# Hirschman and school choice: exit, voice and the local school in Spain

> Albert O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970) warns that when the most quality-conscious parents leave a struggling school, it loses the voice most likely to improve it. Applied to Spain, where about a third of pupils attend concertada or private schools, the radical-centre answer keeps choice and redesigns it: shared admission rules that stop segregation, published results for every school, and parent voice with real powers, so that both exit and voice push schools to get better.

- URL: https://www.radicalcentre.eu/en/articles/hirschman-school-choice-exit-voice-local-school
- Language: en
- Publisher: radical centre / centro radical
- Published: 2026-11-04
- Topic: Ideas & history
- Author: radical centre
- Licence: CC BY 4.0

## Key points

- Hirschman argued that when the most demanding parents leave a declining public school, it loses the voice most likely to fight that decline.
- In 2023–24, 66.9% of Spain's 8.3 million general-regime pupils attended public schools, 24.4% concertada schools and 8.8% private ones, according to the education ministry.
- EsadeEcPol finds socioeconomic segregation in Spanish schools fell after 2018 but remains especially high in Madrid and Catalonia, and segregation by migrant origin has risen.
- Sweden's 1992 voucher reform increased segregation, the OECD found, while Catalonia's 2021 admissions decree cut it by around a fifth in five years.
- The radical-centre position: keep choice, regulate admissions for everyone and give parents' voice real weight.

Albert O. Hirschman wrote [Exit, Voice, and Loyalty](/en/articles/hirschman-exit-voice-loyalty-explained) in 1970 to explain why firms, parties and states decline and how they recover. One of his examples was close to home for any parent: the local public school. Spain has spent forty years arguing about school choice, concertada schools and admissions, and Hirschman's book is still the clearest tool for thinking it through.

His idea is simple. When an organisation gets worse, the people it serves have two ways to react. They can leave, which Hirschman calls exit, or they can stay and complain, organise and push for change, which he calls voice. Economists love exit because it works through prices and competition. Hirschman added that voice matters just as much, and that exit can quietly kill it.

The school case shows how. As the economist Phillip Magness reminds readers in a 2017 essay on vouchers, Hirschman noted in a footnote that a declining public school loses, to private schools, the children of the most quality-conscious families, the parents who might otherwise have fought deterioration. The parents who leave are the ones who would have made the most noise at the school council. The education historian David Labaree puts the same mechanism plainly: for an unhappy family, the easiest option is to exit, and that solves their problem while leaving the school and the pupils who remain worse off. Hirschman got the idea from Nigeria's railways, which lost their most demanding customers to lorries and then had little reason to improve. Labaree recalls that Hirschman called this a lazy public monopoly.

## Exit and voice in Spain's schools

Spain has a large exit route built in. According to the education ministry's Datos y cifras for 2024–25, in 2023–24 Spain had 8.3 million pupils in the general regime: 66.9% in public schools, 24.4% in concertada schools, which are privately run and publicly funded, and 8.8% in fully private schools. In primary and ESO the concertada share is higher still, 28.2% and 29.0%.

Exit in Spain also sorts pupils. EsadeEcPol's analysis of PISA 2022 finds that socioeconomic segregation between schools fell after 2018 in almost every region and now sits below the OECD average, which is good news. It remains especially high in the Comunidad de Madrid and in Catalonia, and segregation by migrant origin rose significantly from 2018. In those places, the schools that lose families end up concentrating the pupils whose parents have the least time, money and confidence to use voice.

Sweden ran the boldest experiment in exit. Its 1992 reform let parents and pupils choose any school, with independent schools funded per pupil by the municipality. The OECD's 2015 review counts about 60 independent schools in 1991 and 792 in 2014, and concludes that choice increased social and ethnic segregation and that competition between schools fuelled grade inflation. Swedish researchers at IFAU found that choice explains a relatively small part of the rise in segregation, and Sweden is still only low-to-medium segregated by international standards. Even so, the OECD's advice was to revise choice so that it delivers quality with equity.

