The impact of public, Catholic and Waldorf schools on pupils’ moral judgement

Our study examines the impact of public, Catholic and Waldorf schools on students’ (N = 1367) moral judgements in Hungary. Although the main focus of the research is on the extent to which parenting style, different demographic characteristics and school model influence students’ moral judgements, the analysis also addresses the reasons for parents’ (N = 1228) school choice. The comparability of schools is supported by a complex sampling algorithm and the detection of demographic differences. The moderating role of school models in student personality formation is described by structural equation modelling (SEM), multigroup path analysis (MGA) and multiple linear regression (MLR). The results show that educational attainment has an effect on restrictive parenting in public and Catholic schools. In these two schooling models, parents with lower educational attainment are more likely to have a restrictive parenting style, while parents with higher educational attainment are less likely. This correlation does not hold for Waldorf schools. Waldorf parents are less restrictive, regardless of their educational level. In public and Waldorf schools, pupils in higher grade levels are more accepting of being out of control, and therefore more accepting of misdemeanour, which leads to becoming less reliable, gradually causing a deterioration in behaviour. It is also true for Catholic schools that pupils with more uncontrolled attitudes are more accepting of misdemeanour and less positive about reliability, but for Catholic school pupils the last element of the chain of effects does not exist: attitudes do not manifest themselves in behaviour.