Children's Lives, Children's Futures: A Study of Children Starting Secondary School (Continuum Studies in Educational Research)

Children's Lives, Children's Futures A study of children starting secondary school Paul Croll, Gaynor Attwood and Carol...

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Children's Lives, Children's Futures A study of children starting secondary school Paul Croll, Gaynor Attwood and Carol Fuller

Continuum Studies in Educational Research

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Continuum International Publishing Group

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www. con tinuurn books. com © Paul Groll, Gaynor Attwood and Carol Fuller 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Paul Croll, Gaynor Attwood and Carol Fuller have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 9781847062697 (hardcover) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Croll, Paul. Children's lives, children's futures: a study of children starting secondary school/ Paul Croll, Gaynor Attwood, and Carol Fuller. p. m. - (Continuum studies in educational research) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-84706-269-7 (hardcover) 1. Education, Secondary-Great Britain-Case studies. 2. School children-Great BritainCase studies. 3. Social adjustment-Great Britain-Case studies. I. Attwood, Gaynor, 1948II. Fuller, Carol H. III. Title. IV. Series. LA635.C77 2010 373.180941-dc22 2009020105

Typeset by BookEns, Royston, Herts. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King's Lynn

Contents

List of tables

vii

Preface

ix

1

Introduction

1

2

Children and the future

21

3

Educational futures: children's intentions for educational participation

39

4

Children's occupational choices

59

5

What children think about school

81

6

Children as learners

111

7

Early exits and negative attitudes

135

8

Present and future: schools, structure, agency

147

Appendix 1: The research project

171

Appendix 2: Supplementary tables

175

References

181

Index

185

This page intentionally left blank

Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

What children want for their futures Parental occupation and what children want for their future Influences on the future Parental occupation and influences on the future Intentions for participation post-16 Reasons for post-16 decision Do you think you will go to university? Reasons for university decision Post-16 plans for children who plan to go to university Occupational plans: most frequent choices Socio-economic status of occupational choices Parental occupations of children choosing the professions or skilled trades The importance of school Enjoyment of school Perception of teacher commitment School as a difficult environment School and friendships Rejection of school The best and worst things about school Group differences in attitudes to school Pupil effort and the importance of success at school Perceptions of attainment Perceptions of parent and teacher expectations Setting, average school attainment and children's self-ratings and attitudes Characteristics of leavers and non-leavers Attitudes to school and employment of leavers and non-leavers Number of negative responses to attitude statements Negative responses in specific areas

23 25 27 28 40 42 50 52 56 61 63 65 84 86 88 89 91 92 94 108 113 116 121 129 137 138 142 144

viii 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 A3.1 A3.2 A3.3 A3.4 A3.5 A3.6 A3.7 A6.1 A6.2 A6.3 A7.1 A7.2

Tables Educational and occupational plans and school attainment level Educational and occupational plans and set Consistency of educational and occupational plans, school attainment level and set: children planning to stay on post-16, go to university and have a professional or managerial job Gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity and educational and occupational intentions and parental views Educational and occupational plans and parental views and expectations for examinations and employment Socio-economic status, parental views and ambitious educational and occupational plans Parents' views and staying on post-16 Friends staying on and staying on post-16 Parents' views and university Friends going to university and plans for university Parental occupation and reasons for not going to university Consistency of school and university intentions for children planning to go to university Future intentions post-16 and for university Learner identities: self-perceptions of performance at primary and secondary school Learner identities: performance and relative performance Setting and comparative performance Mean numbers of negative statements supported Negative responses to school

151 153 154 155 163 165 175 175 176 176 176 177 178 178 178 179 179 179

Preface

Children spend a significant proportion of their lives in school. Indeed, in some respects, for children in England and similar societies, school can be seen as the defining feature of childhood and of the way that children are connected to the wider world, and as a key link between childhood and later adult life. In this book we are concerned with how children experience and feel about their lives in school in the present; how they see their educational futures in school and elsewhere; and how they view the relevance of school for various aspects of their futures. The book is focused on a sample of children in England as they begin their secondary school careers at the age of 11 or 12. It is mainly based on a large-scale nationwide survey, involving both questionnaires and interviews, which we conducted in 2007. The research was supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (RES 062 23 0204) which we are pleased to acknowledge here. We have benefited from the help and advice of many people whom we either consulted with regard to the study or who worked with us on carrying out the survey. Diana Moses, David Malvern, David Drew MP, Ray Priest and ESRC referees and assessors all made helpful and insightful suggestions with regard to the research. Our colleague Kathryn Last, from the University of the West of England, made a major contribution to data collection, and her interviewing skills are reflected in the quality of the interview material collected from the children. We have also had valuable administrative support from Margaret King and Julie Matthews. Our principal thanks, however, must go to the head teachers, teachers and, most of all, the children in the 15 schools which took part in the study. We had an exceptionally high response rate from the schools we approached to take part in the study, reflecting a commitment within schools to valuing the perspectives on school of their pupils. We also had considerable help from teachers who facilitated the administration of the questionnaires and the conduct of interviews. We were pleased that the children seemed to enjoy taking part in the study and very much appreciate the care most of them put

x

Preface

into completing the questionnaires and the frank and thoughtful nature of most of the interviews. An important outcome of the study is that it demonstrates that children want to be asked about their school experiences, value having their opinions sought and, even at a relatively young age, can reflect thoughtfully on the experience of school and its relevance to their futures. In the chapters that follow we draw extensively on interviews and group discussions involving about 40 of the children. Nearly all of these are based on audio recordings although in a small number of cases recording was not possible and we have had to rely on written notes. Quotations given are verbatim with minor tidying and the insertion of punctuation to clarify meaning. We have not corrected grammar and have reflected as far as possible regional variations in language. The names we have used for the children are, of course, pseudonyms. Names are gender appropriate and, in the case of children from Asian and some other backgrounds, reflect their cultural heritage. Apart from this, the names were allocated at random. We should stress that we are not trying to convey any additional information about the children through their pseudonyms, or to match the pseudonyms in any way to their real names. In a few cases we have quoted from comments children wrote on their questionnaires. In these cases we indicate gender but have not provided the children with names. Where more or less identical remarks occurred very frequently in the interviews we have included them without attribution to particular children. Most of the statistical data are presented as tables in the main body of the text. However, to avoid breaking up the text too much we have included some of the more detailed tables as Appendix 2. These are indicated in the text by a capital A preceding the table number. One of our starting points for the study that forms the basis of this book was the question of levels of educational participation and the current initiatives in the UK to increase participation, including the very recent move to make some form of post-16 participation compulsory. We hope that the book can advance our understanding of children's thinking about school and education more generally in such a way as to help in increasing participation rates but also, and more importantly, in making such participation worthwhile.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Children in the present and the future In our title, Children's Lives, Children's Futures, we bring together two of the themes which underlie the chapters that follow. We are concerned first with the sense children have of their lives in the present, in particular, those aspects of their lives which are played out in school or which relate to school. Second, we are concerned with children's sense of their personal futures, with a particular emphasis on their future educational outcomes and participation. The focus on school and education as key features of children's lives, both in the present and in the future, relates first to the importance of school in children's lives. In the present, school absorbs a very significant amount of children's waking time. It also represents their main form of contact with what we could call the public or civic sphere; a world outside the private life of the family where relatively formalized roles and relationships are encountered and the demands and expectations of a wider society are first met. Educational futures are also of key importance to children, determining patterns of participation, qualifications and other attributes that will influence many aspects of the future lives of today's children. A focus on the present and future educational orientations and involvement of children also relates to a major current public policy agenda, both in the UK and elsewhere. The proportion of children who leave school at the age of 16 or shortly after remains at about 20 per cent in the UK and something like a half of children who leave education at this age do not go into employment or further training (DCSF 2008). This group of young people have almost uniformly negative outcomes on a range of indicators such as unemployment, poor health, teenage parenthood and poverty (Social Exclusion Unit 1999). It is therefore very important to establish how children at an earlier stage of their school career feel about participation in education post-16. The importance of children's feelings at this stage is emphasized by the way that early intentions for participation are a good indicator of what

2

Children's Lives, Children's Futures

the children will actually do later. In a longitudinal panel study of young people, Croll and Moses (2005) demonstrated that what children say at the age of 11 about their intentions for staying in education post-16 was highly predictive of what they actually did five years later. The importance of educational participation for all children, at least in the eyes of policy-makers, is such that there are currently proposals to raise the age at which young people can leave the education system and to have 90 per cent of 16—18-yearolds in full-time education and training by 2015 (DCSF 2008). If this initiative is to be successful it is clearly going to be important to discover why so many young people want to leave school as soon as they can. Forcing unwilling participants to stay in the system is not likely by itself to either be workable or valuable. The second major public policy issue with regard to educational participation is that of the numbers of people going into higher education. The proportion of 18-year olds going into higher education has increased substantially over the past 50 years but it is still well short of the UK government target of 50 per cent of the age cohort going to university (DIUS 2008). What is particularly at issue here is not so much the proportion of the total cohort going to university but the relative proportions of people from different social backgrounds. Some traditionally disadvantaged groups have now attained equal or better representation in higher education. Women now make up a higher proportion of the undergraduate population than men, and people from ethnic minorities are now overall (although this is not true for every minority group) substantially over-represented compared with the majority white population. But differences associated with socio-economic status have been stubbornly resistant to change. The participation rate of people from the most disadvantaged social locations is still very much below that of people from more favoured socio-economic positions. (Note: This is the relative likelihood of higher education participation. The absolute level of participation has gone up considerably for all groups, including the most disadvantaged over the past 50 or so years.) So there are important policy-related reasons for studying what children feel about their lives in education and how they see their educational futures. Of course these things are certain to be intimately connected, and the third theme of the book is the interrelationship of children's experience of the present and the views they have of their futures. The attitudes and orientations children have towards school and education in the present are likely to be an influence on the aspirations they have for the future and the choices they make relevant to their futures. At the same time, ambitions and intentions for the future may impact on the experience of the present. In looking at the complex interrelationship between children's accounts of their current experience and children's hopes and intentions for the future we want to show how far children can reflect meaningfully on their educational

