Social Mobility and Education

[Amber]

An OECD publication looking at educational mobility and equality of opportunity. For anyone interested in the idea that selective education improves educational mobility, a key point is that Germany and Austria have fully selective education systems.

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[hermanmunster]

interesting - I gather german education has lots of problems these days - across the board.

I wonder how that chart would have looked 30-50 years ago ? I get the feeling that there was a huge burst of mobility with the knock on effect of free senior and higher education? Maybe it wasn't across the board but lots of friends my age had parents who didn't go to uni / didn't stay at school long / studied higher ed at later age because families couldn't afford it but the kid ultimately stayed to 18 and went off to uni.

[Minesatea]

Interestingly the fully selective dutch education system seems to be working well. Unfortunately my dutch is not good enough for me to move there!

[2childmum]

I was talking to a Dutch lady only a couple of days ago about this. She felt it worked well because, even if at 12 you went the less academic route, there is still the opportunity to take more academic qualifications and get to uni later -it just takes a bit longer. She also commented that Holland came top in a survey about how happy teenagers felt, and she thought the education system there contributed to this.

[Stroller]

As may the space cookies!

[mad?]

As may the space cookies!

[Minesatea]

We have friends in the Netherlands, they are very happy with the education system there (they had previously lived in the UK) . No personal experience of the space cookies!

[mystery]

interesting - I gather german education has lots of problems these days - across the board.

I wonder how that chart would have looked 30-50 years ago ? I get the feeling that there was a huge burst of mobility with the knock on effect of free senior and higher education? Maybe it wasn't across the board but lots of friends my age had parents who didn't go to uni / didn't stay at school long / studied higher ed at later age because families couldn't afford it but the kid ultimately stayed to 18 and went off to uni.

My Mum went to university in the 1950s after a free grammar education. The percentage of people who went to university then was very low. Her parents had left school at 14 I think and could no way have afforded to put a child through university these days. But I don't know how typical my mother's experience was - her parents were not "average" in many ways. Also, even if it was a typical experience, it can't be attributed to the existence of selection. It was because my mother was well taught up to A level (and this could happen now in a non-selective school) and the university experience was completely free of charge (fees plus maintenance grant) with nothing to pay back afterwards.

But back to "educational mobility" - this article seems to be measuring it according to the percentage of people who are better educated than their parents. It becomes problematic as more and more people become well educated - it's very hard for every generation to be successively better educated than its predecessor.

[hermanmunster]

But back to "educational mobility" - this article seems to be measuring it according to the percentage of people who are better educated than their parents. It becomes problematic as more and more people become well educated - it's very hard for every generation to be successively better educated than its predecessor.

I think this is the point - it was quite easy for a large number of people to be better educated than their parents - my parents left school at 14 &16. I got postgrad degrees. My kids can't do much better than that though no doubt one of them will publish far more than me