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The Office for Students is now holding UK universities to account for their failures to address racial inequalities, and the Teaching Excellence Framework is bringing the student experience to the fore in assessing higher education institutions. Racial inequalities persist in spite of decades of legislation aiming to promote equality and end discrimination. The paper considers two main areas of racial equalities work, namely, (1) anti‐racist and (2) decolonial initiatives. It suggests that the rise of managerialism and in particular, audit cultures, have allowed racism to flourish in spite, or because of, the need to account for equality, diversity and inclusion in global markets for higher education. Auditing requires a focus on identities, and cannot take into account the complex ways in which race, race thinking and racism are maintained in knowledge production. The lack of consensus around what decolonial education should be undermines attempts to produce educational social justice. From a feminist postcolonial perspective, the paper suggests that recentralizing racism and reengaging difference offer an important way to negotiate more just educational futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In various educational systems, students are sorted into separate secondary schools on the basis of their academic ability. Research suggests that this type of tracking impacts students' educational expectations, as expectations generally align with students' ability track. However, most research is cross‐sectional and students with lower expectations are possibly also sorted into lower tracks. Moreover, the extent to which track placement influences expectations may vary across students. In this paper, we address the following research question: how does ability tracking impact the development of student expectations and how does this vary by students' migration background. Based on the literature on the immigrant aspiration–achievement paradox, we expect that students with a migration background are less likely to adapt expectations downwardly, and more likely to adapt expectations upward in response to track placement. Using German panel data, we examine the educational expectations of students with and without a migration background, before and after track placement. Moreover, we use variations in tracking procedures across German states to study how students who get tracked compare with students who do not get tracked in the development of their educational expectations. We show that students are more likely to upwardly adjust their expectations when their track placement exceeds their expectations and to downwardly adjust their expectations when their track placement is below their expectations. We find little support for the hypothesized variations by student migration background. Students whose parent(s) hold (a) Bachelor degree(s) are more likely to upwardly adjust their expectations when their track placement exceeds their expectations than students whose parent(s) maximally hold an upper secondary or vocational degree(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between parents' and children's language skills for a nationally representative birth cohort born in the United Kingdom--the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). We investigate both socioeconomic and ethnic differentials in children's vocabulary scores and the role of differences in parents' vocabulary scores in accounting for these. We find large vocabulary gaps between highly educated and less educated parents, and between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, socioeconomic and ethnic gaps in vocabulary scores are far wider among the parents than among their children. Parental vocabulary is a powerful mediator of inequalities in offspring's vocabulary scores at age 14, and also a powerful driver of change in language skills between the ages of five and 14. Once we account for parental vocabulary, no ethnic minority group of young people has a negative "vocabulary gap" compared to whites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Much of the literature on the urban middle classes describes processes of both affiliation (often to the localities) and disaffiliation (often from some of the non‐middle‐class residents). In this paper, we consider this situation from a different position, drawing on research exploring whether and how children and adults living in diverse localities develop friendships with those different to themselves in terms of social class and ethnicity. This paper focuses on the interviews with the ethnically diverse, but predominantly white British, middle‐class parent participants, considering their attitudes towards social and cultural difference. We emphasize the importance of highlighting inequalities that arise from social class and its intersection with ethnicity in analyses of complex urban populations. The paper's contribution is, first, to examine processes of clustering amongst the white British middle‐class parents, particularly in relation to social class. Second, we contrast this process, and its moments of reflection and unease, with the more deliberate and purposeful efforts of one middle‐class, Bangladeshi‐origin mother who engages in active labour to facilitate relationships across social and ethnic difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio‐economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perception of Western governments' hostility to Islam is one of the indicating features of Islamic fundamentalism and, in some cases, is serving as a pull to join extremist groups. In this paper, using data from two waves of a cross‐national survey, we investigate what affects European Muslims' opinions about Western governments. We find that residential segregation is associated with perceived hostility of Western governments to Islam. Further, we find that Muslims living in segregated neighbourhoods and enclaves have a higher probability of believing that Western governments are hostile to Islam. National origins of Muslim immigrants have a significant impact, with people from African countries measuring less perceived hostility than others. We also find that education is associated with perceived