EDIT: from the paper, it appears that mass education in England toward the end of the Victorian era only made a short-lived dent in social mobility, presumably because any temporary advantage in being more educated levelled out after a generation.
In the UK up to the 1960s-1980s, working class people could get a leg up through grammar schools and fully-funded higher education (tuition and modest living costs subsidized by the government) - if you could prove you were smart and hard-working enough, you had a chance to rise up. This ladder was successfully kicked away by comprehensive education and mass higher education (with introduction of student loans rather than free grants). The politicians who introduced these measures of course ensured their own children were privately educated.
So funny, it reminds me of my banana republic called France: our public teachers are on strike once a year to complain they don't have enough fund to support their mission of "social lift" and republican equality, but they are the first to shortcut and walkaround egalitarian measure to ensure a better success to their kids and the wealthy one they put in "special classes"...
Sometimes, I lose trust in what people pretend to do when I look at what they actually do.
Nowadays France (and some European countries) over invest in higher education that only increase segregation funded by the public taxes, while finland radical focus on early years and well being of kids have proven way more cheaper and efficient.
I so wish our elite PhD in ministers could read scientific papers, figures, and be fucking curious, but well, it would mean more competition for their own kids. Wouldn't it?
http://ereh.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/1/1.abstract
EDIT: from the paper, it appears that mass education in England toward the end of the Victorian era only made a short-lived dent in social mobility, presumably because any temporary advantage in being more educated levelled out after a generation.
In the UK up to the 1960s-1980s, working class people could get a leg up through grammar schools and fully-funded higher education (tuition and modest living costs subsidized by the government) - if you could prove you were smart and hard-working enough, you had a chance to rise up. This ladder was successfully kicked away by comprehensive education and mass higher education (with introduction of student loans rather than free grants). The politicians who introduced these measures of course ensured their own children were privately educated.