Introduction

3

experiences and how far they have a sense of the relevance of these experiences for the future. There is no single 'best' age at which to begin an enquiry into children's school experiences and future educational intentions. In deciding to focus on children as they start secondary school we were partly influenced by the evidence discussed earlier that children's intentions at this age are a good predictor of behaviour at 16. Also, however, the start of secondary school is the natural beginning of the phase of education which will lead up to the first educational qualifications children obtain and the first decision about participation once compulsory education is over. The children in our study are past any decision-making about which secondary school they will go to and are also past the initial transitional issues involved in moving to a new school. They are in the early stages of a five-year phase of their educational careers leading up to public examinations (the General Certificate of Education — GCSE) and the choice of whether or not to continue in education. This seemed a good point at which to establish how they feel about their educational lives and how they see them developing in the future. A study such as this is necessarily located within a large ongoing body of work on education, schools and children. One important context for the study is the social studies of childhood (James et al. 1998; Prout 2005; Qyortrup 1994). This has been a relatively recent development in sociology and related fields and has focused on childhood as a concept and category for study. Key ideas include that of seeing children as social actors in their own right and taking seriously what children have to say about their lives. An important dichotomy to emerge from the social studies of childhood is that of children as 'being' and children as 'becoming'. While conventional approaches had focused on 'becoming', childhood as a stage developing into something else, new approaches focused on children's lives in the present, 'being', and on the study of that present. Many of these ideas are reflected in the present study. We are concerned with children's voice and taking seriously what children have to say about their lives. We also recognize, however, that this is not as new as it can sometimes appear in the texts on the social studies of childhood. At least with regard to their lives in education, there is a long tradition of taking children's voices seriously (e.g., Blishen 1969; White 2000; White and Brockington 1983). The distinction between being and becoming can also be seen in our title and our concern both with the present and the future of the children in the study. However, we do not see this as a dichotomy and certainly do not see a focus on children in the present as incompatible with seeing childhood developmentally or as having a sense of becoming as a crucial aspect. As will become apparent in later chapters, the children in our study had a strong sense of their futures and, in many respects, saw their present lives in terms of a preparation for these futures. Another tradition of social science research within which our work is

4


located is that of the sociology of education. In our interest in children's lives in the present we draw upon sociological studies of children at school including survey evidence of how children feel about school (Blatchford 1996; Cullingford 2002; Keys 1995; Keys and Fernandes 1993;) and qualitative studies of children's school experiences (Arnot and Reay 2004; Ball 1981; Pollard and Triggs 2000; White 2000). We shall address the sharply contrasting picture that comes from some of these studies. In particular, we shall compare the broadly positive view that children enjoy and value school, which tends to emerge from survey evidence, and the rather more negative picture of boredom and disaffection that sometimes emerges from more qualitative approaches. We shall also address the issue, which emerges from some sociological studies, that children from different social backgrounds have very different experiences of and responses to school and, in particular, pupils from disadvantaged social backgrounds feel rejected and devalued in school settings. A further aspect of the sociology of education is also relevant to our concern with children's futures. An important body of work involving sociological studies of education is the analysis of the role of the school and the education system in social reproduction; in particular, in the reproduction of patterns of advantage and disadvantage associated with socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity (Halsey et al. 1980; Patterson and lanelli 2006). Many studies have documented the tendency for patterns of advantage and disadvantage in one generation to be reproduced in the next generation and for people to move into occupational and social destinations in ways that are relatively predictable from the occupations of their parents or from their gender and ethnicity. So, despite the marked upward shift in the occupational structure and in educational participation and qualifications, the relative mobility of people from different backgrounds has remained largely unchanged. As Furlong and Cartmel (1997) have argued, young people reaching the end of their schooling and moving into jobs and into higher and further education are the key element of the process of social reproduction: this is the way that continuities or discontinuities across generations happen. The opportunities they have, and the choices and decisions they make, play a key part in determining their own educational and occupational futures and their own future socio-economic situation. If patterns of advantage and disadvantage are to be reproduced in the way that studies of social mobility show that they are, then children from different social backgrounds must necessarily make different choices and start on different educational and occupational trajectories. It is therefore important to look at the perspectives children have on their opportunities and choices and consider to what extent differences between groups have emerged at a relatively early stage in their educational careers.

Introduction

5

Children's voices The evidence we are presenting in this volume is based on what children have to say and, in particular, what they have to say about their lives at school and their lives in the future. In doing this we are drawing on a tradition of research, both in the social studies of childhood and the study of education, which has been concerned to give children a voice and to take children's views seriously and constructively. An interest in what children have to say about their experiences of education goes back at least to the 1960s and Edward Blishen's (1969) well-known book, The School that I'd Like. This established that children, including children as young as 11 and 12, could write about many different aspects of school in a revealing and critical, but also constructive, fashion. Other work taking this approach includes that of Roger White (White 2000; White and Brockington 1983) which, like Blishen, provided a revealing picture of school in children's own words. From a very different academic tradition, the notion that what children have to say about school can make a positive contribution to the practice of education is also found in the work of Wheldall and Merrett (1984) on strategies for managing pupils' behaviour. They stress the importance of negotiating classroom rules with pupils and show how children are almost invariably sensible and constructive with regard to such rules. More recently, attention to the voice of children has been given renewed impetus by being incorporated into studies of school improvement. Levin (1999) argued that education reform cannot succeed without a very much greater involvement of students, and suggested strategies for increasing the involvement of students in their schools. Particularly influential has been research conducted by Jean Rudduck and her colleagues (Rudduck and Flutter 2004; Rudduck and Mclntyre 2007) on using consultation with pupils to improve the process of schooling. These studies emphasize that children should not be underestimated, especially in a school context, and document their ability to reflect on their school experiences, support others and take responsibility. Children in these studies say they want to be treated fairly and with respect, they value teaching that is 'not boring' and that actively involves them as learners, and they are very conscious of the physical aspects of the school environment. A constant theme is that children dislike being treated 'like children' and are looking for adult-like autonomy. Rudduck and her colleagues locate their own work in the wider context of both the school improvement movement and a growing concern with the rights of children. With regard to school improvement pupil voice can be valuable instrumentally in helping to find ways to improve teaching and learning. But it also relates to developments such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the recent appointment in the UK of a Children's Commissioner. Legislation in the UK such as Every Child Matters (DfES 2003)

6


includes a requirement that young people should be involved in decisions which affect them and the reports on schools of the Office for Standards in Education, OfSTED the UK school inspection agency, now includes an account of pupil perspectives. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states 'children shall . . . be provided the opportunity to be heard' and 'the views of the child be given due weight' (Lundy 2007). Rudduck and Mclntyre's research showed that children were very positive about being consulted and this is echoed in the evidence from the present research in which nearly all the children welcomed the opportunity to complete questionnaires and take part in interviews, and took great care to ensure that their views were properly understood.

Attitudes to school The idea of children's voice involves much more than a focus on what children say about school. However, school is a very important part of it and many of the studies cited above refer to pupil voice. What children think about themselves as pupils has been studied in several large-scale representative surveys of attitudes to different aspects of school. Relevant studies include Blatchford's (1996) survey of 7-, 11- and 16-year-olds in London, a series of questionnaire surveys conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (Keys 1995; Keys and Fernandes 1993; Maychell et al. 1998) and a longitudinal analysis of the British Household Panel Survey by Croll and Moses (2005). These surveys have shown a consistent picture of pupil attitudes, particularly with regard to the generally very positive responses to schooling that emerge. In all these studies a distinction can be found between instrumental and affective aspects of feelings about school. Instrumentally, children tended to see school as important for their futures, saw the value of qualifications and similar outcomes, and were prepared to put in effort to achieve these. Affectively, most children enjoyed being at school, liked most teachers and valued friendships and the social experience of school. This distinction between instrumental and affective responses is related to one of the main themes of this book, a distinction between children's lives in the present and childhood and schooling as a preparation for the future. Instrumentally, children saw school as a determinant of future possibilities. Affectively, they saw it as a relatively enjoyable experience in the present. While most children were positive about both these aspects of schooling, in all the studies children were more positive about the instrumental aspect than they were about the affective. Ratings of statements such as 'it is important to do well at school' were higher than ratings of statements such as T enjoy coming to school'. It was also apparent from several of these studies (Croll and Moses 2005; Keys 1995) that positive feelings about the value of school

Introduction

1

were not always accompanied by intentions to stay in education when compulsory schooling ended at the age of 16. A significant minority of pupils either planned to leave at 16 or were not sure of their intentions, and many of these had expressed positive views about both the instrumental and affective aspects of school. One of the purposes of the present study is to look in more detail at the types of understandings and intentions that might explain these patterns of pupil responses. While these large-scale representative surveys show a generally positive response by children to education and to school, a more mixed, and sometimes rather negative, picture has emerged from other studies using qualitative interview and observation data. In particular, some of these studies focus on specific groups of children and suggest that pupils are highly differentiated in schools on the basis of socio-economic background and, sometimes, ethnicity. In these studies, children from less advantaged backgrounds and minority groups are often quoted as expressing very negative views of their school experiences and as having low expectations with regard to their performance and likely qualifications. For example, Reay (2006) reported 'working class' children feeling teachers look down on them and described a 'raw and tangible' sense of alienation, and Arnot and Reay (2004) reported these children being made to feel stupid and 'thick' by teachers. The question of schools as a site of social differentiation will be considered later in this chapter. However, it should be noted that the surveys discussed previously do not support the picture of school as a negative experience for large sections of society. Typically the surveys show group differences, mainly in terms of girls being more positive than boys and children from more advantaged backgrounds being more positive than children from less advantaged backgrounds (Croll and Moses 2005). But the main picture to emerge is that, despite these differences, all groups are positive overall. Studies which have specifically focused on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as those of Cox (2000) and Ridge (2002), also show that these children, although not as strongly positive as others, nevertheless have positive attitudes towards school and the value of learning. Of course, the qualitative studies which show such dramatically negative comments by children from particular backgrounds are very small scale, both in the sense of depending on small numbers of children and as presenting evidence as small snippets of conversations with, or comments by, these children. There is clearly a problem with representativeness with regard to both the selection of children and the selection of data. Children were not selected for study in a systematic fashion and the basis of social categorization is often unclear. Necessarily, only a small part of the interview and observational material can be presented so it is hard to get an overall view of the children's perspectives. In Chapter 7 we see if we can identify children

8


who have had negative experiences of schooling and whose perceptions match those of the children quoted as being negative about school. Evidence from the large-scale studies already conducted suggests that while there may be individual children in particular social circumstances who are negative about school, this does not seem to be generalizable to the groups of which they are a part, such as ethnic minorities or the 'working class'. While the discrepancy between survey evidence and the qualitative case studies may be explainable in terms of the unrepresentativeness of the latter, there is more of a problem in explaining the discrepancy between the surveys quoted and a more extensive study of young people and school by Cullingford (2002), ironically titled, The Best Years of their Lives? The study is based on 195 semi-structured interviews with Year 10 and Year 11 pupils from a range of different types of school, which were varied with regard to gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background. The central message of the book is that when young people are asked about their experience of school the 'attitudes towards school were uniformly negative' (Cullingford 2002: 36). The interviews showed a 'shared, consistent, negative view of the experience of school' (ibid.). Some of the themes to emerge include the resentment of arbitrary rules and authority (ibid.: 38) and the experience of bullying to which teachers are often indifferent (ibid.: 41). The negative tone of the responses is said to be particularly striking as the approach in the interview was 'pupils were invited to take as positive a view of their experience as possible' (ibid.: 33). However, it should also be noted that although Cullingford's interpretation is highly negative his evidence does not altogether support this uniformly negative account. Some of the quotations talk of enjoyment of the curriculum (e.g., ibid.: 87) and of very positive responses to particular teachers (e.g., ibid.: 188). There are also several quotations suggesting that the young people felt that they had failed to make the most of the opportunities school offered: T should have put my head down and done what I should have done' (ibid.: 56) and T wish I had tried harder' (ibid.: 66). (These comments echo the evidence presented by Attwood et al. (2003) from young people who had dropped out of or been excluded from the school system.) Cullingford also refers to a 'genuine sense of regret at the missed opportunities and not realising the possibilities of school' (2002: 56) but does not see this as challenging his central thesis. The picture to emerge from this study is utterly different from that to come out of other surveys of pupil attitudes as described above. It also differs from the more negative picture offered by Reay (2006) and Arnot and Reay (2004) as it does not make any differentiation between children from different backgrounds. The evidence we shall be presenting in this book does not support the uniformly negative picture offered by Cullingford, although there are examples of individual comments similar to those he reports. However, it will relate to one of the themes that can be identified in his study; that of making the best use