hostility of Western governments to Islam in a non‐linear way. People with the highest and lowest levels of education tend to be less likely to believe that Western governments are hostile to Islam, relative to people with mid‐level education. This non‐linear effect is best explained by education's differential effects on perceptions of key world events. During the time between 2011 – before ISIS's announcement of its Caliphate in Iraq and Syria – and 2013, subsequent to that announcement, we see a sharp decrease in perception of Western governments' hostility to Islam, particularly among more educated European Muslims. We make the case that this decrease can be attributed, in some ways, to the emergence of ISIS. We discuss our findings in terms of theoretical and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comprehensive account of the way in which cognitive and educational attainment mediate the link between social origins and elite social class destinations in mid‐life. Using the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70), we assess the roles of a range of pathways through which educational advantage may lead to occupational attainment: cognitive development; private and selective secondary schools; school level qualifications; and higher education, including institution and field of study. Whereas past research has shown a residual direct effect of social origins on class destinations, we find that, once a sufficiently detailed picture of educational attainment is taken into account, education fully explains the link between social origins and top social class destinations. In contrast, the gap between men and women in achieving top social class positions is in no part accounted for by education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest in the emergence of a 'global middle class' in which high achieving young graduates increasingly look to develop careers that transcend national boundaries. This paper explores this issue through comparing and contrasting the aspirations and orientations of two 'elite' cohorts of graduates. Interviews with students at the University of Oxford, England, and Sciences- Po, France, reveal very different ambitions and allegiances. Our Oxford respondents portray their futures as projects of self-fulfilment as they build portfolio careers by moving from job to job and from country to country with limited social allegiances - epitomizing the nomadic worker of the transnational elite. Our Parisian respondents, on the other hand, display strong allegiances to the nation, state and civic duty. Their projects of the self involve reconciling their personal aspirations with strong allegiances to France. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of these differences. It argues that the enduring role of education in the formation of national identities should not be overlooked and that more detailed research is needed on the contextual specifity of transnationalism and the (re)production of elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the relationship between social engagement, particularly civic engagement, and education. It is well known that more highly educated people are more likely to engage in voluntary work in formalized settings. It has been difficult to disentangle the effect of higher education from that of family origin and occupational socialization. This paper examines the effects of tertiary education on the social and civic engagement of young people, using the British Household Panel Study. The social and civic activity of young people is observed in their late teens, before entering the labour market or tertiary education, and compared with that of the same young people in their early 20s, after completing tertiary education courses or gaining labour market experience. It was found that the social and civic engagement of young people who would enter higher education was higher in their late teens than that of their peers who did not enter. However, higher education had a small additional effect on civic engagement, for both young and mature students. The children of professionals were the social grouping most likely to be involved in civic activities. The relationship of higher education, professional occupations and family socialization is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reply by Richard Breen and John H. Goldthorpe to Peter Saunders' criticisms about their work on meritocracy in Great Britain. Saunders has argued, on the basis of analyses of the National Child Development Study data-set, that present-day Britain is to a large extent a meritocratic society: where individuals end up within the class structure is largely determined by their ability and effort. Saunders' difficulties stem in large part from his original concern to expose British sociologists' commitment to what he has labelled the social advantages and disadvantages (SAD) thesis. In both our previous papers our aim has been simply to test the meritocracy thesis--not to support the SAD thesis, nor to run a competition between the two theses. In our first paper our strategy was to begin by establishing the level and pattern of the class origins-class destinations association and then to see what happens to this association when the individual merit variables of ability, effort and educational attainment, as best these can be constructed, are brought into the analysis. Saunders now contends that this approach is flawed and in fact biased against the meritocracy thesis because of problems of measurement error and of omitted variables. But in neither respect do his arguments stand up to examination. It is apparent that Saunders' misunderstandings arise from the fact that he seeks to impose upon us the strategy of the variable race that he himself favors. Thus, he contends that in our approach any residual variation in class outcomes is automatically attributed to class origins or, in other words, the default is set to favor the SAD thesis. Finally in this connection we would note that in our second paper addressing the meritocracy thesis, we develop our original approach to try to mitigate both problems of measurement error and those of deciding just how closely a particular society at a particular point in time approximates the meritocratic ideal.

