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While much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio‐economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of Basil Bernstein's work on language in relation to education and child rearing is widely recognized, but his contributions to the sociology of the school are less well-known. It is not the purpose of this article to make an extended critique of the theoretical and other propositions made in Bernstein's series of writings, but to report an attempt to put some of them to the empirical test. The results of the investigation give only limited support for some of the propositions made by Bernstein about the sociology of the school. This statement must be qualified by a number of reservations. Firstly, the variables used to test the propositions were not constructed for this specific purpose, and may not therefore represent the best use of the concepts involved. Secondly, they do not cover all the examples suggested by Bernstein. Thirdly, the schools to which the measures apply are secondary schools. With these reservations, the results suggest that Bernstein's explanation of the relationship between the different aspects of the school should be reconsidered. The explanations appear to be based upon an adaptive view of education, in which its form and change are determined by, or closely related to, the nature of and changes in superordinate sectors of society.

The paper addresses several debates surrounding the reproduction of socio-economic inequality: (i) the persistent inequality thesis, which maintains that despite the increases in educational participation socio-economic inequalities in education have not declined; (ii) the related thesis of maximally maintained inequality, which proposes that socio-economic inequalities decline only when participation levels for the most privileged socio-economic group approach saturation levels; (iii) the meritocracy debate on the importance of ability vis-à-vis socio-economic background and changes in its influence over time; and (iv) the effect of policy changes on socio-economic inequalities in education. These issues are addressed using data from six Australian youth cohorts born between 1961 and the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper published in "British Journal of Sociology," the author made the claim that despite decades of intensive investigation, not a single researcher had ever shown that class difference in education was indeed unfair and unjust. It was a charge that was underwritten by a simple, if technical, argument, which drew attention to what, in logic, would have to be shown if such a difference was to be regarded as an inequality, rather than as just another difference in a differentiated society. In this case, it was suggested that, other things being equal, the researcher would have to meet one of two conditions. He would have to show that the different classes were similarly disposed to education or, alternatively, if there were evidence, as in Great Britain, of considerable working-class indifference to education, he would need to demonstrate that such indifference was itself the result of structural or cultural inequality. Only then, it was argued, could the researcher be said to have reasonably shown that class difference in education was unfair; for only then could the researcher be reasonably sure that such a difference was not, after all, just another difference.

The persistence of social disparities in educational achievement in contemporary societies is a matter of concern to social theory. Sociology of education has distinguished between the primary and secondary effects of socialization in order to construct explanatory theories of inequality of educational opportunity. Empirical evidence from the recent OECD PISA research is analysed to suggest that causes of the primary effect are the most important. The case is made with close reference to Goldthorpe's attempt to provide a rational action model of social disparities in education. An approach informed by scientific realism is held to offer a more adequate explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]