SocMobility: Education and Social Mobility in Scotland in the 20th Century
Overview
A Research Project
funded by the Economic and Social Research Council |
This research project investigates patterns
of social mobility in Scotland with particular attention to the role
played by education in the process of social mobility between generations.
Underlying current policy debates about social inclusion are the questions
of the extent to which the social structure is fluid – for example,
whether it is possible for people to move as adults to a different
social class from that in which they grew up - and of whether education
offers opportunities to make such transitions. Over the last century Scotland has experienced very important and radical changes in its school system, most notably in the setting up of a full secondary system by 1936, and the unification of that system with the ending of all formal selection between public sector schools by the late 1970s. It has also experienced even greater changes in the structure of its labour market, most notably the linked processes of a declining manufacturing sector, a growing service sector, and a growing rate of participation by women. The project adopts an historical and comparative perspective to investigate how educational and occupational changes may have affected patterns of social mobility in Scotland: the history is mainly through the comparison of different birth cohorts, and the comparative dimension is with the results of the project National Patterns of Social Mobility, 1970-1995, directed by Professor Richard Breen in Nuffield College (Oxford). The new project benefits from the availability of new data on social background, collected in the large (15,000 case) 2001 Scottish Household Survey, questions which were partly financed by Moray House and by an earlier grant from the British Academy. Other surveys that are used include the Scottish enhanced sample of the British Household Panel Study (1999), and the Scottish Mobility Survey of 1974. The research analyses trends in the rate and patterns of social mobility, gender and religious differences in these patterns, and the effects of institutional (especially educational) changes on the processes of social mobility during the 20th century. The methodological tools of the research include the use of mobility tables, odds ratios, log-linear modelling and regression modelling. |
Researchers
Cristina Iannelli, Lindsay
Paterson |
Publications
Published
and working papers from this project are posted on this site. |