Does education contribute to meritocracy or to social reproduction?

 On a large scale, education doesn't contribute to meritocracy. If we look at the statistics we could see that children coming from lower socio-economic backgrounds perform worse in their academic results than the children coming from the middle or high socio-economic background, not depending on how well the education system of the country is. It means that children supported by their families financially and psychologically have more opportunities to be successful rather than children born in poor families.

It looks like a checkmate game where queen and pawn have different levels of advantages. Although, a pawn has a chance to become a queen and has the same power as a queen has, it has a high level of risk to be sacrificed as pawn is the least advantaged figure in the game. 

These students also could be compared to a pawn figure, some of them can get a high status as a result of education and hardwork, but mostly they have a high risk of being unsuccessful. Anyway, a high-quality, equitable education system is a very strong tool for building a meritocratic society. But it could be reached by a complex and holistic approach: raising the well-being of the population, determination of a nation, and a high-quality equitable education system.