Editing Generation X (section)

====== Education ======
The almost universal dismantling of the [[grammar school]] system in Great Britain during the 1960s and the 1970s meant that the vast majority of the cohort attended [[comprehensive school]]s. [[Compulsory education]] ended at the age of 16.<ref>{{cite book|last=Reitan|first=Earl Aaron|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7qaMqwGRE00C&pg=PA14|title=The Thatcher Revolution: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, and the Transformation of Modern Britain, 1979–2001|year=2003|page=14|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=9780742522039 |access-date=11 April 2021|archive-date=3 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203080703/https://books.google.com/books?id=7qaMqwGRE00C&pg=PA14|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=":0" /> As older members of the cohort reached the end of their mandatory schooling, levels of educational enrollment among older adolescents remained below much of the [[Western world]]. By the early 1980s, some 80% to 90% of school leavers in France and West Germany received [[vocational training]], compared with 40% in the United Kingdom. By the mid-1980s, over 80% of pupils in the United States and West Germany and over 90% in Japan stayed in education until the age of eighteen, compared with 33% of British pupils.<ref name="MacDowall2000">{{cite book|last=MacDowall|first=David|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eyK2MgEACAAJ|title=Britain in Close-up: An In-depth Study of Contemporary Britain|publisher=Longman|year=2000|access-date=11 April 2021|archive-date=3 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230203080704/https://books.google.com/books?id=eyK2MgEACAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> There was, however, broadly a rise in education levels among this age range as Generation X passed through it.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bolton|first=Paul|date=27 November 2012|title=Education: Historical statistics|url=https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04252/|access-date=10 April 2021|website=House of commons Library|archive-date=25 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210525002800/https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04252/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1990, 25% of young people in England stayed in some kind of full-time education after the age of 18, this was an increase from 15% a decade earlier.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Coughlan|first=Sean|date=26 September 2019|title=The symbolic target of 50% at university reached|language=en-GB|work=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/education-49841620|access-date=10 April 2021|archive-date=11 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210411010003/https://www.bbc.com/news/education-49841620|url-status=live}}</ref> Later, the [[Further and Higher Education Act 1992]] and the liberalisation of higher education in the UK saw greater numbers of those born towards the tail-end of the generation gaining university places.<ref name=":0">{{cite news|date=11 March 2016|title=Thatcher's children: the lives of Generation X|publisher=Economic and Social Research Council|url=http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-events-and-publications/news/news-items/thatcher-s-children-the-lives-of-generation-x/|url-status=dead|access-date=2 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160729024605/http://www.esrc.ac.uk/news-events-and-publications/news/news-items/thatcher-s-children-the-lives-of-generation-x/|archive-date=29 July 2016}}</ref>