As in many parts of the world, the school system in Senegal has suffered from state budget cuts associated with structural adjustment and neoliberal reform in the 1980s. As a result, the quality of elementary public schools has been compromised; meanwhile a significant private sector developed. This article analyses the proliferation of private schools in Dakar and the ways in which Senegalese parents navigate the multiplicity of school types (French, Franco-Arabic or Franco-English, Catholic or secular), to understand how families struggle to ensure their social and material reproduction in a neoliberal economy. I suggest that educational investments are situated at the intersection of global and intra-family inequalities. International migration has made global inequalities apparent within and between Senegalese families, who are unequally positioned depending on whether they include members living abroad.