A new Mapineq peer-reviewed article, co-authored by Mar Cañizares Espadafor and Alicia García, has just been published in the European Sociological Review. Using a quasi-experimental design, the authors investigate the long-term effects of a major educational reform in Spain, which extended compulsory schooling by two years in the early 1970s.
What do they show?
1. Although the reform applied to all students, its effects were far from uniform. It raised the average number of years spent in education for that generation — but the greatest gains were made by those who would otherwise have left school at the age of 12, many of whom came from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
2. The children of those students — who stayed in school longer because of the reform — also achieved better educational outcomes. This points to the long reach of public policy, and how some reforms can quietly shape opportunities across generations.
What can we learn — and what should it tell us in 2025?
This study reminds us that universal reforms do not generate universal effects. There is always a group whose trajectories are transformed, and others for whom the same policy brings little change. But when reforms reach the right students at the right moment, they can create real — and lasting — impact.
We also learn that public policies often have unintended consequences, some of which only become visible across generations. And crucially: even a reform as far-reaching as this one was not enough to shift the overall distribution of educational inequality. It improved prospects for the next generation but did not close the wider educational gaps.
Countries like Portugal and the UK already mandate schooling until the age of 18. Yet this study does not claim that more years automatically mean greater equity. The authors challenge the idea of a linear effect, suggesting instead that there may be a ceiling to what additional time in education alone can achieve.
Importantly, the study shows that well-designed reforms can unlock potential across generations — but only if we are honest about their limitations and deliberate about who they are truly reaching.
This research does not offer easy answers — but it (hopefully) opens the door to better questions. Because if we want education to be a genuine force for reducing inequality, we must ask not only how much we provide — but also how, to whom, and with what purpose.
Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf003