Despite a wide international literature on the effect of vocational and general education on school-to-work transition, relatively little is known about the role of having studied specific subjects in explaining inequalities in young people's labour market outcomes. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining differences in employment chances of…

Newly available survey data allow the investigation of the educational and employment opportunities open to Roman Catholics in Scotland in the mid-20th century. Previous research has shown that Catholic disadvantage in education and the labour market in the early 20th century had weakened or vanished by the end of the century, and that the main…

Newly accessible data from the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 are used to investigate the legacy in the 1950s of reforms to Scottish secondary schooling in the first four decades of the 20th century. These reforms had sought to extend opportunity for post-primary education beyond the children of the professional middle class who had formed the…

This paper examines trends in social class inequalities in young people's educational attainment and HE [Higher Education] entry between the mid-1980s and the end of the 1990s in England and Scotland. Using time-series data derived from the Scottish School Leavers Surveys and the England (and Wales) Youth Cohort Study, changes in both absolute and…

This study examined the extent of variation in national certificate examinations results among all secondary pupils, schools, and Educational Authorities (EAs) in Scotland. Results showed significant differences among the 16 EAs even after controlling for the effects of pupils' family backgrounds. Socio-economic status also influenced the…