Introduction

9

of the possibilities school offers and the dangers of missing the opportunities school makes available. As we have seen, a clear distinction emerges between children seeing school as an enjoyable experience and seeing school as an important experience and as a preparation for the future. Although most children seem to enjoy school in the present, the sense of its instrumental importance is a stronger aspect of their response to school. In the analysis in later chapters we distinguish between attitudes to school, defined as dimensions of affect, and orientations to school, defined as the understanding of what school is for and of the consequences of educational participation and attainment. This also allows us to relate our data to the views of schooling expressed by some children in the qualitative research studies. The issue of attitudes and expectations also relates to the question of how children see themselves as learners and how well they feel they are meeting the academic demands of the school. As is very apparent from the surveys quoted, children believe that it is important to do well at school and that successful school performance will have positive consequences for their futures. However, it is not clear from these studies to what extent children feel that they are succeeding academically or if they anticipate academic success in the future. Children's sense of themselves as learners is likely to be an important influence on their responses to school and on beliefs about whether the instrumental purposes of schooling are going to work for them. In the English educational system in which this study is located there has been a very heavy emphasis in recent years on formal, summative national testing of pupils. Children are assessed at the age of 7, again at 11 and again at 14, corresponding to the end points of what are known as Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 and, until recently, Key Stage 3. Then, at the age of 16 they take public examinations, the GCSE at the end of Key Stage 4. The children in the present study experienced the Key Stage 1 assessments in the early years of their school careers and took the Key Stage 2 assessments at the end of their time in primary school, about one year before completing questionnaires for our research. This assessment regime has been widely criticized for its prescriptive and restricting influence on the school curriculum and for what are claimed to be negative effects on children (Harlen 2007; Harlen and Deakin Crick 2003; Reay and Wiliam 1999). Although the earlier assessments do not lead to qualifications they inform judgements made on schools and loom very large for teachers and children. One of the most frequent criticisms is that they are likely to create a sense of educational failure among children who do not reach particular standards and that this could trap pupils in a cycle of low expectations and performance. Some of the small-scale qualitative studies of children's perspectives give examples of children being aware of a hierarchy of attainment in which less well performing children see themselves as failing in school in a way that will have long-term negative consequences for them

10


(Reay and Wiliam 1999). However, there is little large-scale evidence of children's self-perceptions as learners. In Chapter 6 we consider how children view their performance at school up to the first year of secondary education and the expectations they have for future performance. A broader issue with regard to children as learners is that of self-efficacy and the attributions that children have for academic success and failure. Psychologists such as Bandura et al. (2001) have shown the importance for children of believing that their own actions can influence academic and other outcomes and believing that success is within their grasp and is the consequence of effort and strategy. For example, with regard to the choice of future occupations they argue that, 'People simply eliminate from consideration occupations they believe to be beyond their capabilities, however attractive the occupations may be.' (Bandura et al. 2001: 188). We have seen that there is strong evidence that children believe that it is important to do well at school. There is less evidence on how far they believe that doing well is possible for them and how far they see it as resulting from appropriate engagement with the educational structure of the school. The extent to which children think that effort will be rewarded and that positive outcomes are available to them personally is likely to be an important part of their orientation to schooling and to its relevance for their futures.

Aspirations and expectations Seeing school as a preparation for the future raises the question of how children see their own futures: what they aspire to and what they expect in the future. This applies to various aspects of their lives. Children may have educational expectations and aspirations: plans to continue their education past the age of compulsory schooling at 16, plans to go to university or other sorts of post-school education or training, and plans to achieve various qualifications. They may also have plans and hopes relating to the job they will get on completing their educations and plans for careers and longer-term occupational destinations. Children may also aspire to or expect different sorts of domestic arrangements and personal relationships, perhaps including marriage, children and home circumstances. Of course, the children in our study are relatively young to have definite plans in these areas, just 11 or 12 at the time of the research. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that not only are children able to express hopes and plans for the future at this age, but that such intentions can be good predictors of future behaviour. One of the starting points for the current study is the research on early intentions for educational participation conducted by Croll and Moses (2005). They used longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey to look at the relationship between early intentions

Introduction

11

and later behaviour. When asked at the age of 11 whether they planned to stay on at school or college after they were 16, the great majority of children expressed an intention. Strikingly, these intentions were very good predictors of what these children actually did in terms of staying in education or leaving five years later. Other research on the ways that quite young children see their future lives also shows the ability of children to express plans and expectations with regard to occupational and domestic situations. For example, the study of 10-year-old children by Christenson and James showed that, despite having a limited sense of their future lives as adults, children were able to talk about their futures in terms of jobs, marriage, children and domestic arrangements (James 2005). In this study we are concerned with educational intentions but also occupational plans and aspirations. A recent study of older children (Croll 2008) has shown that at the age of 15 nearly all the young people surveyed were able to express occupational plans. A striking feature of these intentions is that they were typically ambitious. Most of the young people were expressing plans to go into 'desirable' occupations, such as professional and managerial jobs; only a minority planned careers in manual occupations and virtually none in partly skilled or unskilled manual work. These ambitions were for desirable occupational destinations which were far beyond the present or likely future availability of such jobs. This inevitably meant that many of the young people ended up doing jobs that were less rewarding than the jobs they had hoped for. Nevertheless, intentions expressed at 15 still had predictive power for occupations up to ten years later. Having ambitious intentions was associated with having more rewarding outcomes even though many people had not achieved their ambitions. Better outcomes were particularly likely to be associated with ambitious intentions when these went alongside academic success. What was particularly striking was that when young people were both ambitious and academically successful, the occupational outcomes were equally good for children from all social backgrounds. In contrast, when children were neither ambitious occupationally nor successful academically, the occupational outcomes for children from less advantaged backgrounds were very much poorer than those for children from more advantaged homes (Croll 2008). Another theme of research on occupational choice has been that of alignment', the extent to which the occupational ambitions of young people line up with their educational intentions and attainments. In a study of adolescents in the USA, Schneider and Stevenson (1999) show a similar pattern of ambitious career intentions to the British young people in CrolPs study. They argued that many of the young people in their study had misaligned ambitions: they either wanted careers which required far greater levels of time spent in education than they were intending or, in some cases, aimed for jobs that required less education and qualifications than they

12


planned. A similar pattern of misalignment was apparent for some of the children in the UK study (Croll 2008). Schneider and Stevenson stressed the importance of parents helping their children to align their occupational ambitions with the educational choices they made and the way that parents need to both support and challenge their children. In this study we are concerned with extending some of these analyses to rather younger children. We wanted to know to what extent children of 11 and 12 could express career intentions and how ambitious they were in these intentions. We also wanted to know how well these career intentions aligned with their educational plans. As was apparent in the Croll and Schneider and Stevenson studies, there will not be enough desirable jobs for all the young people who want them and children's performance educationally is an important, although not the only, factor in determining which ambitions will be realized (Croll 2008). Although the children in our study are young, they are embarking on an important stage of their educational careers. The understanding they have of the role of education in career possibilities and the approaches they develop to education and school at this early stage may be of crucial importance with regard to the patterns of their lives in the future.

Choices Much of our discussion so far has been about children making choices: choices about staying on at school, about going to university, about career paths, and so on. These are explicit choices which we address in the research data. However, there may also be some less explicit and clear-cut choices that children make, about, for example, their degree of commitment to school in terms of effort and conformity and their degree of identification with the goals of school and education. The choices we describe in relation to future educational participation and future jobs refer to actions which are quite a long way in the future for 11- and 12-year-olds. Nevertheless, they may guide other, less explicit, choices children make, and the way that children set out on their secondary school careers in terms of commitment and involvement are likely to have long-term consequences for educational participation and achievement. For example, a study of young people who had dropped out of, or been excluded from, school by the age of 15 showed the difficulty of recovering from early negative choices about commitment to school (Attwood et al. 2003). The young people in that study were attempting to re-start their educational careers and many greatly regretted the behaviour and attitudes that had resulted in the educationally disadvantaged position they found themselves in. There was a strong sense of missed opportunities and educational and career choices, which were now restricted as a result of choices made earlier in their secondary schools.

Introduction

13

Seeing occupational and educational destinations in terms of choices made by individuals, necessarily engages with the work of sociological theorists such as Bauman (2000), Beck (1992), Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) and Giddens (1991) who have argued that contemporary society has undergone fundamental changes involving individualization and the creation of individual identities based on the operation of choice. These and other authors have moved away from traditionally dominant forms of sociological explanation involving heavily structuralist accounts of personal destinations and life experiences, especially those based around social class, to a focus on life patterns as an individual project and on individualization as the key feature of modern society. These theorists have argued that social groupings and identities based on occupation and inherited socio-economic status, which have dominated traditional sociological thinking, have been replaced by groupings based on lifestyle, choices, diversity and a highly individualized notion of identity. For these authors, 'The ethic of individual self-fulfilment and achievement is the most powerful current in modern society. The choosing, deciding, shaping human being who aspires to be the author of his or her life, the creator of an individual identity, is the central character of our time' (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002: 22-3). These arguments have been criticized for failing to reflect persistent patterns of social and economic inequality and the evidence that opportunities and life chances continue to be transmitted across generations in a way that maintains relative social inequalities and reproduces existing social structures (Atkinson 2007; Croll 2008). Nevertheless, many aspects of these ideas, especially an emphasis on choice and agency, match the perspectives of young people themselves, which have emerged from a variety of research studies. Many studies have shown how young people typically have a strong sense of personal agency. Studies such as those of Attwood et al. (2003) and Ball et al. (2000) show the extent to which young people even in disadvantaged circumstances feel that the direction their lives take is influenced by their own capacities and behaviour. These young people do generally feel that their own efforts will determine personal outcomes and they see themselves as having, in Beck's terms, an 'elective' or 'do it yourself biography (Beck and Beck Gernsheim 2002: 3). These results are in keeping with the much more sweeping arguments of Beck (1992) and Beck and Beck Gernsheim (2002) about the centrality of life choices in contemporary society compared with an earlier time of highly socially constrained directions and opportunities. They show that, despite continuing patterns of structural inequalities, at the level of individual perceptions, young people feel that they have real choices, that various possibilities are open to them and that their own actions and capabilities will influence the course their lives take. Another very important, but very different, approach to the role of choice with regard to patterns of educational participation and career destinations is

