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APPENDIX IV
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUPING
The attempt that has been made in this report to relate academic achievement in grammar schools to the home background has been based upon the father's occupation. It is the only factual evidence in the possession of the schools on which such an estimate could be based. In order to make possible broad distinctions we have grouped occupations into five categories under the headings (i) Professional and managerial, (ii) Clerical, (iii) Skilled, (iv) Semi-skilled and (v) Unskilled. This occupational grouping is fundamentally based upon the Registrar-General's classification into social classes, but since it differs in some material respects a word of explanation is required.
The Registrar-General's classification into five social classes is, very generally speaking, as follows. The first two classes contain professional and managerial groups of occupation. Class I consists of members of the major professions (e.g., Law, medicine, architecture, the Church), holders of higher administrative posts and directors of big business; this group amounts to three per cent of occupied men and women. The second class consists mainly of business managers, teachers, clerks engaged in costing, estimating, and accounting, medical auxiliaries and shopkeepers; this group amounts to 15 per cent of occupied persons. The third social class contains a large group of occupations (amounting to 53 per cent of the total occupied persons), which covers the remainder of the clerks, the shop assistants, those in personal service, foremen and skilled artisans. Social class IV contains the semi-skilled workers (16 per cent) and social class V the unskilled workers (12 per cent).
The 1951 one per cent sample tables (Part I, H.M.S.O. 1952) make use of a more detailed classification into 13 socio-economic groups. In brief, this classification distinguishes between agricultural (1 and 2), non-manual (3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8) and manual occupations (9, 10, 11 and 12), and the armed forces (excluding officers) (13). In this classification farmers are group 1, agricultural workers group 2; social class I above becomes socio-economic group 3; social class II becomes socio-economic groups 4 and 5 (shopkeepers); social class III becomes socio-economic group 6 (clerical workers), 7 (shop assistants), 8 (personal service), 9 (foremen), and 10 (skilled workers); social class IV is socio-economic group 11 (semi-skilled) and social class V becomes socio-economic group 12 (unskilled).
The Census classification is assembled from a most careful recording in considerable detail of the actual work on which men and women were engaged. Both the initial recording and the subsequent classification called for skill and a highly elaborate instruction book. We lacked the resources to undertake a similar classification and, in any event, the data from which classification could be made were confined, for all pupils who had left school, over three-quarters of the sample, to a very short entry in the admission register made seven years before. The single word 'clerk', for instance, is a common form of entry, but it would not enable us to decide whether a particular clerk belonged to the Registrar-General's social class 2 or 3. We were driven by the conditions of our enquiry to adopt a simpler, rougher method. It is, perhaps, no disadvantage that our nomenclature, by making a direct comparison with the Census results impossible, will not appear to lay claim to the same degree of precision which attaches to the Registrar-General's calculations, but we are satisfied that the broad picture given by the social classification of our grammar school sample is substantially accurate.
Our reason for adopting the particular classification which we have adopted, is our desire to separate those whose parents had either received a grammar school education themselves or followed occupations in which that tradition is strong. For that reason we decided to separate clerical workers from skilled manual workers. Our clerical classification, then, is drawn from the Census social classes II and III; it contains the whole of the census socio-economic group 6, and some of group 4. Most of its members will have had some form of grammar school education, few will have
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had any form of higher education. Our professional and managerial classification is made up of social class I and the bulk of II; or of socio-economic groups 3 and most of groups 1, 4 and 5. It contains virtually all those who have had any form of higher education, though it also contains a good many who have not. Our skilled workers classification is, roughly, social class III without the clerical workers, or socio-economic groups 7, 8, 9 and 10. Our semi-skilled classification is roughly social class IV or socio-economic group II and most of 2; our unskilled classification is the counterpart of social class V and of socio-economic group 12.
For a detailed study of the occupations contained in the various social classes and socio-economic groups the reader is referred to the Registrar-General's publications, particularly Part I of the 1951 Census one per cent sample. The guidance given to schools in completing our questionnaire is given below.
'If you do not know enough about the father's occupation to assign it to boxes 1 to 5 tick off box 6. It would help us if you would write in the occupation on the left hand side of the form. The following examples which are not, of course, exhaustive may help as a guide to filling in this section.
1. Professional or Managerial Occupations
Lawyers, clergymen, doctors, pharmacists, engineers, surveyors, architects, civil servants (executive and administrative grades), actuaries, accountants, teachers, managers of industrial or commercial concerns, officers of local authorities, army, navy and air force officers, inspectors and other senior police officers.
2. Skilled Occupations
Market gardeners, fitters, electricians, instrument makers, foremen, overlookers, viewers, weavers, curriers, saddlers, boot and shoe makers, tailors, upholsterers, carpenters, joiners, engine-drivers, compositors, bookbinders, postmen, shop assistants, police constables, hewers, getters, and machinemen (in mining), bus drivers.
3. Clerical Occupations
Clerks (including Civil Service and Local Government clerical grades), Shorthand-typists, typists, secretaries, (not company secretaries), other office machine operators.
4. Partly Skilled Occupations
Agricultural workers, miners (other than those in 2), kilnmen, foundry labourers, metal enamellers, solderers and brazers, garment machinists and pressers, maltsters, platelayers, ticket-collectors, bus conductors, bargemen, barmen, laundry workers, packers, oilers and greasers.
5. Unskilled Occupations
Unskilled labourers generally, navvies, porters, dock labourers, lift attendants, costermongers, hawkers, newspaper sellers, watchmen, rag, bone, bottlesorters, kitchen hands.
(N.B. If the pupil's father has retired, but his former occupation is known he should be treated as still following it.)'
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APPENDIX V
NOTE ON PARAGRAPHS 37-39
As the basis of these paragraphs the relations between the variables X, T, and Y were explored, where, for each local education authority,
X stands for the percentage of the male population in the Census classes I and II.
T stands for the L.E.A. provision in maintained and direct grant grammar schools and streams, as a percentage of the total provision for pupils aged 13.
Y stands for the number of pupils still at school at the age of 17 as a percentage of the number of pupils aged 14 in all schools.
For the 40 county boroughs mentioned in the text, where the situation was least complicated by the presence of pupils with homes in other areas, the best linear relation for Y turned out to be Y = .23 T + .09 (X - 10), which gave a remarkably good fit, with a multiple correlation of .77. The simpler relation Y = .28 T - .36 gave a fit only slightly inferior, with a correlation of .74. The best relation for T in terms of X was T = .48 X + 11.0 with a correlation of .50, and for Y in terms of X a correlation of .57 was given. Y = .20 X + 1.53. A considerable amount of work would have been needed to correct the figures for the other areas by allowing for the presence of children from beyond their boundaries. An analysis of the uncorrected figures gave no reason to suppose that the underlying pattern was markedly different.