Predicting parental intentions behind public school selection using the theory of planned behaviour

The main aim of this article is to address the following education policy issue in Australia: Declining student enrolment figures in the Public sector over the 25 year period (1979–2004). This sees a growing concern that school administrators and marketers may be addressing the wrong needs of parents choosing a Public primary school. Therefore, this paper is to introduce the use of a behavioural theory, Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen Decision Processes 50:179-211, 1991) for shedding some light to better understand and predict parents’ behavioural intentions in selecting a Primary school for their child. Direct measures were used to predict behavioural intentions and indirect measures were used to gain insight into specific beliefs underlying parental school choice. Questionnaire items were taken from a prior elicitation study (Goh Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark 6(2):99-108, 2009). Results from direct measures reveal that only attitudes and subjective norms significantly predicted behavioural intentions. Perceived difficulties did not add any significant predictive value in the regression equation. Results suggest that direct measures explained approximately 67% variance of behavioural intentions.