ABSTRACT
A recent study of Englishmen born between 1907 and 1952 has shown that, despite the educational reforms that followed the Second World War, the educational inequality in post-war England and Wales that was associated with social-class background was as great as it had been before the war. Moreover, actual class differences in educational attainment were substantially larger than class differences in intelligence as measured at the age of 11 (Halsey, Heath and Ridge 1980). Yet the expansionist perspective had implied that educational reform, and a consequent trend in society towards greater wealth and openness, would increase educational equality. Are these findings a consequence of an irredeemably class-based society and education system in England, as (we suspect) many Scots and not a few English might suppose? What have been the consequences of expansion and reform for educational equality in Scotland with its different history and forms of provision? The Scottish Mobility Study (1976) has in fact reached similar conclusions to those of the English study as far as historical trends are concerned. However, education and society have continued to change during the post-war period. By virtue of their timing, neither of these studies could reveal any effects of more recent changes.
