The text presents some results of a recently concluded investigation that, generically, is part of the complex processes of the (multi) regulation of education. The study was developed in a district in the north of Portugal (conventionally designated Vila Formosa) and was limited to schools that offered secondary education. The analysis of the data suggests that, in the complex topography of the processes of (multi)regulation of the school field, the combination of measures of educational policy with resources and courses of action that the different schools and the diverse categories of families and young people possess and adopt constitute a triad of dynamic sources, sometimes convergent and sometimes tense, that, by their cumulative sociological effects, generate the re-ordination of the field of competing struggles in education that seem to penalize, above all, the families that already suffer other disadvantages.
(multi)regulation of education; school publics; policies of choice; explanations; competing struggles
