Saunders' recent work claiming that contemporary British society is to a la
rge extent 'meritocratic' is criticized on conceptual and technical grounds
. A reanalysis of the National Child Development Study data-set, used by Sa
unders, is presented. This reveals that while merit, defined in terms of ab
ility and effort, does play a part in determining individuals' class destin
ations, the effect of class origins remains strong. Children of less advant
aged class origins need to show substantially more merit than children from
more advantaged origins in order to gain similar class positions. These di
fferences in findings to some extent arise from the correction of biases in
troduced by Saunders; but there are also features of his own results, consi
stent with those reported in the reanalysis, which he appears not to have f
ully appreciated.