers and non-profit initiatives, who try to compensate for what the state does not manage to provide: equitable chances.

Ethics approval

The research was approved by the Ethics Commission of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Zurich. The approval number is: 21.4.13.

Informed consent

Informed consent to take part in the research was obtained from all participants in written form prior to the commencement of the study. All participants signed consent forms. In the case of participating minors, their legal guardians also gave their written consent to participation.

Acknowledgements

This article benefited substantially from the comments of the two anonymous reviewers and the work of the editor Prof. Jane Martin. The authors would also like to thank Itta Bauer, Lara Landolt, Hanna Hilbrandt, Nicole Nguyen, Kristy Ulrich Papczun and Anthony Miro Born for their very helpful and constructive comments on this paper. In addition, we would like to thank Simon Milligan for his professional support with proofreading and language editing. Our final thanks go to the children, their parents and the teachers and headmasters who took part in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the sensitive nature of the data focusing on minors, the data are not publicly available. Further, research participants did not consent to the distribution of interview data.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant number 192207.

Notes

1 All names of individuals and schools are pseudonyms, and the occupations of parents were changed to comparable occupations.

2 All quotes were translated to English by the first author.

3 Switzerland also implemented quality monitoring reforms but introduced less radical and less market-driven reforms than other countries. Switzerland's education departments, for example, did not publicise school quality reports, introduced no high-stakes testing affecting teachers, and did not introduce school choice at primary school level (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006).

4 All cantons have early tracking systems with a selective transition to secondary school after grade 6. Depending on the canton, the transition depends on teachers’ recommendations, school grades, entrance exams, or a combination of these (see Hafner et al., 2022 for a comparative analysis of transition systems in different cantons).

5 Eighty-four percent of all pupils attend Sekundarschule, which is mostly followed by multiyear vocational education and training and sometimes also vocational tertiary education.

7 The social index (“Sozialindex”) consists of percentage of foreign nationality (children from Germany and Austria, who have German as their national language, are not considered foreign for this statistic), percentage of people receiving social aid, and income level.

8 We would like to thank one anonymous reviewer who pointed out that mostly mothers were involved with their children’s education in our sample.