14


that of Goldthorpe (2007a). This approach uses Rational Action Theory to demonstrate that decision processes based on a rational analysis of resources, opportunities and constraints can be used to account both for the increase in educational participation over the second half of the twentieth century and the continuing differential rates of participation by people from different socio-economic backgrounds. Beck's account of choice does not explain the way that people whose parents come from advantaged locations are more likely themselves to end up in such locations, while, conversely, people whose parents come from less advantaged locations themselves are disproportionately likely to be in disadvantaged positions. Why should people choose less well-rewarded educational and occupational routes? Goldthorpe argues that rational decision-making can account for patterns of choices which act to reproduce patterns of social inequality. In making choices about, for example, whether to participate in higher education, young people and their families have to balance the rewards offered by such participation, the costs to themselves and the risks that they will not be successful. These factors present themselves differently to people in different social locations, especially if we accept, as Goldthorpe argues, that the most important motivation underlying these choices is to avoid downward mobility; ending up in a worse situation than their parents. People in more advantaged positions are better equipped to meet the costs, more confident of success and are anyway propelled into ambitious educational routes by the need to at least maintain the situation of their parents. People from less advantaged locations are less well equipped for the costs, less confident and do not need to take such routes to avoid downward mobility. This approach has many attractions, especially that, as Goldthorpe points out, rationality is a very parsimonious basis for theory, it is 'its own explanation' (2007a: 26). But, as Goldthorpe also recognizes, there is not a great deal of empirical evidence on actual processes of decision-making. We would add that there is little evidence on the points in time at which these decisions are made and possibly changed, or on who within families makes these decisions, the role of the children themselves and of their parents. Beck's account of choice matches many accounts of the perceptions of young people themselves about the influences on their lives but fails to account for structured patterns of inequality in outcomes. Goldthope's approach gives an elegant and powerful explanation for unequal outcomes but has limited support from empirical data on choice-making. Any attempt to apply theories of choice to children as young as those who are the subject of this book must address a variety of issues including the relationship between children and their families, the understandings children have of the nature of the choices available to them and the consequences of different choices, and the extent to which they feel that choices are within their power. An initial question must be; who is making choices, children or their parents and families? As we have seen, children's expressed intentions at an

Introduction

15

early age can be a good predictor of what they actually do later, especially with regard to educational participation. However, these intentions and actions may reflect family choices and pressures as much as their own preferences. One of the issues we shall be considering in Chapter 3 is the extent to which children feel that they are making choices in accordance with their parents' wishes and how far they see parental preferences as influencing decisions about educational participation. A significant weakness in Beck's analysis is the lack of attention to generational and inter-generational factors. His actors appear from nowhere as choice-making, reflexive individuals. Yet in the earliest part of their biographies they will have been small children whose choices were made for them. How children emerge from their families into individualism is never considered. The family is one of Beck's notorious 'zombie' categories; traditional ways of understanding society which are still used as labels but no longer have relevance to the ways people experience their lives. Families, for Beck, are now matters of choice, as the dissolution of relationships and formation of new relationships creates a multiplicity of patterns of domesticity and parenthood which do not correspond to a concept like 'family'. But despite this complexity there is no doubt that almost all children are part of some family-like pattern of association and that, at a subjective level, the notion of family is universally understood and family relationships highly valued (Croll and Moses 2005; Schneider and Stevenson 1999). At the same time, the idea of rational choices made by families located in particular class situations, offered by Goldthorpe, perhaps underestimates the growing complexity of people's family situations as well as the difficulties in describing families in class terms. Choices depend on people having knowledge of alternatives, and rational choices depend on knowing the costs, risks and benefits of different actions and of understanding the relationship between particular courses of action and different outcomes. The question of the age of the children we are studying arises again in terms of the level of knowledge and understanding children of this age may have of different educational and occupational routes and the relationships between these. If children are to make meaningful choices about things like jobs and higher education, they need to know what the alternatives are and to understand the consequences of particular educational routes. The understanding they have of means—ends relationships is crucial if choices are to be understood rationally. For example, children wanting to go to university need to understand that successful school careers are usually necessary, and children wanting professional and other wellrewarded occupations need to know that higher education is the way into many of these. Studies of young people a good deal older than our sample have shown a degree of vagueness and confusion about the requirements, both academic and financial, of attending university (Archer et al. 2007;

16


Hatchings and Archer 2000). The study of American adolescents by Schneider and Stevenson (1999) showed considerable misalignment between occupational ambitions and educational intentions. CrolPs (2008) study of young people in the British Household Panel Survey also showed that some young people had occupational ambitions demanding greater qualifications than they were attempting, while others had educational attainments which would have qualified them for more ambitious job outcomes than they said they wanted. While we would not necessarily expect 11- and 12-year-olds to have a detailed understanding of the requirements of particular occupations or of the structure of the UK higher education system, some sense of what is needed in order to enter higher education and some types of occupation is required if they are to make meaningful choices. Of course, this is not just an issue of what the child knows and understands, but also of the information available from parents and other family members. It is likely that some children are much better informed than others about educational and occupational possibilities. A final issue to do with the choices children make is that of how far they see different outcomes as real possibilities for themselves and the extent to which they believe that effort and educational success will be rewarded. The first depends upon a notion of agency or self-efficacy; a belief that they have the capacity to achieve their goals. As we saw earlier, there is evidence that children, in general, believe in agency; that outcomes in life come about through effort and achievement. However, it is not necessarily clear that children at this age have the capacity for self-assessment in terms of academic potential or that they understand the risks of academic failure. In Chapter 6 we investigate how children see their personal capacities and how far different children have greater and lesser senses of their current and future achievements. As well as a sense of their personal capacities children also need to believe that the educational system works; that the implied contract of exchanging effort at school for good qualifications and jobs will be honoured. Therefore we also look at trust in the system; trust that their own school is doing its best for them and that educational success will be rewarded.

Group differences and marginalization So far we have focused principally on children or pupils in general, looking at overall patterns of orientations and attitudes to the school and to the future. But it is also important to consider differences between different groups of children. There are substantial differences between educational participation and achievements and occupational outcomes for children, which are related to the socio-economic situation of their families, their gender and their

Introduction

17

ethnicity (Connolly 2006). These differences have to be seen in the context of substantial aggregate shifts in patterns of educational participation, qualifications and occupational destinations over the past 50 or so years. Over this period there has been a large-scale upward shift in young people staying in school and going into higher education, and a shift in employment with a growth in numbers of professional and managerial jobs and a decrease in manual occupations (Bynner et al. 2003). At the same time there has been a massive upward shift in the educational participation and achievements of females, to the point where females outperform males at most points of the educational spectrum (Makepeace et al. 2003). But despite the overall upward shift in educational performance and social mobility, the relative situation of people from different socio-economic backgrounds has remained largely unchanged (Patterson and lannelli 2006). Also, the educational success of females has not, so far, been reflected in the representation of women at the most senior levels of employment (Weiner et al. 1997). What happens to young people as they move through the educational system and into work is crucial in understanding the differences and inequalities apparent in educational and occupational backgrounds. Furlong and Cartmel make the important point that the transition from school to work is how social reproduction happens; 'young people are at the crossroads of the process of social reproduction' (1997: 2). Most evidence shows that young people from all social groups are positive about their schools and positive about educational opportunities. As Goldthorpe (2007b) has argued, the very much increased proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education during the later years of the twentieth century shows that explanations for socio-economic differences in participation in terms of cultural barriers and 'cultural capital' cannot be sustained. Furlong also argues 'class cultures can no longer be seen as providing significant barriers to educational progression' and suggests that we have moved to a situation where 'the benefits derived from qualifications are more or less universally acknowledged' (2004: 12—13). In the analysis in subsequent chapters we shall be investigating how far these benefits are recognized by our 11- and 12-year-olds and how far they are seen to be within their grasp, both overall and for children from different backgrounds. Despite the evidence that the great majority of young people enjoy and value education, studies have also been quoted where individual children are quoted as feeling rejected by, and marginal to, their schools and education (e.g., Arnot and Reay 2004; Reay and Wiliam 1999). These children felt that teachers do not value them, largely because of the backgrounds they come from. In less extreme terms, de Graaf agues that for children from certain backgrounds school is 'not as much fun' (2007: 2) as it is for others and, although they accept the instrumental value of school, they still want to leave as soon as possible. He also claims that some children are anxious that they

18


will 'not feel at home in higher education' (2007: 3) or that they will not be able to meet the appropriate academic standards. We know that a minority of young people in the UK do leave school as soon as possible and that a substantial proportion of these are not leaving in order to take up positive alternatives. The NEET (not in employment education or training) youngsters, currently making up about 10 per cent of 16- to 18-year-olds (DCSF 2008), are widely perceived as a problematic group with very poor longer-term economic and social prospects (Social Exclusion Unit 1999). We shall be looking at evidence for early signs of this kind marginalization in terms of negative feelings about school, their own educational performance and their aims for the future. One of our starting points was the evidence that what children say about staying on at school when they are just starting secondary education is a good predictor of actual behaviour. It is important to establish whether such intentions are part of a wider syndrome of alienation from school for a subset of children.

An overview In the chapters that follow we pick up many of these themes and relate them to the evidence from questionnaires and interviews obtained from a representative sample of children starting their secondary school careers. First we shall look, in Chapter 2, at how children see their personal futures; what they are hoping for from the future in terms of qualifications, jobs, children, marriage and homes; how far they think these hopes are realizable; and what they think such outcomes will depend on. We then turn to specifically educational intentions and in Chapter 3 consider the children's plans with regard to staying in education post-16, going on to university and the motivation underlying particular planned educational routes. This chapter addresses one of the key questions of our study with regard to influences on rates of participation in education and the extent to which children starting secondary school understand the educational possibilities available to them and have these routes at least partially planned out. In Chapter 4 we move on to children's occupational ambitions and look at the extent to which they have occupational plans at this age, and the nature of these plans. As we argued previously in Chapter 1, young people moving into jobs is how social reproduction occurs and the relationship between the children's job choices and the occupations of their parents is a particular focus of the analysis. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are mostly focused on how children see their futures. In Chapters 5, 6 and 7 we move to the present. In Chapter 5 we look at what children think about their experiences of school; what they see as the purposes of education and how much they enjoy and value different aspects of school. We use both statistical analysis and the

Introduction

19

children's own words to try to convey a sense of the complexity of attitudes to school and the way that feelings about other children, their teachers and their aims for the future influence these attitudes. A specific aspect of children's feelings about school is their sense of themselves as learners, and this is considered in detail in Chapter 6. Here we analyse children's views on how well they are getting on academically and how well they expect to perform in the future. This is a key issue with regard to the sense of personal efficacy discussed above and the extent to which children think that particular aims are attainable. The children are also attending different schools with widely differing typical levels of educational attainment, as well as being, for the most part, allocated to different attainment-based sets for at least some of their teaching. Chapter 6 also looks at the influence on learner identities of the children's different places in this academic hierarchy. One of the issues raised by some of the other studies of children's experiences at school is the extent of negative attitudes and even anti-school subcultures. In Chapter 7 we present a picture first of children who plan to leave school as soon as possible and then of children who express strongly negative responses to at least some aspects of school. This makes it possible to look at characteristics of the exceptions to the generally positive view of school to come out of the previous analyses. Finally, in Chapter 8, we bring together aspects of the preceding discussion to consider different patterns of influence on the current experiences and future intentions of the children in the sample. As will become apparent, the children have different patterns of aims for their educational and occupational futures and, in particular, have differing degrees of coherence and consistency in their plans and different levels of awareness and knowledge about the possibilities open to them. The children also differ with regard to the levels of academic attainment of the schools they attend and the sets they are in, their socio-economic characteristics in terms of ethnicity, gender and their parents' occupations, and in personal characteristics such as their belief in their academic capabilities, their confidence that academic commitment will be rewarded and their knowledge of the requirements for different educational and occupational destinations. In this way we try to interrelate children's lives in the present and children's hopes for the future, and to consider the ways in which different aspects of these lives influence choices about the future in a fashion which may have consequences for those futures.


