The Effect of Social Status on Educational Attainment in Amsterdam: School Differences and Stability

This paper is directed to the empirical assessment of differences between schools in the effects of a pupil's social status on educational attainment in three successive cohorts. The underlying idea is the concept of ‘social selectivity in education’. The data are from the VOCAL-database and comprise all students who entered in general secondary education in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in the years 1973,1974 and 1975. Their school careers were followed during at most eight years. It appeared that the effects of social status are very small, especially when other characteristics of the students are taken into account. Furthermore, differences in the effects of social status between schools were not found. The effects of social status were not affected by the instability of the attainment process. Social selectivity in education appeared to be absent, probably due to the favourable environmental system.