’I Heard It on the Grapevine’: ‘hot’ knowledge and school choice

Abstract This paper is one of a number of related pieces which address the issue of parental choice through a careful Straussian analysis of interview data. The focus here is upon the structures and processes underlying the use of grapevine’ knowledge, which parents elicit and disseminate in choosing a school. It is argued that this immediate or ‘hot’ knowledge is of particular importance to many parents and is set over and against the ‘cold’ formal knowledge produced by schools themsebes or published as examination results or league tables. Grapevine knowledge is socially embedded in networks and localities and is distributed unevenly across and used differently by different social‐class groups. The paper concludes by suggesting that the stress and anxiety involved in choice for many parents is a product of unstable cultural values, and the slippery signs systems now surrounding ‘school’ at a time of increased economic uncertainty.