Reforms which increase the stock of education in a society have long been held by policy-makers as key to improving rates of intergenerational social mobility. Yet, despite the intuitive plausibility of this idea, the empirical evidence in support of an effect of educational expansion on social fluidity is both indirect and weak. In this paper we use the raising of the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16 years in England and Wales in 1972 to estimate the effect of educational participation and qualification attainment on rates of intergenerational social class mobility. Because, in expectation, children born immediately before and after the policy was implemented are statistically exchangeable, the difference in the amount of education they received may be treated as exogenously determined. The exogenous nature of the additional education gain means that differences in rates of social mobility between cohorts affected by the reform can be treated as having been caused by the additional education. The data for the analysis come from the ONS Longitudinal Study, which links individual records from successive decennial censuses between 1971 and 2001. Our findings show that, although the reform resulted in an increase in educational attainment in the population as a whole and a weakening of the association between attainment and class origin, there was no reliably discernible increase in the rate of intergenerational social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of this paper ethuomethodology is compared with realist and social constructionist sociology, with specific reference to notions of `reality'. In contrast with sociological concerns about the correct theorization of reality, for ethnomethodology `reality' is approached as a members' phenomenon. Ethnomethodology seeks to investigate how concerns with the `real' inform members' locally ordered practical action and reasoning. In the second part of the paper, we offer an ethnomethodological analysis of reality-as-a-members'-phenomenon in the context of a classroom storytelling. Our focus is on aspects of the teacher's and pupils' `reality analysis' which is touched off by events within the story. The discussion is divided into two sections: the first examines the participants' analysis of the `believability' of specific events in the story; the second considers their analysis of the status of these events with reference to the distinction between dreaming and being awake. In conclusion, we elaborate the differences between ethnomethodology's respecification of reality analysis as a topic of investigation and conventional sociology's theorizations of reality. In so doing, we emphasize the mundane and locally ordered character of members' - including sociologists' - reality analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Basil Bernstein's response to an article by Michael Huspek which advanced a theory of the relationship between social class and communication codes. Bernstein acknowledges that a developing theory creates a burden for those who engage with it. Such a theory requires its readers a recency of reading. In the case of Huspek he seems to have parted company with the theory well before 1975. The major arguments derived from papers published well before 1970. The section headed A Reconsideration of Bernstein's Descriptions of Working-class Speech draws entirely from a paper published in 1962, and the description of codes reduced syntactic complexity goes back to a paper published in 1958. According to Bernstein, it is therefore difficult, if not possible, to comment on Huspek's paper without summarizing or at least referring to developments of the last 20 years. Developments which not only have escaped Huspek, but perhaps equally seriously have escaped the anonymous reviewers whom Huspek acknowledges. Bernstein's comments is grouped under two headings: Social Class and Education, and Class and Oppositional Codes. Huspek points out that Bernstein has operated with a two level model of empirical research.

This paper uses unique population-level matched employer-employee data on monthly wages to analyse class-origin wage gaps in the Swedish labour market. Education is the primary mediator of class origin advantages in the labour market, but mobility research often only considers the vertical dimension of education. When one uses an unusually detailed measure of education in a horizontal dimension, the wage gap between individuals of advantaged and disadvantaged class origin is found to be substantial (4-5 per cent), yet considerably smaller than when measures are used which only control for level of education and field of study. This is also the case for models with class or occupation as outcome. The class-origin wage gap varies considerably across labour market segments, such as those defined by educational levels, fields of education, industries and occupations in both seemingly unsystematic and conspicuous ways. The gap is small in the public sector, suggesting that bureaucracy may act as a leveller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is set in the context of macrosocial/macroeconomic theories of the organization of both paid and unpaid work. The specific topic investigated is engagement in unpaid voluntary work, an activity which is thought to be important for social cohesion, civil society and citizenship. Research on the sources of social cohesion has focused on organizational membership and voluntary organization activity. There has been little investigation of informal helping of non-resident kin, friends or acquaintances, an activity which is not measured in most social surveys but is measured in time use surveys. Previous research shows that the highly educated are more likely to engage in formal voluntary organizations and data from the UK 2000 HETUS survey confirm that the highly educated spend more time on formally organised voluntary work. However, the less qualified, particularly women, spend more time on extra-household unpaid helping activities. Since both types of voluntary work are partly dependent on available time, these findings are modelled adjusting for time allocated to paid work, study, family and personal care. The findings remain statistically significant. Drawing on work carried out by the Office for National Statistics, a monetary value is placed on both formally organized and informal voluntary work. Although the median wage rates for formal voluntary work are greater than those for informal helping, the latter is greater in frequency and duration and therefore more economically valuable from a population perspective. This finding is discussed in the light of recent debates on citizenship and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses several debates surrounding the reproduction of