Chapter 2


Introduction A key issue with regard to the central concerns of this book is the extent to which children have a sense of their future lives and, where they do, what they hope for and expect from their futures and what they think will determine the shape and direction these futures will take. Can children see themselves as adults, and what do they hope that their adult lives will be like? There is mixed evidence about the extent to which young children can project into their futures. For example, the study by Christensen and James (James 2005), discussed in the Chapter 1, found that 10-year-olds have a very limited sense of their future lives, although they are still able to talk about jobs and children and marriage. These children were a little younger than those in the present study. The study by Croll and Moses (2005), which is one of the starting points for the present work, found that children at the age of 11 were able to make predictions about their future educational participation which turned out to be remarkably accurate. In the questionnaires and interviews we were concerned first to establish that children could think meaningfully about their future. The discussions and preliminary interviews conducted as part of the pilot work for the project suggested that nearly all children had a good sense of what their future lives may be like and also the sorts of things that would influence them. The responses to the questionnaires in the main study showed a coherence that demonstrated that children understood our questions and had thought about their answers, and the interview data often showed a thoughtful engagement with decisions that would affect their futures. One of the features of the questionnaire survey was the care children put into making sure that what they were saying was clear, indicated by crossings out and notes on the questionnaires. This was especially so with regard to questions about school but also applied to questions about the future. In considering children's sense of the future we are concerned, at this point, with two issues. The first is what they want from their futures and those

22


aspects of their adult biographies they see as the focus of their hopes. The second is how achievable they think their hopes are and the extent to which they see their own agency as determining their futures. In the questionnaire survey these issues were approached through two sets of questions. The first set of questions, reported in Table 2.1, presented children with outcomes for the future and asked if they would like these 'a lot', 'a little' or 'not at all'. The specific items included things related to careers such as a good job, qualifications, money and status and also things related to family and domestic life such as having children, marriage and owning their homes. After the children had rated how much they wanted these various future possibilities they were then asked to say which three they wanted most. The second set of questions presented the children with various statements about possible determinants of their futures and asked how much they agreed with them. These statements are reported in Table 2.2 and relate to the influence of educational success and participation, the influence of personal effort and the influence of luck on their future lives. Children were also asked if they expected to get a good job.

Hopes for the future The ratings of how much children wanted various aspects of life in their futures are given in Table 2.1. The first thing to note is that most children wanted most of the things they were presented with and, generally, they wanted them strongly. The figures on the right-hand side of Table 2.1 give the percentages of children saying they wanted things 'a lot'. All the items reported here were wanted 'a lot' by well over half of the children and half of them by over 80 per cent of the children. By far the most highly rated item was a good job, and career-related items generally were highly rated, with money and good qualifications among the highest ratings and a job people look up to wanted 'a lot' by two-thirds of the children. Domestic aspects of the future were generally below career aspects although they were still wanted 'a lot' by most of the children. About 60 per cent wanted to have children, slightly more than this wanted to get married and slightly less to live close to their families. The item about owning your own home can be seen as falling between the domestic and the employment aspects of the future. The home is a place for the family but also depends on a level of economic success that will probably depend on employment. A very high proportion of children wanted to own their own home 'a lot' and this item was rated second only to having a good job as the thing children were most likely to say they wanted 'a lot'.

23

Children and the future Table 2.1 What children want for their futures Three things wanted most

A good job Money Good qualifications Own your own home Have children Get married Live close to your family A job people look up to N=

Would like a lot

Boys

Girls

All

Boys

Girls

All

78.7% 43.5% 33.7% 29.5% 24.5% 30.4% 20.3% 4.7%

77.5% 40.0% 36.6% 22.7% 25.7% 20.6% 25.9% 7.9%

77.9% 41.6% 35.3% 25.8% 25.2% 25.0% 23.4% 6.4%

94.8% 85.2% 84.6% 89.5% 61.1% 64.0% 53.0% 68.3%

93.9% 80.6% 87.0% 84.6% 58.4% 64.0% 61.7% 65.7%

94.3% 82.8% 85.9% 86.8% 59.6% 64.0% 57.7% 66.9%

359

432

791

359

432

791

The ratings of how much they wanted various things for the future gave children freedom to select as many desirable outcomes as they liked. They could say that they wanted all of them 'a lot' and some children did so. However, the next part of the question forced children to make choices and to identify the three things that they wanted most. The results from this question are presented in the first three columns of Table 2.1. Compared with the data in the other columns these could be regarded as an indication of the intensity of future preferences. As would be expected the relative standing of the different items does not change much from the rankings based on wanting things 'a lot' although there are some differences. However, what emerges most strikingly from the table is that, when the children were forced to make choices between different aspects of their futures by the format of the question, how much wanting a good job stands out. Wanting a good job was the top ranked of all things children wanted in the future but, when they were able to list all the things they wanted, it was less than ten percentage points above things like qualifications and owning your own home. But when choices were forced on the children, the security of a good job was picked by almost twice as many as the next highest ranked and by three times as many as marriage, children and home ownership. A good job seems to be a defining aspect of children's hopes for their futures, and much more important to most of them than money, qualifications and family life. The analysis of the forced choices also shows that wanting money becomes more important when children have to say what they want most and that wanting the status of a job 'people look up to' becomes less important. In particular, two-thirds of the children said that they wanted a job people looked up to 'a lot', more than said that they wanted marriage or children. But a job people look up to hardly figured at all in the three things they wanted most, while about a quarter said that marriage, and about the

24


same proportion children, were among the things they wanted most. Almost exactly 40 per cent of children mentioned either marriage or children as one of the things they wanted most for the future, about half the numbers of those saying they most wanted a good job. Another item to shift in importance when children had to say what they wanted most was owning your own home. When they could choose as many things as they liked, owning your own home was ranked close to getting a good job and above money and qualifications, and well above marriage and children in importance. However, when children were choosing what they most wanted, owning their own home slipped back in relative importance and had a similar ranking to children and families, and far below having a good job. A particularly striking feature of the data presented in Table 2.1 is the similarity of the responses of the boys and the girls. In particular, the commitment to having a good job as a central feature of hopes for the future is virtually identical for males and females in the sample. Boys put slightly more emphasis on having money, and girls slightly more emphasis on qualifications, but the differences are small and the rankings very similar for boys and girls. This basic gender similarity is also the case with regard to domestic aspects of their futures. In particular, boys and girls are equally likely to say that they want children and that this is one of the three things they want most. Boys are slightly more likely to say that they want to own their own home and this difference increases when they have to say what is most important. Boys and girls are identical in saying they want to get married, but when they have to choose the most important things for their future, boys are 50 per cent more likely to choose marriage. There was a positive but fairly weak association between wanting children and wanting to get married. Those who had children as one of their three most wanted choices were more likely to have marriage in the three most wanted than other children, and this was true both for boys and for girls. However, there was no automatic link between children and marriage and two-fifths of those with children in the first three choices did not have marriage in the first three choices. This was especially so for the girls. Only a third of the girls who said that children were one of the three things they wanted most also said that marriage was among the three they most wanted. The data show no sign of a gender stereotyped vision of the future held by these children. Any idea that jobs and qualifications are the things that males should aim for and that marriage and children are the way that females should define their futures has disappeared for this generation of children. Girls, as much as boys, are aiming for good jobs and money and qualifications. Boys, as much as, or even perhaps more than, girls,are fairly likely to say they want marriage and children but, like the girls, do not put as

25


high a priority on this as on a good job and other career-related aspects of the future. As well as the similarity of choices for boys and girls, there was the basic similarity between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, shown in Table 2.2. Children whose parents were in professional and managerial non-manual occupations had exactly the same level of choices for good jobs and qualifications as children from skilled non-manual and manual occupational backgrounds. There was a tendency for children from manual backgrounds to give more emphasis to money, and children from professional and managerial backgrounds to give more emphasis to marriage, but the overall picture is of hopes for the future held in common by children from all backgrounds. This sample of children did not, in general, polarize into those who saw their futures in career terms and those who saw their futures in family terms. At the level of saying what they wanted 'a lot' there was no negative association between wanting jobs and wanting families. At the level of what they wanted most, the forced choice format virtually ensures a degree of negative association: if one thing is in the three most wanted list, others cannot be. However, the negative association was fairly weak. Seventy per cent of those most wanting children or marriage also wanted a good job, compared with just under 80 per cent for the sample as a whole. And about 30 per cent of those most wanting good jobs also wanted marriage or children, compared with 40 per cent for the whole sample. Table 2.2 Parental occupation and what children want for their future Parental occupation Three things wanted most

Professional and managerial (%)

Skilled nonmanual (;%)

Manual (%)

A good job Money Good qualifications Own your own home Have children Get married Live close to your family A job people look up to

75.9% 36.8% 33.3% 27.2% 24.6% 31.1% 22.4% 5.5% 228

76.6% 33.9% 38.6% 26.9% 28.1% 26.3% 19.9% 7.0% 171

77.7% 48.6% 34.9% 25.0% 25.0% 22.6% 24.0% 6.8% 292

N=

26


Determinants of the future As well as asking what children wanted for their futures we were also concerned to establish if they expected that some of these hopes would be realized and what they saw as the determinants of future outcomes. Partly we were concerned with this in relation to their views of school and how far they thought that what happened at school would determine what would happen in the future. This is dealt with in more detail in Chapter 5 but is also considered briefly here. More generally, we were concerned with the role they attributed to personal agency: how far they saw the way their personal future would work out in terms of their own efforts and capabilities, and how far they saw it as something beyond their control. The question of children's sense of agency is relevant to some of the theoretical issues considered in the previous chapter. First, it relates to the idea of children as social actors in their own right and the extent to which ideas about children actively constructing their own lives matches the perspectives of the children themselves. Second, the idea of agency and choices relates to ideas about the way that patterns of social inequality are reproduced across generations and the role of values held by children and their families and the choices that they see as available to them in this process. Third, it relates to ideas about individualization associated with Ulrich Beck (1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002), with the implication that future identities have to be actively created and that life choices are a central feature of contemporary society compared with an earlier period of much more socially constrained identities. As was apparent from the analysis of what children wanted for their futures, having a good job was by far the most important aspiration for this sample of children. In Chapter 4 we explore in more detail what they meant by a 'good job'. In this section we are concerned with whether they think a good job, however defined, is a realistic expectation. One of the statements children were asked to respond to was T expect to get a good job'. As Table 2.3 shows, almost two-thirds of the children agreed with this statement, just under a third were not sure and only one in twenty of the children disagreed. So a majority of the children were optimistic about getting a good job but a substantial minority were uncertain about this aspect of their futures. Again, we must emphasize that the children were only aged 11 and 12 and so this level of uncertainty is not at all surprising. However, those who were not uncertain were almost all positive and only a very small proportion of children were negative about their occupational futures. If children were either positive or uncertain about their occupational futures then what did they see as influencing these futures? Most of all they saw success at school as a key factor. As Table 2.3 shows, nearly all the children agreed 'Doing well at school makes a difference in life' and almost no

