ABSTRACT
Debate on the urban classroom crisis circled around confused concepts of educational equality and opportunity. Teachers, politicians and administrators examined innumerable real or imaginary constraints allegedly leading to classroom failure or success. Explanations ranged from family size to lead pollution in cities. But for the thirty years after 1945 British educational sociologists were obsessed by the links between social mobility and the schools. 1 Why did so few sons of dockers climb the educational pyramid to Oxford or Cambridge? Academic achievement in the classroom, well paid professional or Civil Service employment and the elitest life-style were regarded as the highest good that education could obtain.
