The opening of new state schools by non-state actors has intensified debates about social selection and inequality in quasi-markets. This article examines the case of England, where the government allows anyone to apply to open a new 'free school', arguing this will improve social equity. Using data from the National Pupil Database for all 325 free schools established between 2011/12 and 2015/16, we analyse whether the students attending free schools are representative of their local neighbourhoods. We develop the first analysis of whether the specifics of who opens and provides a free school impacts on who attends the school. We also analyse whether opening a free school has an impact on neighbouring schools. We find that free schools are located in areas with above-average deprivation but admit intakes that are more affluent than the average for the neighbourhoods from which they recruit. This is particularly the case for primary free schools, which also recruit students with above-average prior attainment. There is no evidence that free schools become more representative as they admit additional year groups. Significantly, we find that all categories of free school providers have opened schools whose populations are more affluent than their neighbourhoods, with the exception of academy chains. We also find that the opening of a free school leads to a concentrated loss of pupils at the closest school, except in cities, but we do not identify an impact on the student composition of neighbouring schools. Discussing the reasons for this, we conclude that free schools are socially selective and reproduce socio-economic inequalities.

中文翻译：

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准市场、学校多样性和社会选择：五年后英国免费学校案例分析

非国家行为者开设新的公立学校加剧了关于准市场中的社会选择和不平等的争论。本文考察了英格兰的案例，该国政府允许任何人申请开设新的“免费学校”，认为这将改善社会公平。使用国家学生数据库中 2011/12 至 2015/16 年间建立的所有 325 所免费学校的数据，我们分析了就读免费学校的学生是否代表他们当地的社区。我们首先分析谁开设和提供免费学校的细节是否会影响谁上学。我们还分析了开设免费学校是否对邻近学校有影响。我们发现，免费学校位于贫困程度高于平均水平的地区，但录取的入学人数比他们招募的社区的平均水平要高。小学免费学校尤其如此，它们也招收先前成绩高于平均水平的学生。没有证据表明免费学校在录取更多年级时会变得更具代表性。值得注意的是，我们发现所有类别的免费学校提供者都开设了人口比其社区更富裕的学校，但连锁学院除外。我们还发现，开设免费学校会导致最近学校的学生集中流失（城市除外），但我们没有发现对邻近学校的学生构成的影响。讨论这其中的原因，