One hope for public education was that it would give rise to a new meritocracy - and enable social mobility through learning.

Epidemiologists Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett synthesized global education data from the OECD, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the World Bank. They found that for children aged 15 years and younger, mathematics achievement scores are inversely correlated to economic inequality: as inequality increases, test scores decline. Scholars have studied this phenomenon since at least the 1960s. Not surprisingly, economic inequality within a population is a significant indicator of student performance. The performance gap related to inequality widens in adolescence, and Canadian performance deterioration has occurred in the context of increasing socioeconomic inequality. The same is true in all economies, as the World Bank report of 2018 documents. Rather than reduce inequality, educational systems (especially those with significant private components), act as accelerants. As David Berliner (2009)^[18] notes a decade ago, teachers cannot counter the effects of poverty, hunger, chronic health challenges and growing economic inequality. When looking at PISA data, for example, we can see the direct impact of poverty on learning - poor students scored 100 points less than the students of wealthy parents in the 2012 PISA sample from the US (a score of 425 versus 528)^[19].

An important UK study makes this point powerfully. Using a range of data collected between 1958 to the late 1990's, Machin and Vignoles (2004)^[20] look at the nature of inequality in the UK and the impact of education on it. This is their own summary of their own findings:

• The link between parental income and educational achievement strengthened during this period.
• The link between parental social class and educational achievement also strengthened over this time.
• A person's early ability (as measured by test scores) became a poorer predictor of how well they do at the end of their education.
• The rapid expansion of the higher education system disproportionately benefited children from richer families.
• The labour market success or failure of individuals became more closely connected to their parent's income than was the case in the past, revealing a fall in intergenerational mobility.
• Cognitive ability, as opposed to education, became marginally more important in the labour market. However, parental income and social class became increasingly important determinants of this ability, thereby strengthening the role of family backgrounds in determining both educational and labour market outcomes.

Even Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in higher education are more often taken by those with strong prior educational performance rather than the unemployed, poor or job-change seekers. Free, open and accessible is still not making inroads into inequality.

Suggested Reading:

1. Berliner, D. (2009) Are Teachers Responsible for the Low Achievement by Poor Students? Kapp Delta Pi, Fall. Available at https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cf2d/ee9e263b143ad4edf22800453d1293ec6e38.pdf
2. UNESCO World Inequality Database on Education - at https://www.education-inequalities.org