Scotland developed a series of educational surveys between the late-1940s and the early-21st century that allow the country’s experience of education to be studied in systematic detail. No other country has an archive of this length and depth. The surveys include evidence on pupils’ curriculum, attainment, subjective experience of school, and destinations after leaving school, as well as details of their social characteristics and of the secondary schools which they attended. By linking also to archival evidence on the histories of schools, the book’s analysis investigates the interplay between deliberate policy and wider social change. The transformation of education in this period is accompanied by equally important economic restructuring which has led to unprecedented changes in the way that education relates to lifelong opportunity in the twenty-first century. The book investigates how these changes have underpinned Scotland’s civic values, and have contributed fundamentally to shaping the debate about the country’s constitutional future.

This book is essential reading not only for those interested in Scottish education – a fascinating story in its own right – but for all those committed to building education systems that meet our democratic and egalitarian ideals. -- Adam Gamoran, William T. Grant Foundation
With an uncommon combination of quantitative rigour and lucid, humane prose, Lindsay Paterson weighs up Scottish claims to have cultivated the "democratic intellect". Has Scotland succeeded in delivering a broad, liberal education to all? The answer, defined and qualified in ways illuminating to policymakers as well as students and scholars, is yes. -- Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge
goes well beyond... familiar claims and the counter-claims of sceptics. Paterson’s thesis is more nuanced, more qualified, more rigorous and thus more challenging—intellectually and personally. -- Catriona M. M. MacDonald, University of Glasgow * The Scottish Historical Review *
[a] remarkable new study... with a detailed analysis of statistical evidence that is genuinely exciting -- James McGonigal, emeritus professor of English in Education at Glasgow University * History Scotland *

Lindsay Paterson is Emeritus Professor of Education Policy, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. His main academic interests are in education, civic engagement and political attitudes. He has contributed to many debates in Scotland since the early 1990s on education, on social change, and on politics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.