Book review: education, social background and cognitiveability: the decline of the social by Gary N. Marks

In this book, Gary N. Marks argues that the influence of socioeconomic background for education is moderate and most often declining, and that it has only very weak impacts on adults’ occupation and earnings after taking into account education and cognitive ability. This book affords an alternative and at times quite radical opinion to the seemingly endless debate of how to raise educational attainment and enhance wider life chances, writes Claire Forbes.