Selection for Secondary Education and Achievement in Four Grammar Schools

Abstract

r NHE ENGLISH educational system has close histoncal connection with the social class structure. In the last fifty years it has played > . an increasingly important part as an agent of selection for social mobility. This has been due, not so much to conscious educational policy, though the idea of the educational ladder has done much to shape the present school system, but rather to far-reaching changes in the occupational structure. The development of large-scale industry has reduced the importance of accumulating small capital as a means of social ascent and at the same time created a new class of salaried managerial and technical occupations. Entry to the new salariat has increasingly involved the acquisition of formal educational qualiScations obtainable, for the most part, through selective secondary education of the Grammar School type.3 A good deal of interest has recently been taken in the general problem of the relation between education and social mobility, particularly since the Education Act of I944 introduced radical changes into the conditions of entry into the Grammar Schools. Some data relevant to two aspects of the problem are presented below. They are based on material collected from a sample of some 700 boys, aged I3-I4 years, in four Grammar and five Secondary Modern Schools in Greater London. It should be noted that the sample was not chosen speciScally for the purpose of the present discussion