ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a description and analysis of the educational experience of the adult population of England and Wales as sampled for the purposes of the inquiry in July 1949. This is not entirely unknown territory. But the results of the sample survey make it possible to be precise where before, even with the aid of the statistical material in the annual and other reports of the Board of Education, only the roughest of estimates could be put forward. Moreover, since the individuals in the sample have been classified according to the occupational status of their fathers, far more light can be thrown than has hitherto been possible on the distribution of educational opportunity as between social strata defined with reference to this criterion of status.
