Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In the academic year of 2004-2005 the Spanish region of Madrid began to implement a bilingual educational programme in public schools (MBP hereinafter). One of the objectives sought by this programme, although not the only one, is to make the study of a foreign language accessible to students from economically less favoured families (who have greater difficulty in meeting the cost of private language tutoring). Consequently, our study aims to analyse whether, as proposed, students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds effectively participate in the MBP. To comply with this objective, we estimate a logit model directed at identifying which factors influence the selection of a bilingual public school by families. The results obtained reveal that the MBP has led to the sorting of students by socioeconomic and cultural status, causing cream skimming within the public education sector in Madrid.