48 pages
A5
ISBN-10: 1 85856 226 0
ISBN-13: 978 185856 226 1
March 2000


Staying on after minimum leaving age has long been a key indicator of the distribution of educatinal opportunities and life chances. It has been a major component of the expansion of school and post school education in Britain in the closing quarter of the 20th Century.

This pamphlet offers an overview of staying on and reports a major recent study. This contrasts the visible and hidden roles of the schools and identifies the strategies of guidance and curriculum control employed by schools to retain able and committed students at 16+ and to impede their transfer to further education. It also highlights school's strategies to discourage 'unwanted' students from staying on. Policy, race and gender issues are considered in the light of British government plans for the major expansion of school and further education.

John Eggleston is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Warwick and Visiting Research Professor at the University of Central England.
Warwick Papers on Education Policy No.9

The paper begins with an excellent short summary of the social context of staying on. This encapsulates the tensions precisely:
The general preference of all major political parties is to be able to initiate and steer social change instead of responding to it and this is almost certainly a major factor in the slowness of successive governmental initiatives to raise educational achievement. (p.3)
The modest size of the Paper belies its usefulness. All secondary teachers and FE staff should read this.- Education Today