This chapter provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on
the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps …

What is a university degree for? What can it offer to students? Is it only about getting a job?
How can we measure the quality of an undergraduate degree? Paul Ashwin shows how …

Universities are increasingly making decisions about undergraduate admissions with
reference to contextual indicators to identify whether an applicant comes from a …

This literature review study aims to provide an overview of influencing factors of access to
and equity in higher education. In this way, the research offers insight into specific factors …

The UK government has expressed a desire to increase social mobility, with policies to help
achieve this aim focused on reducing inequalities in educational attainment. This paper …

This paper considers the relationship between family background, academic achievement in
high school and access to high-status postsecondary institutions in three developed …

Higher education is back in the spotlight, with post-2015 sustainable development goals
emphasising equality of access. In this paper, we highlight the long distance still to travel to …

Over the last 40 years, UK higher education has moved from a publicly funded system to a
mixed publicly/privately funded system regulated as a tuition loans-based consumer market …

Part 2: Possible explanations four The clustering of access to schools 47 five Differential
attainment at school 65 six Differential school effects 81 seven School improvement 101 …

Bringing together the most recent empirical evidence and the latest theoretical debates, this
fully revised new edition gets to grips with a broad range of inequalities in people's lives …