SUMMARY
The article is devoted to the consideration of barriers to social inequality, which are reproduced in education in particular at its initial levels. Emphasized that the results of the majority of modern sociological studies indicate that the successes in education and the social status achieved after a certain time after graduation depend on the social origin of the individual. Such dependence testifies to the ineffectiveness of legal mechanisms of social mobility, including those that are laid in the basis of the functioning of the institution of education. The influence of inequality factors poorly studied in sociology is estimated. With the support of the works of foreign sociologists, «barriers» that take place in the education system, promote the reproduction of social inequalities, and impede vertical social mobility have been identified. Particular attention is paid to the scientific comprehension of one of such barriers, connected with differences in linguistic and cognitive codes, whose carriers are children from different social strata. Author’s interpretation of the terms «language code» and «cognitive code» is provided. The results of studies carried out with the authors’ participation confirming the presence and revealing mechanism of the action of the indicated barrier are presented. The results of researches conducted with the participation of authors in 2013-2015 are presented. These results confirm the existence and revealing the mechanism of action of he barrier referred to above. Based on the results of researches, it is proved that the degree of development of cognitive codes, although it depends on the factor of social origin, in particular, on kind of professional activity of mother as the most important agent of primary socialization, nevertheless the teacher’s work style largely influences the development of cognitive codes. A final conclusion is that the teachers’ adherence to democratic principles of dialogue and dialogic nature of educational discourse, an orientation of teaching methods, first of all, on the cognitive development of students (rather than loading their memory with information) will allow one of the fundamental barriers to inequality in education to be laid at the first educational levels – general preschool and primary school education.