The Social Background of Pupils and Inequality in Educational Opportunity. The Fundamentals of Educational Planning: Lecture-Discussion Series No. 62.

This paper attempts primarily to establish the guidelines of a reference framework for studying educational inequality as it relates to ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic divisions within society. In his analysis, the author focuses mainly on inequality between different socio-occupational categories. The discussion is organized in two major sections. Section 1 is a study of the mechanism of inequality, based mainly on French statistical data, and section 2 is an analysis of explanatory factors that create and maintain educational inequalities. Because the analysis model is based mainly on research in western countries, it is pointed out that the model may be of limited value in studying educational inequality in other societies with different social systems. (JG)