Social Differences among Day‐release Students in Relation to Their Recruitment and Examination Success

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Abstract
It is argued in this paper that failure and wastage in part‐time day classes is not primarily a matter of lack of ability, but can only be understood in relation to their heterogenous nature and the differential motivation which brings together this diverse group of young people. Youths whose fathers are in unskilled or semi‐skilled jobs fared at least as well, and often better than, those from professional families. This should not be interpreted as meaning that the family ceases to exert influence once a young man goes to work. Rather, it is one of several indications that those male employees under 18 who attend first year classes on one day per week are a skewed sample of the population. Most of them come from an artisan background and their success rate on the first year of just over 50 per cent appears to depend at least as much on their individual motivation as on their ability as measured by test scores. At the two extremes the groups tended to be unrepresentative; those from the professional and managerial backgrounds being mostly the intellectually inferior members and those from Social Classes IV and V being the more intelligent members of those groups.

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