ABSTRACT
Britain’s 1944 Education Act was aimed at ensuring that workingclass girls and boys had as equal an opportunity of obtaining secondary education as their middle-class counterparts. Nonetheless, research soon revealed that despite obtaining equality of access working-class boys continued to perform less well than their middleclass peers. This concern prompted a new policy in the mid-1960s with the dissolution of the tripartite system of secondary education and the establishment of comprehensive secondary schools. The imperative for this action was clear: to repair the meritocratic credibility of schools by ensuring that all pupils, irrespective of background, be given an equal opportunity to develop their intellectual potential to the full through unimpaired access to educational institutions and the credentials they offer. In Britain, as in other Western capitalist societies, equality of opportunity is the organizing principle of state education.