Catalonia tried the opposite repair. In March 2019 the Catalan Parliament hosted a pact against school segregation, with 30 actions and 189 measures, and its first item was a new admissions decree. Decree 11/2021 reserves places for pupils with specific needs until the school year starts, limits the share of vulnerable pupils in each group and gives town councils a role in mid-year enrolment. According to the Síndic de Greuges figures summarised by the Diputació de Barcelona, between 2018–19 and 2023–24 segregation measured by foreign pupils fell by 23% in primary and 20% in secondary. Foreign pupils are still 1.5 times more present in public schools than in concertada ones, down from 2.3.

## A radical-centre reading

The left is right that admission to any school paid for by taxpayers should follow common rules. Catalonia shows that shared reserves of places for vulnerable pupils, applied to public and concertada schools alike, reduce segregation in a few years. The market-liberal tradition is right that families should choose, and that a school which can lose pupils has a reason to listen. Hirschman himself never asked anyone to give up exit; he asked for a mix in which exit and voice keep each other alive.

That mix is the third idea, and it belongs to neither camp. Voice gets cheaper and stronger. Every school publishes its results and progress, as we proposed when we argued for [measuring to correct](/en/articles/measure-to-correct-school-assessments-open-data-spain), so parents have something concrete to raise. The school council stops being a formality: parents' representatives get a say over the school's improvement plan and a formal right to call in the inspectorate when results fall. And exit leaves a trace. When a family changes school, it records the reason, the regional administration publishes those reasons by school, and a school losing families for the same reason has to answer for it in front of its council.

Put together, this keeps choice for every family while protecting the school that loses its loudest parents. The families who stay gain a voice that carries weight, the families who leave send a message that someone reads, and admission rules stop the system from sorting children by their parents' means. Spain can test the "exit with a reason" register in a few districts in Madrid and Catalonia, where segregation is highest, and compare them with similar districts before extending it.

Hirschman ended his book with loyalty, the attachment that makes people stay and fight a little longer. A local school earns that loyalty when parents can see that speaking up changes things.

## FAQ

### What did Hirschman say about schools?

In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), Albert O. Hirschman used public schools as an example of how exit can weaken an organisation: if quality-conscious parents move their children to private schools as a public school declines, the school loses the parents most likely to push for improvement. The economist Phillip Magness cites this passage in his discussion of school vouchers.

### What is the difference between exit and voice?

Exit means leaving: switching to another school, product or country. Voice means staying and trying to change things from inside, by complaining, organising or taking part in decisions. Hirschman argued that organisations recover best when both are available and neither drowns the other.

### How many pupils go to concertada schools in Spain?

According to the education ministry's Datos y cifras for 2024–25, in 2023–24 24.4% of pupils in the general regime attended concertada (publicly funded private) schools, 66.9% public schools and 8.8% private schools. In primary and ESO the concertada share is higher, at 28.2% and 29.0%.

### Does school choice increase segregation?

It can. The OECD's 2015 review of Sweden found that its 1992 choice reform increased social and ethnic segregation, though Swedish researchers at IFAU judged choice's share of the rise to be relatively small. Catalonia shows the other side: after a 2019 pact and a 2021 admissions decree, segregation measured by foreign pupils fell by around a fifth.

## Sources

- [School Vouchers and the Inverse-Hirschman Scenario](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2017/Magnessvouchers.html), Econlib (2017)
- [The Problem of Public Schools in a Liberal Democracy: Insights from Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty](https://davidlabaree.com/2021/08/30/albert-hirschman-exit-voice-and-loyalty/), David Labaree (2021)
- [Todo lo que debes saber de PISA 2022 sobre equidad](https://www.esade.edu/ecpol/es/publicaciones/todo-lo-que-debes-saber-de-pisa-2022-sobre-equidad/), EsadeEcPol (2023)
- [Improving Schools in Sweden: An OECD Perspective](https://gpseducation.oecd.org/Content/ProjectsMaterial/ImplementingEducationPolicies/Improving-Schools-in-Sweden.pdf), OECD (2015)
- [El decret d'admissió de l'alumnat (Destil·lats d'Educació 37)](https://kitcueme-municipis.diba.cat/documents/d/oel/d37-decret-admissio), Diputació de Barcelona (2025)
- [Datos y cifras. Curso escolar 2024/2025](https://lamoncloa.gob.es/serviciosdeprensa/notasprensa/educacion-fp-deportes/Documents/2024/110924-%20datos-y-cifras-curso-escolar-2024-2025.pdf), Ministerio de Educación, Formación Profesional y Deportes (2024)