"This monograph focuses on attainment at the end of secondary/high school education and the interface with tertiary education. Nigel Kettley combines a thorough reappraisal of secondary literature, including official statistics, institutional histories and interview data, with an analysis of qualitative and quantitative primary research. The results show the significance and weakness of both the mid-twentieth-century classic analyses of social class and the late-twentieth-century feminist approaches. Ultimately these findings demonstrate how a joint consideration of social issues, in particular of gender and social stratification, produce a powerful model for explaining attainment. This has important implications for educational policy in two key areas, namely boys' underachievement and participation in Higher Education."--BOOK JACKET.