This paper draws on data from two recently completed ESRC-funded projects in order to examine class differences and similarities around choice of school and choice of childcare. We argue here that there is every reason to believe that in many circumstances, within its particular mechanisms and practices, choice produces specific and pervasive forms of inequity.The processes by which working class parents in one study chose care settings and schools could be seen as less skilled, less informed, less careful than the decision-making of many of the middle class respondents. However, this is not an argument we advance, noting instead that the practices and meanings of choice are subject to significant social, cultural and economic variations in terms who gets to choose, who gets their choices, and what, how and why people choose when they are able to. We argue here that there are alternative sets of priorities in play for our working class respondents, involving attachments to the communal and the local