27


one disagreed with this statement. Over three-quarters thought that staying on at school would help them get a better job: a much higher proportion than were definitely planning to stay on, as the analysis in Chapter 3 shows. And over 60 per cent thought they might regret leaving early, while only one in ten rejected this statement. Overall, children seem to have accepted the 'official' school view that future employment prospects would be strongly influenced by success at school. The children were also asked to respond to statements about the role of agency that was not specific to the school with regard to the future. The responses to the contrasting statements, Tf you try hard you will get what you want in life' and 'People get ahead through luck' are also given in Table 2.3. Over half the children accepted the view that effort would be rewarded but a quarter were unsure and nearly one in five rejected this. Only a small minority accepted the statement that people get ahead through luck, but more than one in three were unsure and half rejected this view. Interestingly, although these statements appear to contrast effort with chance the responses to them were not negatively related (Kendall's tau-b for ordinal data was very slightly positive at 0.06). This means that some children were able to hold the view that people got ahead through luck and that if you tried hard enough you would get what you wanted out of life. Of course, these statements, although providing very different attributions for success, are not necessarily contradictory. They can be seen as offering different avenues to success, which may both apply to different people or in different circumstances. The general picture to emerge is that of children being cautiously optimistic about their futures and mainly thinking that effort will be rewarded while, at the same time, showing a degree of uncertainty about overall determinants of the future. Nevertheless, a belief in the value of school remains central. This was the position with regard to children overall and, as Table 2.3 Influences on the future % Agree Doing well at school makes a difference in life Staying on will help me get a better job I expect to get a good job If I leave school early I might regret it If you try hard you will get what you want in life People get ahead through luck

% Not sure

% Disagree N

86.9

9.7

3.4

824

77.1 62.7 61.8 55.6

15.8 32.6 28.3 26.2

7.1 4.8 9.9 18.2

822 817 819 822

15.1

35.0

49.9

817

28


with the data on what they wanted in the future, few group differences emerged. Boys and girls gave virtually identical responses to the statements in Table 2.3 and there were few differences related to socio-economic background. In particular, children whose parents were in professional, skilled non-manual and manual occupations were equally likely to expect to get a good job, to believe that school made a difference and that effort would be rewarded (Table 2.4). However, children whose parents were in nonmanual occupations were more likely to think that staying on at school would get them a better job and children whose parents were in manual occupations were more likely to attribute success to luck.

Planning for the future 'It's best to plan ahead . . .' (Mark). Mark's comment reflects a view held by many of the children interviewed during the research. The extent to which these children had plans for the future varied considerably. Some had mapped out educational and occupational futures in considerable detail. These are considered further in Chapters 3 and 4 where educational and occupational futures are discussed. But typical patterns included staying at school post-16, doing A levels, going to university and a professional career in law, medicine or accountancy. Other children had equally definite ideas about leaving at 16 and following a parent (in practice a father) into skilled manual work. Many children had nothing like this degree of precision about their future plans but, even among children who were very vague about future education and careers, the idea that they wanted a good job in the future was virtually universal. In this respect, the interview data reflected the Table 2.4 Parental occupation and influences on the future (percentage agreeing) Parental occupation Professional and

managerial Doing well at school makes a difference in life Staying on will help me get a better job I expect to get a good job If I leave school early I might regret it If you try hard you will get what you want in life People get ahead through luck N=

91.1% 84.3% 60.5% 69.2% 58.3% 12.8% 235

Skilled Manual nonmanual 88.2% 79.5% 61.8% 59.4% 53.2% 8.9% 170

85.0% 75.1% 61.8% 61.3% 56.1% 18.8% 305


29

questionnaire data pretty much exactly in that the idea of a good job was predominant whether they were prompted through a question on the questionnaire or whether they were asked in general terms to talk in the interview about their futures. The idea of a future involving a good job was usually presented in one of two types of discourse. On the one hand, a good job was discussed by the children in terms of how it could be obtained. On the other hand, a good job was discussed in terms of what it would provide and the other things it would make possible. Of course, many children had both these perspectives and talked in terms both of how they could get the sort of job they wanted and what it would mean for them.

Getting a good job For example, Mark said he wanted to be a lawyer when he is older because 'Being a lawyer is a good job'. He knew that staying in education was therefore very important to achieving this ambition, as was doing well at school generally. As he thought he will have to work very hard to achieve his aims, staying on in the sixth form in current school 'is the best way of getting all the help I can'. Mark went on to say that even if he did not become a lawyer he would want a similar sort of job and that would also involve higher education: 'The best jobs that earn well need a degree. I have planned it all out, if I am going to have a family then I am gonna need a lot of money and . . . and to do that I will need money behind me.' Here is someone who has planned in detail what he wants both in terms of how he can get the job he wants and the family life that it will provide for. A different perspective which a much less clear view of the future comes from Thomas who says he hasn't thought about what he will do in the future but just knows that he needs to have good qualifications to be able to get a good job: T don't feel you can get a good job without them.' Although many children dwell on qualifications when asked about their futures, the things that they think these qualifications will make available to them are an indication of the views they have of the future. They also show how the idea of a realistic future can be held alongside fantasy ideas about futures. Emma explained how she considers educational qualifications as extremely important in that 'they help you get a better job and help you become the person you really want to be'. Previously she had said that what she really wanted to be was a pop singer and be famous just like Girls Aloud (a female pop group). But at the same time she had taken on board that qualifications would be crucial to her realistic future. What also came out was a sense that qualifications would be something you carried forward into the future and would have for the rest of your life. Zainub said: 'Getting good

30


qualifications is really important 'cause they last you your whole life. So, I think getting good qualifications is probably the most important thing in my life.' Jake who was not sure if he would stay on post-16 was nevertheless very conscious that his level of qualifications would stay with him: Interviewer'. Jake'.

Do you think you can do qualifications when you leave school? Well yeah, I would look at redoing my stuff when I leave school if I don't get a good grade otherwise you are stuck with a low grade for the rest of your life.

And this sort of view was held by children who did not particularly enjoy school but saw it as determining their future. Michael said he did not like coming to school but he knew he had to attend if he wanted to get a good job. And Fatoumata explained that she had changed her mind about what she had put on the questionnaire about not regretting it if she left school: 'now I think I would regret it if I didn't stay at school as [I could] get a better job'. In a similar vein, Sophie had taken on board what she had clearly been told about school and the future. She thinks she might regret it if she doesn't stay on at school: Yeah because normally you hear people saying 'I wish I had stayed on at school because then I could have a better job'. That is why I might stay on at school because you hear adults say it and if adults say it then you have to think about it. Ben planned to leave at 16 but nevertheless believed that it was important to do well at school: 'like I said, you can get a job without school but you can get a better job with school'. More generally he said that he is learning a lot of things that will be useful to his future. Even children who are not keen on school and qualifications still see their future in career terms. Justin, who was going to leave at 16, explained: 'I feel by then I've learned enough to start my career'. Many of the children had had advice from parents about future careers, as some of the examples above show. This kind of advice could be extremely varied. For example, Steven talked about how his parents had encouraged him to stand for the school council because it would be a good experience: 'like if I start being a leader . . . well I am not saying that I am bossy . . . but by being a leader now when I am older . . . 'cause my family always saying you are going to be a leader, like a manager or something high'. In contrast Ben's mother has more general advice:

Children and the future Ben'. Interviewer'. Ben'.

31

She just wants me to get a really good job to earn some money. Has she said what she thinks a good job is? No just one that earns lots of money.

But Ben and his mother, like Steven and his family, have a strong orientation towards a future dominated by the need for particular sorts of jobs.

Jobs for what? As well as talking about jobs in terms of the need for qualifications and other routes to getting them, the children talked about jobs in terms of what they would mean for other aspects of their futures. This was put in mostly material terms but it was not concerned primarily with money, and when children did say that they wanted jobs for money their ideas of their financial futures seemed relatively modest. Most commonly, secure and well-paid jobs were seen as a foundation for independence and for family life. Several children talked about being independent of their parents in the future. Zara worried, 'if I don't do well then I won't be able to get a good job and I will have to stay at home, living with my parents'. For Lucy, getting a job is very important because of wanting to live alone and be independent: 'like, 'cause then I'd be able to get my own stuff. If I have no money and my mum and dad can't lend me any then I'd be stuck 'cause I really want my own house so I can learn to do stuff by myself. As well as a job bringing independence, a common theme was that a job would enable you to have a family. Although family life involving children and marriage was not as important for the future for most children as a good job, it nevertheless featured as an important aspiration in several of the interviews. Several children also made the explicit connection between a job and a family life in terms of one paying for the other. Sarah said she wanted 'a good job so I can look after my own family'. And Emily said that what she wanted from a job was 'enough money; not to be rich but just enough to support my family and my children'. It is noticeable that both these girls are seeing themselves in a future role of not just having a family but as supporting it. Nowhere in the data, either from the boys or the girls, was there any indication that future gender roles with regard to supporting a family would be different for males and females. Sarah also equated having a good job with having lots of money so she will be able to travel and being able to 'do things'. She also wanted to have children but not until she has done some travelling, so she needs to have a good job first. Again, this is a future lifestyle that she clearly thinks she will be paying for herself.

32


Homes and families One of the factors mentioned by several children in connection with the importance of a good job was that of owning your own home. This had also emerged from the survey data as one of the most common things children wanted for their futures. Having your own was largely seen by the children in terms of independence from their parents, as well as being necessary in order to start their own families. The theme of independence came up in several interviews. Steven explained how having his own home is very important as he does not want to live with his parents for the rest of his life and he was also projecting forward to a future after his parents' deaths: I love my parents but, if I lived with them for too long I don't think my life would be happy and I wouldn't have any independence and, like, when I do lose them, I'd be kinda stuck on my own. If I have my own home, then when I do lose them, I will have had time to get used to it and time to learn what I need to. Thomas saw home ownership in economic terms. He wanted his own home, because he does not want a mortgage or to waste money renting a home: T really want something of my own . . . my dad's gonna start making me pay rent but I don't want to. I wanna live a bit on my own, have a bit of freedom and then what I really hope is that I have my own family. And Oliver said: T don't want to live in a box! [laughs] And I won't want to live at home for ever either. I would definitely want a home because I would want my own space.' This idea of independence from your family was widespread but not universal. Zainub gave great emphasis to the way that her family is very important and how she would hate to be far from them. Being near to them makes her feel safe. Sometimes she has to go and stay with other relatives and she gets terribly homesick. For this reason she does not want to marry. She wants to remain close to her family. In discussions of owning your own home it was not always clear that the children distinguished owning their own home and having their own home. Some children clearly identified ownership as indicating economic success as well as independence. But others were mainly focused on having somewhere to live separate from their parents. Lindsey wanted 'just a place I can call mine'. And Ricky explained: 'You don't have to stay with your parents for most of your life. You have a home of your own to go home to when you have children. I want my own home when I am eighteen'. These two themes of independence and having a family were commonly linked and the idea of marriage and, more particularly, children emerged as important for some of the children.


