Educating for Mobility?

Studies of education policy have found links between types of education systems and income and class mobility. Many of these policies look at broad structural features of education system, academic streaming, public spending and so on. However, most citizens education experiences are highly localised, a feature that the introduction of marketizing reforms have accentuated. This paper looks at the consequences of marketizing reforms in education on the experiences of pupils by examining a single case: the UK. In 1989, policymakers introduced new school autonomy measures and parental choice in the UK, alongside centralising measures of curricular control. These policy shifts dramatically altered local education experiences. This paper matches pairs of parents and children in different local contexts in the 1990s to the current employment and earnings status of children (now in their late 20s and 30s) using the British Household Panel Study-UKHLS sample. Using an original dataset of school and local authority level features, this paper examines the long-run effects local school marketisation on economic and political outcomes among children.