This book addresses one the most contentious issues of postwar Western Europe, namely the organization of the primary and secondary stages of schooling in state education systems. In examining the politics of continuity and change in postwar schooling in Britain and the Federal Republic Germany, Gregory Baldi seeks to contribute to more general understandings of education's place in the welfare state, the development of social institutions, and the relationship between material and ideational factors in shaping political outcomes over time.