33

Although the questionnaire responses had given equal emphasis to marriage and children as aspects of the future, in the interviews the children were much more likely to say how they wanted children of their own than they were to say they wanted to get married. As with the questionnaire data, boys and girls were equally likely to see this as something they wanted in the future. Georgina said: I think it's nice to have someone there with you. I like them and I like being around them. I would like to have a family. There's only me at home. I have some step sisters and brothers but I don't see them very often so I would like to have a family and I would have more than one. In a similar vein John said of children: 'They're nice and I would like to have my own family. I don't want to be on my own when I'm older and when you're at home there is nothing to do. When you have your own family there will be plenty to do.' This idea of families, and especially children, as a central feature of a future life came out strongly for Emma who talked at length about her hopes for the future. Having children was a big part of what she wanted and was seen in terms of a domestically oriented everyday life: 'having children is important as without them you will be alone, with no one to talk to or do stuff with'. Josie also wanted children: T don't know why I just do.' Many of these family-related hopes for the future had clearly been thought out by the children, and the sorts of issues they would face in having children were discussed in a strikingly realistic fashion. One example was Mark who said he would love a family but was also worried that it will clash with his dream of moving to America. He also said that his own parents had him at a very young age and struggled for money: 'So I want to make and save money and then have a family when there is money to support one.' Sarah talked about her ambition is to get married and have her own family, and said that she knew she would need to have 'a good job so I can look after my own family'. As with most of the girls she saw herself as taking responsibilities for a family. Josie said: T need a good job with money to look after my family. I have to be good at something and I will be good at looking after my family.' To some extent Josie was seeing herself in a traditionally female caring role. However, she also saw herself supporting her family economically. The only other example that hinted at more traditional gender roles with regard to children was Charlotte explaining how things may not work out in the future in the way people hope for. In describing this uncertainty she said: '[It] always happen like that because other things happen — if you have children you might have to give up things to look after them.'

34

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Interviewer'. Charlotte'. Interviewer'. Charlotte'.

So do you think you would have to give up your job to look after your children? Not all, but sort of if you want to look after them. Would you want to? Yes.

Other children also saw the prospect of children as restricting but not in the same way as the girl quoted above. As we saw above, Sarah had talked about how she equates having a good job with having lots of money so she will be able to travel and being able to 'do things'. But she also wanted a family: 'I want to have children but not until I have done some travelling and had some fun so I need to have a good job first.' Not everyone who talked about families wanted children or marriage but very few explicitly rejected this. Carl said that he did not really want to get married or have children: 'if you have children they just get on you're nerves . . . if I go and get married to someone I was friends with at school and then years later they hear rumours about things I said about them at school and things I 'ave done, then it would destroy it. He was also one of the children who wanted to stay living at home, 'until I'm about 28, like my brother'. As we have seen, a domestic future figured equally in the plans of the boys and girls interviewed, with boys placing rather more emphasis on marriage than the girls. A group discussion involving two boys and two girls illustrated this. Oliver has been saying how he definitely wants to live away from his parents: Oliver'. Rachel: Edward'. Rachel:

I would want my own space. But you will get lonely away from your family. No, he will get a wife and kids. I know I really want them, all boys do I think. Yes, all boys do want them but it's not you that have to carry them. How can you even think about children now? I just can't imagine thinking about children now!

And later: Rachel:

Georgina:

Children . . . I really don't know if I want them. I just don't know how you could think about children now. It's just too far away. They're definitely not in my top three.

As the figures in Table 2.1 show, Rachel and Georgina are statistically more representative in not having families in their top three, but the views of Edward are not at all unusual and, whether or not they were in their top


35

three, a substantial majority of both boys and girls wanted marriage and children as part of their futures and commonly discussed them seriously in the interviews.

Luck and effort The questionnaire responses showed most children to be committed to the idea that outcomes in life reflected personal effort. A clear majority agreed that if you try hard you will get what you want in life. However, a quarter of the children were not sure about this and nearly one in five rejected it. At the same time half the children rejected the idea that people get ahead through luck and only a small proportion thought that this was true. In the interviews these ideas were explored further with the children and ideas about effort, luck and fairness as determinants of how lives would work out emerged from many of the children's comments. By far the dominant feature of these discussions was a sense of personal agency and a work ethic based on the idea that effort would be rewarded. A typical comment was Mark who believed that you get out of life what you put in: 'if you try your best you're bound to find success, people aren't luckier or unluckier than others, you get what you work for'. In a similar vein Thomas claimed 'you get out of life what you work for' and if you are not successful then he believed that it is down to a lack of effort on your part. And Zainub explained that she '[does not] believe in luck . . . [I] believe in self belief and determination and always working at your best'. She went on to explain that this is what she tells her younger brothers and sister (she is 12!): 'People who say that life is unfair make it so for themselves, life is what you say it is. It is just an excuse.' The censoriousness of this comment was not at all unusual. Steven was clear that schools have a lot to offer students so long as students are willing to work and put in that little bit extra: 'if you don't then there isn't much scope for you'. And Liam argued: Tf you muck around at school then you won't be very clever and you won't get the grades you want to get a job you want, where as if you work hard at school and concentrate then you might get cleverer and you might get the job the want.' Not all the children had this critical tone with regard to others, but most had a clear view that they themselves and others like them could succeed through effort. Matthew said 'you get out of life what you work for and you can still be a success in life if you work hard'. And Liam thought, Tf you try hard enough you might get the job that you want. Not everything that you want — but the job'. A few children had a more qualified view of the rewards for effort but still subscribed to a commitment to effort being rewarded. Zara said: 'if you work

36


hard you can be what you want to be'. But she also said: 'some people may get more opportunities than others'. However, she could not give examples of who had advantages over others. Similarly, Charlotte thought 'life is [not] always fair. You can do badly at school and still get a good job'. Just 15 per cent of the children had agreed on their questionnaires that people get ahead by luck and a further third of the sample were unsure about this. In the interviews there was little support for the idea of getting on through luck and several children explicitly rejected this view. Bahia said: 'I don't think people can get on just by luck. I don't think that can happen. You need to make your own chances and that is not luck.' Emma, talking about the role of luck, interpreted this as the luck to have personal characteristics of effort and application: some people are lucky in life, they learn in school. Unlucky ones don't listen and do as they are told and then later in life they will be unlucky. If you work hard you will be lucky and get the best jobs. School makes a big difference to what you want to do in the future. If you don't concentrate you can't do what you want to do. As long as you work and believe in yourself you will get what you want. So for her, if you were lucky enough to be a hard worker then you would find that hard work was rewarded. And Thomas explained how his father is always 'telling me to work hard and go to university'. His father has been successful in his career and attributes this to luck but now tells his son: 'You can't depend on luck, you must get qualifications.' Where children did talk about the role of luck this was almost entirely in the context of fantasy and celebrity-oriented aspects of the future. As we see in Chapter 4, when asked about future jobs, a minority of the children, about one in five of those naming specific jobs, said they wanted what we have called fantasy or quasi-fantasy occupations. For boys this was almost always a professional footballer and for girls almost always a pop singer. It was discussing these types of futures that the idea of being successful through luck was most likely to come up. David who had talked about wanting to be a footballer said that he might not achieve this because 'Life's not fair . . . like you can try really hard at football and you don't get spotted by scouts and that'. And Jane knew that her ambition of being a singer would not be realized: like I was talking about this to my mum the other day and I said, like for example singers and actors, they get in and get famous because they already know someone in the job. Like Britney Spears's sister, she got in because of who her sister is and so on and so forth and I think, since we don't know anyone famous, I won't make it.


37

Charlotte had talked in general terms about a lot of things in life being down to luck. But the example she gave was of 'Someone producing a CD and someone else might listen to it and like it and make you famous or you might not get that chance and then you would have to work hard to make it famous yourself. In this case she was still thinking that if she did not have luck it might be possible to work hard and be successful, and the role of effort is reasserted.

Views of the future The analysis of both the questionnaire and interview data shows that children of 11 and 12, in their first and second years at secondary school, had a strong sense of their personal futures and were able to project what these futures might look like and what they hoped for from them. This sense of the future was much stronger than that reported by Christensen and James (James 2005) from their study of 10-year-old children. The children in our study were about two years older than those in the Christensen and James study, a considerable period of time at this age. It may also be relevant that they had started secondary school and that this transition is marked by a greater awareness of future possibilities as they become part of an institution which leads on to employment or adult modes of study. Employment was absolutely key to these children's sense of their futures. The desire for a good job stood out above everything else in children's hopes for the future. Linked to this was the belief that doing well at school was the route to a good job. The nature of the jobs children wanted is examined in more detail in Chapter 4. What is apparent with regard to perceptions of the future is that a good job was linked by the children to future independence, security, a home and a family. All of these things also figured in children's hopes for the future, but not to nearly the same extent as having a good job. Most children wanted marriage and children of their own (but not necessarily both), although these were not priorities for the majority of children and some said it was too early to be thinking about these aspects of the future. In contrast, very few thought it was too early to be thinking about a job. What is very striking in the data, both with regard to employment and domesticity, was the absence of gender differences. Girls and boys were equally committed to satisfactory employment in the future and were also equally likely to want children and domesticity. Most children thought they would achieve a good job although a substantial minority were uncertain about this. Very few had written off their chances of a good job. The children also had a strong sense of personal agency and most subscribed to the view that effort would be rewarded and that their personal futures would depend on their own characteristics, ambitions and commitment. The view that the future depended on luck was only held by a

38


minority of children, and this was mainly in connection with celebrity culture and 'making it' in fantasy careers in sport and entertainment. There was very little sense among the children that life may not be a level playing field and that some people might start with advantages over others. There were suggestions in some of the interviews that life may not be fair and that some people might have opportunities denied to others but, perhaps not surprisingly, this was not elaborated on or clearly understood. In addition to the importance of a good job, other themes to emerge in children's perceptions of their futures were independence and security. There was also a general acceptance of the importance of qualifications, and credentialism has become very widely accepted even by children of this age. For these children we can see the school as a crucial link between the present and the future. Obviously these children have a sense of their present lives, and the role of school in these lives is explored in Chapter 5. As we have seen from the data discussed here, children also have a sense of their future lives. It is school which links these two perceptions in that how they do at school is seen by children as very influential in determining whether they will get what they want in the future. In Chapter 1 we discussed the theories of Ulrich Beck, in particular the notion of individualization and the idea that traditional determinants of the life course and of social identities had been replaced by a much more fluid and open-ended process in which autonomous individuals forged their own identities and determined their own lives. In some respects the perspectives on the future of the young people in this study match Beck's analysis. These children's responses to the future can be seen as indicating that they see themselves embarking on life as an individual project and as entailing a personal future which will depend on their own efforts and choices. But at the same time, these children see their futures very much in terms of employment, followed, for many, by settling down with their own homes, marriage and children. This sense of the future is nothing like the fluid search for personal identity and the possibilities of different lifestyles suggested by Beck's theories. Finally, we should note that there were very few differences in perceptions and hopes for the future related to the socio-economic situation of the children. Children from different backgrounds had broadly similar ambitions and saw the same sorts of things as influencing their future lives. However, we know that the socio-economic situation of families is related to outcomes for children, even if this relationship is probabalistic and by no means determining. In the next chapter we consider differences in educational plans of children from different backgrounds and in Chapter 4 we explore further the links between the job choices of the children and the jobs of their parents. But from the data on future plans it seems that the central ideas of wanting a good job and believing school success and personal effort are key to this is a general view across children from all backgrounds.