socio-economic inequality: (i) the persistent inequality thesis, which maintains that despite the increases in educational participation socio-economic inequalities in education have not declined; (ii) the related thesis of maximally maintained inequality, which proposes that socio-economic inequalities decline only when participation levels for the most privileged socio-economic group approach saturation levels; (iii) the meritocracy debate on the importance of ability vis-à-vis socio-economic background and changes in its influence over time; and (iv) the effect of policy changes on socio-economic inequalities in education. These issues are addressed using data from six Australian youth cohorts born between 1961 and the mid-1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the pattern of educational homogamy in Ireland and Britain. Using contemporary data on recent marriages from the early 1970s through to the mid-1990s, we show that these two countries share a broadly similar pattern of educational homogamy, which is quasi-symmetric in character, with no tendency for women to marry up over and above that which can be attributed to the gender difference in educational attainment. In the 1970s, the strength of homogamy was much weaker in Ireland than in Britain. But we discern a clear inter-country difference in how the net strength of homogamy has changed over time. While it has declined in Britain since the 1970s, in Ireland the strength of homogamy has first increased and then levelled off. Our findings are inconsistent with the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic development and homogamy reported by Smits, Ultee and Lammers (1998) - an argument premised on secular change in the criteria of spouse selection. Instead, our results are better understood in terms of Mare's (1991) life course argument that homogamy is inversely related to the time-gap between school departure and first marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parental role models are often put forward as an explanation for the choice of gender-atypical educational routes. This paper aims to test such explanations by examining the impact of family background variables like parental education and occupation, on choice of educational programme at upper secondary school. Using a sample of around 73,000 Swedish teenagers born between 1972 and 1976, girls' and boys' gender-atypical as well as gender-typical educational choices are analysed by means of logistic regression. Parents working or educated within a specific field increase the probability that a child will make a similar choice of educational programme at upper secondary school. This same-sector effect appeared to be somewhat stronger for fathers and sons, while no such same-sex influence was confirmed for girls. No evidence was found that, in addition to a same-sector effect, it matters whether parents' occupations represent gender- traditional or non-traditional models. Parents of the service classes or highly educated parents - expected to be the most gender egalitarian in attitudes and behaviours - have a positive influence upon children's choice of gender-atypical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper published in "British Journal of Sociology," the author made the claim that despite decades of intensive investigation, not a single researcher had ever shown that class difference in education was indeed unfair and unjust. It was a charge that was underwritten by a simple, if technical, argument, which drew attention to what, in logic, would have to be shown if such a difference was to be regarded as an inequality, rather than as just another difference in a differentiated society. In this case, it was suggested that, other things being equal, the researcher would have to meet one of two conditions. He would have to show that the different classes were similarly disposed to education or, alternatively, if there were evidence, as in Great Britain, of considerable working-class indifference to education, he would need to demonstrate that such indifference was itself the result of structural or cultural inequality. Only then, it was argued, could the researcher be said to have reasonably shown that class difference in education was unfair; for only then could the researcher be reasonably sure that such a difference was not, after all, just another difference.

This paper examines changes in the relationship between class origins and the position young people occupy one year after finishing post-primary education in the Republic of Ireland over the period 1984-1993. We find that class differentials in the position occupied after leaving school do not change over time, although, among young women, the relationship between educational attainment and the position occupied does change slightly. We show that the reason why this latter change can co-occur with an absence of change in class differences is because class origin effects on the position a school leaver occupies one year after leaving school are substantially independent of educational attainment effects. In other words, class differences in how young people fare after leaving school are only weakly mediated by education. Other channels of class influence must therefore be operating, and their cumulative impact is much greater than that of class based educational inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1980s Conservative governments instituted programs that were intended to use religion to achieve Conservative goals. An example is the reform of religious education in the English state schools undertaken by the Thatcher government. This paper reports on the expectations regarding religious education by several influential groups: Thatcherites, religious education specialists, and religious leaders. The conclusion is that the reform of religious education is not likely to advance Conservative policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changes in the dimensions and sources of educational inequality in Australia. Data from a sample of the urban population is used, and divided into three education (rather than birth or age) cohorts in order to assess the effects of educational expansion over time. The results show that there has been some decline in the effect of social background on years of basic schooling and total years of education, and some increase in the effects of ability. However, the impact of social background remains important, while gender differences in qualifications and tertiary attainments are mostly undiminished. This suggests that while basic schooling has become more meritocratic with the expansion of educational opportunities, higher attainments still reflect and perpetuate systematic inequalities within the broader society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]