The charge has often been made that in peripheral regions of Scotland the secondary educational system has contributed to rural depopulation, since students often must leave the rural community for a distant, centralized secondary school located in an urban area where values and aspirations differ from those of rural communities. In a study of nine peripheral areas, representative of the main patterns of secondary education and differing types of centralization, 500 parents of primary and secondary students were questioned on their: migration intentions and home district attachment; satisfaction with the local pattern of secondary education; expectations of the educational system, particularly in reference to local job preparation; and migration and job expectations for their children. Results revealed that most parents: did not intend to migrate and were attached to their home district; were best satisfied with the provision that allowed their children to transfer out of the community at the end of two years of local secondary education; but wanted the schools to provide opportunity for upward mobility; and overwhelmingly expected their children to migrate. There was no evidence that parental dissatisfaction with the pattern of education was in itself a significant factor influencing migration or that an attempt to introduce rurally oriented courses to deter migration would be advantageous to the community or reflect parental/student aspirations. (JC)