In 2018 the UK government launched a £50 million scheme to fund the expansion of existing grammar schools provided that they increase efforts to attract more pupils from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. This initiative assumed that grammar school attendance boosts the educational attainment and the higher education progression rates of…

Understanding social disparities in educational attainment requires understanding of students' decision-making throughout their educational career. We focused on students' pathways throughout upper secondary and higher education (HE), identified common types of pathways and studied the role of SES as a determinant of students' pathways.…

Many countries have introduced flexibility in their admissions equivalents for tertiary education, allowing students to apply with vocational rather than academic qualifications at upper secondary level. However, entrants with vocational qualifications are generally less likely to succeed at university. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are…

How do young graduates view the role of immediate families in influencing/supporting them as they start their working lives and how do those reflections affect how they think of themselves as graduates? Social, political and economic changes have led to many young people being dependent on family for longer, but how does this play out in their…

Over the last decades, various policies at national and local levels have been implemented to widen participation in higher education (HE) in Scotland and more widely in the UK. Despite this, the acquisition of a HE qualification is still largely determined by the family in which individuals are born. Our study provides new evidence on the extent…

Globally, access to higher education has increased, but inequalities by socio-economic background remain. This article explores the relationship between early schooling opportunities (and learning) and progression into higher education in four low and middle-income countries. We analyse data from the Young Lives longitudinal study, following…

There is an established literature that suggests teacher perceptions of pupils affect how they interact with them, how they teach them and how they rate their ability and behaviour. Evidence also indicates that a teacher's perception of a child is often based on ascriptive characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background…

The reasons why students from lower socio-economic groups are under-represented at high status universities are not yet entirely understood, but evidence suggests that part of the gap may be a consequence of differential choice of A-levels by social background. The Russell Group of universities has since 2011 published guidance on A-level subject…

Supporters and critics of free schools in England have had differing expectations about whether free schools would emerge in socially disadvantaged areas, and whether they would become socially selective. We investigate the outcomes, using information from the first three years since the introduction of the first new schools in 2011, drawn from…

This paper investigates how pupils' growth trajectories in three language domains (reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension) are related to their own socioeconomic and ethnic background and to the socioeconomic and ethnic composition of their primary school. Using multilevel piecewise growth curve analysis, the growth trajectories…

Despite substantial prior research on higher education choice, top universities in the UK continue to stand accused of favouring socio-economically advantaged students, to the detriment of those from poorer backgrounds. The objectives of this study are to test whether students with the same or equivalent entry scores are more or less likely to…

School science courses have widely varying participation rates across a range of student characteristics. One of the stated aims of the 2006 Key Stage 4 science curriculum reforms in England was to improve social mobility and inclusion. To encourage students to study more science, this reform was followed by the introduction in 2008 of an…

This paper explores reasons why secondary schools with a religious character have pupil intakes that are of a higher social background and ability than their secular counterparts. We show that this is especially true across all regions in England once the characteristics of the pupils living in the local neighbourhoods are taken into account. Data…

This study uses data drawn from three recent cohorts of undergraduates at the University of Sussex to investigate the key determinants of degree performance. The primary theme of the study is an examination of the gender dimension to degree performance. The average "good" degree rate for female students was found to be superior to the…

Using a UK representative sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, the present study examined the unique and cumulative contribution of children's characteristics and attitudes to school, home learning environment and family's socio-economic background to children's language and literacy at the end of Key Stage 1 (age seven-years-old).…