Due to the role of education in promoting social status and facilitating upward social mobility, individuals and their families spare no effort to pursue better educational opportunities, especially in countries where education is highly competitive.

In China, the enrollment of senior high schools and universities mainly follows a ranking system based on students’ scores in national entrance exams (Zhongkao and Gaokao). Typically, students with higher scores have priority in choosing schools and endeavor to get into better senior high schools to increase their chances of entering a prestigious university.

However, students can only select “better” senior high schools based on their average Gaokao grades, which are strongly influenced by the initial performance (Zhongkao grades) of enrolled students. The true quality indicator of school education (schooling effect, defined as the grade improvement achieved through education at the senior high school) is unknowable. This raises the first question: will school rankings reflect the real educational quality of schools over decades of educational competition, or merely the initial quality of the students they enroll?

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The School Enrollment Model is a spatially-explicit computational model that depicts a city, with schools and students located within the space. The model represents the Chilean school system, a market-based educational system, where people are free to choose among public, private voucher, or private fee-paying schools. In the model, students become aware of some schools, apply to schools, switch schools, pass or fail grade levels, and eventually either graduate or dropout. Schools select students, update their tuition, test scores, and other characteristics.

The purpose of the model is to represent the Chilean school system and analyze the different mechanisms that affected the enrollment distribution between public, private voucher, and private fee-paying school sectors during the period 2004-2016.