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The paper examines the school background of leaders in eight occupational groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Royal Navy, army, Royal Air Force, Church of England, and clearing banks. These elite groups were studied at four time intervals: 1939, 1950, 1960, and 1971. With the exception of the civil service, no significant change was discernible in the proportion of men who had attended public school. The paper also examines the university background of leaden in five of the groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Church of England, and clearing banks. Except for the Church of England, no significant change was recorded in the proportion of men who had attended Oxbridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is usually presumed that the function of education is that of selection and that this is the most important conception of education of which sociologists should be aware. This paper presents historical and comparative material from two contrasting societies-Graeco-Roman Antiquity and West Africa in the late Middle Ages-which shows that the selective function was relatively unimportant. The paper concludes by suggesting that educational conceptions take a variety of forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with curriculum decision making in the school and the attempts to apply a sociological analysis to this important area. Its focus is on the 'micro' rather than on the 'macro' decision making process, i.e. within the school rather than within the educational system, though the significance of macro decisions is recognized throughout the paper. Commencing with a discussion of the role that may be played by the study of decision making in curriculum content and method, the paper goes on to suggest some of the orientations that influence such decisions. Six such areas are identified. In the light of these areas four ideological variables are hypothesized. These are finally brought together as components of a model of the autonomy and interrelationship of educational personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an historical and statistical analysis of the pre-professional education of officers of various sectors and levels of the British Army between 1800 and 1971. 'Four eras' in the evolution of educational selectivity in the army commissioning system are identified: 1800-1849---educational criteria irrelevant; 1849-I 870-partial educational selectivity; 1870-1939-examination-dominated selection; 1941 onwards- `scientific' selection. In the light of this historical pattern, it was anticipated that the officer corps would show a heavy dependence on the elite sector of education, although also, over time, a reduction in this dependence. Examination of figures for membership of Woolwich (1855-1939), of Sandhurst (1890-1967), of the army elite (1870-1971), and of the officer corps as a whole (1969) verified these predictions. Officership proves to have been a virtual monopoly of the public schools-amongst whom the major boarding schools were predominant at least up to the Second World War, and even since then public school boys have predominated at every level of the army until quite recently. However, it is also clear that an irreversible decline in the role of the public schools has now set in, and that state sector schools are now taking over the major role in the supply of new officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on educational choice has revealed good correlations between it and social class. Such research has two weaknesses; it fails to specify a mechanism connecting structural attributes and individual behaviour, and it cannot account for deviants. One attempt to remedy these deficiencies is supplied by explanations cast in terms of class values. This paper criticises such explanations, and suggests that the real determinant is to be found in economic differences which are only properly visible over the whole working career. Such economic differences partly cross-cut traditional occupational divisions. Economic experience is projected to construct models of the world which are used in making decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the influence of the policy of local education authorities upon educational attainment. We suggest that the influence of local policy has been neglected in the sociology of education and hypothesize that policy variables are likely to be of major importance as determinants of attainment. Evidence drawn from correlations of policy, provision and social-class variables with each other and with various measures of attainment tends to validate this suggestion, and indicates that two `policy- models' of local authority activity may be appropriate: viz, the elite-orientated authority model, in which resources are differentially concentrated on a sponsored elite with consequent high attainment of this elite; and the egalitarian authority model where resources are more evenly spread throughout the school system with consequent `inferior' attainment of an elitist kind, but where the evidence suggests there is higher overall attainment of the total school system product. It would also appear that the determinant of the policy set pursued by an LEA. is the social class background of the area it covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sociological Research Unit of the Department of Sociology of Education has been engaged for the past five years upon a study of variations between and within social class in familial patterns of communication and control. This paper examines social class differences in maternal reports of various contextual usages of language. The findings, obtained from a sample of 100 mothers, indicate social class differences in adult-adult and mother-child communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by examining the typology of educational systems outlined by Earl Hopper m Sociology (vol. 2, no. I, 1968) and argues against the attempt to reduce the comparative study of education to varieties of occupational selection. On the other hand, accepting that a central part of the sociology of education must be with ideology and the generation and transmission of learning, it outlines a framework for examining this in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]