Breaking down the question
The statement makes a claim you are asked to discuss: schooling does not ensure upward mobility for all members of society. The command word "discuss" invites a balanced examination, but the framing "with reference to class societies" points you towards the critical sociological tradition that questions the liberal faith in education as the great equaliser. Your task is to weigh the meritocratic promise of schooling against the structural forces that reproduce class advantage through the very same educational system.
Begin by clarifying the underlying assumption the statement challenges. The functionalist and modernisation view holds that mass schooling opens careers to talent, allocating people to positions by ability rather than birth, and so serves as an engine of social mobility. The statement pushes back: in class societies, education is entangled with inequalities of wealth, culture and power that blunt its levelling effect. The heart of a strong answer is explaining the mechanisms through which schooling reproduces rather than dissolves class position.
How to approach it
Open by acknowledging the case for schooling as a channel of upward mobility, so the discussion is genuinely two-sided. Note the meritocratic argument and the real gains that education can bring to some individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Then develop the critical core, which should occupy most of the answer. Marshal the reproduction theorists systematically. Explain Bourdieu on cultural capital and habitus, Bowles and Gintis on the correspondence between school and workplace hierarchies, and Collins on credential inflation. Add the material barriers — unequal school quality, the costs of prolonged education, and differential access to elite institutions. Ground each mechanism in class dynamics rather than listing them loosely.
Close with a balanced judgement. Schooling can enable individual mobility but does not guarantee it for all, because its distribution and rewards are shaped by the class structure it operates within. This synthesis honours the "discuss" command.
Model answer
Modern societies place great faith in education as the principal route to upward social mobility. The functionalist tradition, articulated by Davis and Moore and by the modernisation theorists, holds that mass schooling replaces ascription with achievement, allocating individuals to occupational positions on the basis of demonstrated ability rather than the accident of birth. On this view schooling is meritocratic and mobility-enhancing: it opens careers to talent and allows the able child of poor parents to rise. There is real truth here, for education has enabled many individuals to move upward and has expanded literacy and opportunity on a mass scale. Yet the claim that schooling ensures upward mobility for all members of society does not survive close sociological examination, particularly in class societies where educational chances and rewards are structured by inequalities of wealth, culture and power.
The most influential critique comes from Pierre Bourdieu. He argued that schools reward the cultural capital — the language, tastes, dispositions and manners — that middle- and upper-class children absorb effortlessly at home, while treating this class-specific culture as though it were natural ability. Working-class children arrive with a different habitus and are judged deficient against a standard that mirrors the dominant class. The school thus appears neutral and meritocratic while in fact converting inherited class advantage into apparently earned academic success, a process Bourdieu called cultural reproduction. Far from dissolving class, schooling legitimates it by making unequal outcomes look like the fair verdict of talent.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis reached a parallel conclusion from a Marxist standpoint. In their correspondence principle, the social relations of schooling mirror those of the capitalist workplace: schools reward punctuality, obedience and acceptance of hierarchy, and they prepare children of different classes for different positions in the division of labour. Elite schools cultivate the autonomy and leadership suited to managerial roles, while schools serving the working class instil the discipline expected of subordinate labour. Education reproduces the class structure and the docile workforce that capitalism requires, rather than overturning inequality.
Randall Collins added the mechanism of credentialism. As more people gain qualifications, the credentials required for a given job inflate, so that entrants must climb ever higher simply to stand still. Because prolonged education is more easily financed by the affluent, credential inflation quietly favours those with the resources to stay in the system longest, while the qualifications of the disadvantaged are devalued. Schooling then screens and ranks candidates in ways that track existing class advantage rather than rewarding pure ability.
Beyond these cultural and ideological mechanisms lie stark material barriers. In class societies the quality of schooling is itself unequally distributed: well-resourced private and suburban schools serve the privileged, while under-funded schools serve the poor, so that the same years of schooling yield very different capacities and prospects. The costs of prolonged education — fees, coaching, forgone earnings — fall hardest on poorer families, encouraging early dropout. Access to elite universities, which act as gatekeepers to the most rewarding careers, is skewed towards those with the cultural and financial capital to compete for scarce places. The expansion of schooling has often been accompanied by the flight of the advantaged to more exclusive tiers, preserving their relative lead.
The empirical record bears out the critique. Sociological studies of mobility show that although absolute mobility has risen with the growth of white-collar work, relative rates of mobility — the chances of a working-class child reaching the top compared with a privileged child — have proved remarkably stubborn. Education raises the general level of skills without equalising the competition, because the privileged deploy their resources to keep ahead within it.
None of this means schooling is powerless. For particular individuals, and especially where states expand access, provide scholarships and reserve places for the disadvantaged, education can and does enable genuine upward mobility. Reservation policies, universal schooling and public higher education have lifted many who would otherwise have remained where they were born. The accurate conclusion is the one the statement invites: schooling offers a real but conditional and unevenly distributed chance of mobility. It does not ensure upward movement for all, because in class societies the access to good schooling, the cultural capital rewarded within it and the credentials it confers are themselves shaped by the class structure that education is supposed to transcend. Schooling can be an instrument of mobility for some while simultaneously being an instrument of reproduction for the class system as a whole.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners look for candidates who recognise that the statement is a critique of educational meritocracy and who can explain, with named theorists, the mechanisms of reproduction. The strongest scripts move beyond assertion to show how cultural capital, the correspondence principle and credentialism each translate class advantage into educational success, and they support the argument with the distinction between absolute and relative mobility.
The common weakness is a one-sided answer that either praises education uncritically or condemns it wholesale. Because the command is "discuss", the script should concede the genuine mobility schooling can bring to individuals and to policy interventions such as reservations, before explaining why it nonetheless fails to guarantee mobility for all. Explicit reference to class societies throughout, rather than a generic account of education, is essential to answering the question actually set.