The Trend of Class Differentials in Educational Opportunity in England and Wales

prominent in contemporary commentaries on the 'condition of England', and on the changing structures of highly industrialized societies. Empirical research has given little support to expectations that definite changes would be observable when rates of social mobility were compared over time. The theory that in the United States the 'closing of the frontier' and the consolidation of corporate capitalism must have reduced movement up and down the social scale has been questioned by recent research. And the contrasting notion, common in Western Europe, that economic, political and educational changes must have increased chances of social ascent and descent has also been