Chapter 3


Introduction The original starting point for the research reported in this book was the question of levels of educational participation: the proportion of school pupils continuing in education past the age at which it is compulsory, but also the proportions going on into higher education. These were identified as issues of considerable importance with regard to educational and social policy, both in respect of the absolute level of educational participation and with regard to differential levels of participation among different groups of young people. Currently the UK government has set a target of 50 per cent of young people attending university and, as we write, a new initiative has been announced which will effectively raise the school-leaving age and keep all young people in education and training until at least a year past the age when they can currently leave. These initiatives are designed to raise participation rates overall, but they are more specifically a response to the relatively low participation rates among young people from disadvantaged social backgrounds. Currently, attempts to improve participation rates have tended to focus on the curriculum and assessment arrangements for 14—19-year-olds. In particular, initiatives such as the introduction of diplomas are attempting to make the curriculum more relevant to young people who are felt to be unsuited to a traditional academic curriculum and to offer the possibility of worthwhile qualifications of a more vocationally oriented kind. Important as these initiatives are, there is reason to believe that important aspects of children's feelings about education and their future educational intentions are formed before they start to experience the 14—19 curriculum. In particular, an analysis of longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey has shown that what children say at the age of 11 or 12, when they are in their

40


first term of secondary school, about their post-16 intentions, is a very good predictor of what they actually do five years later (Croll and Moses 2005). This suggests that attitudes and orientations to school may be fixed, at least for some children, well before the 14—19 curriculum and its associated assessment procedures have had any chance to influence them.

Participation post-16 One of the main aims of this study was to explore in detail with children how they see their educational futures and to do so very early in their secondary school career. As we saw in the previous chapter, children of this age were able to reflect thoughtfully on their futures and frequently made the connection between education and other aspects of the future. In particular, most children felt that it was important to get qualifications and saw qualifications as the main route towards their main ambition, which was to get a good job. In the questionnaire children were asked directly about their intentions post-16; whether or not they planned to stay in education either at school or in other forms of post-16 provision. The results from this question are presented in Table 3.1, first for children overall and then separately for boys and girls and for children whose parents were in different types of occupations. Just over six in ten of the children said that they were going to stay in education, just under a fifth said they would definitely leave and a similar proportion said that they were not sure. These children were just a couple of years older than the first cohort of children for whom the age at which they can leave education is going to be increased by at least a year but, for a very substantial minority, the idea of staying on post-16 is either something they do not want to do or something they are uncertain about. Although a majority of the children said that they would stay on, the figure is perhaps lower than might have been expected Table 3.1 Intentions for participation post-16 Gender

Stay on Unsure Leave N =

Parental occupation

All

Boys

Girls

Professional and managerial

Skilled nonmanual

Manual

61.6% 19.9% 18.5% 829

55.9% 19.7% 23.5% 392

64.4% 19.3% 13.3% 437

71.7% 18.5% 9.9% 236

67.8% 15.5% 16.7% 174

55.3% 23.5% 21.2% 305


41

from other data to emerge from the study. For example, in Chapter 2 it was apparent that children nearly all wanted a good job and mainly made the connection between school, qualifications and satisfactory employment. Also, in Chapter 5 it is apparent that children both value school instrumentally and, for the most part, enjoy it as a social experience. The comparison of the intentions of different groups of children reflects well-established patterns of difference but also shows that all sorts of intentions are evident across all children. Girls are more likely than boys to say that they will stay on, reflecting the more positive views of school generally expressed by girls, their higher levels of average academic achievement and the higher levels of current post-16 participation of females. Girls were just as likely as boys to be unsure about their future intentions but were about ten percentage points lower on saying they would leave school. The differences between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds were also in the expected direction. Children whose parents worked in professional and managerial occupations were most likely to say that they would stay on and least likely to say that they would leave. Children of parents in skilled non-manual occupations were less likely than those from professional and managerial backgrounds to say that they would stay on and children whose parents were in manual occupations were even less likely. The children in the manual occupational group were twice as likely as those from professional and managerial backgrounds to say that they planned to leave at 16. These differences are in line with the known socio-economic characteristics of children who leave school early and confirm the policy concerns over the lower participation rates of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Nevertheless it should also be noted that the majority of children from families in manual occupations planned to stay on in post-16 education and only just over one in five said that they definitely planned to leave. So, while there was a clear association between socio-economic background and intended post-16 participation, it is also clear that a majority of children from all backgrounds were planning to stay in education. In this sense participation post-16 is becoming a norm irrespective of background. Children were also asked about their reasons for staying on or leaving. They were presented with a list of possible reasons and asked to nominate up to three. The results from these questions are presented in Table 3.2. By far the most common reasons for staying on were in order to get qualifications in order to get a job or to get into university. Three-quarters of the children said they needed qualifications for a job and 70 per cent said they needed qualifications for university. In all, over 90 per cent of the children who said they would stay on cited one or both of these reasons. These results match the analysis in Chapter 2 which showed the importance children attached to getting good jobs and are in accord with the analysis presented in Chapter 5 of the centrality of instrumental orientations to school.

42

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 3.2 Reasons for post-16 decision Stay on

Leave

Need qualifications for job

383 75.0%

Get a job and earn money

Need qualifications for university

361 70.6%

Don't like school

55 35.9%

Parents want you to stay on

154 30.1%

Friends will leave

36 23.3%

Friends will stay on

122 23.9%

No point in staying on

33 21.6%

Enjoy school subjects

71 13.9%

Will not do well enough

18 11.8%

Enjoy going to school

68 13.3%

Parents want you to leave

11 7.2%

N= 511

116

75.8%

N = 153

As we saw in Chapter 2, when children were asked about their future intentions in the interviews, staying on at school in order to get qualifications and a good job was one of the central themes. Zainub was quoted earlier saying, 'getting good qualifications is probably the most important thing in my life' and this was echoed by many of the children; 'Qualifications are good because they are the best way to a better career and they help you get the better jobs' (Jake). This also came out in one of the group discussions: Rachel'.

Oliver'.

I will definitely stay in the sixth form because I have a definite job I want to do and I know I will need A levels to be able to go to university. Me too. I will stay here. Well you have to really. You need to get a better education and you will if you stay on.

Rachel and Oliver, and many other children, were clear sighted and purposeful about their intentions; they knew that they would need good qualifications to realize their ambitions and that staying on at school was the best way to achieve this. While getting qualifications relevant to future employment was the most important reason for staying on at school, employment was also the main reason given for leaving school at 16. Three-quarters of the children who planned to leave said that this was so that they could get a job and start earning money. Children expressing these intentions did not generally dissent


43

from the orthodox view that education and qualifications were important with regard to jobs, but they either felt that they would have achieved at a satisfactory level by the time they were 16, or felt conflicting pressures of education and employment. Carl was adamant that he would leave school at 16. Like many of the boys, he had dreams of becoming a professional sportsman but knew that this was unlikely to happen and said he was determined to get a job and was prepared to 'take on any work I can'. He had said on his questionnaire that doing well at school makes a difference to life and that the things you learn in school are useful for the future but he was also sure he would not regret leaving school and was not concerned about how he would do in examinations. An important part of Carl's motivation for leaving school was economic: his parents were both unemployed and he felt that he needed to earn money as soon as possible. His parents were also keen that he should leave school and get a job when he was 16. But there was no sense that Carl felt under undue pressure to leave school or that he felt that this would involve wasting opportunities. In various ways secondary school was not working out well for Carl. He had enjoyed primary school where he said he was happy and knew all the teachers but he was much more ambivalent about secondary school. He had not enjoyed the experience of Year 7 where he had felt 'swamped' and vulnerable and he was also aware of bullying. Most of all though, he felt he was struggling academically, that he was not achieving as well as he had done at primary school and that his; 'grades . . . [were] slipping'. For Carl a number of factors had come together to create negative intentions for future educational participation: he felt that he would need to start earning money as soon as he could, but he was also not enjoying school much and did not feel he was achieving well. So while Carl accepted in principle that educational participation was valuable and was associated with desirable job prospects, he did not see this as working out for him. Some children thought of leaving school just in terms of income and without any reference to what they thought about education: 'I want to leave at 16 and start earning some money' (Ricky). And Justin, like Carl, planned to 'do some work to help my parents'. However, several of the children who planned to leave at 16 because they could then get a job thought that education was important but they would have had sufficient by the end of compulsory school. One boy who planned to leave told the interviewer that, 'You can't get nowt without a good education and I would rather have some education than none' (David). And others made it clear that their plan to leave was conditional on being able to get a satisfactory job. Liam, for example said: 'If I get a job before I leave school I will leave but if I don't get one then I'll stay on.' And Justin thought that what he was learning at school was useful but that he would have learned enough by the time he was 16:

44

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Interviewer'. Justin'.

So you are going to leave at 16? Yeah, [I] feel by then I'll have learned enough to start my career

One of the questionnaires was from a girl who had expressed strongly positive views on the importance of school, how it would help her get a job and its relevance for her future. She also insisted that she tried her hardest and generally liked school. Nevertheless she was going to leave at 16 and saw this mostly in career terms: 'I want to start my job early so I can get more successful.' Further reasons for decisions about staying in education were the influence of parents and friends. Nearly one in three of the children said that a reason for staying on was that their parents wanted them to and nearly one in four said they were influenced by the fact that their friends would stay on. Very few children said their parents wanted them to leave school, and the example given above of Carl's parents was unusual. However, about a quarter of those planning to leave said that one of the reasons was that their friends would leave. Where children had discussed educational futures with their parents this was almost always in a positive context of future participation and often involved higher education and possible jobs. For these children their educational careers had become a family project: 'My dad tells me what he hopes for me' (Steven); 'My mum asks me about it [future educational plans] a lot. She's always saying I need to think about it now' (Rachel); 'It's important to my parents that I get good qualifications . . . they just want me to work hard and get on so I don't waste my life away' (Max). However, several of the children interviewed had not discussed future educational possibilities with their parents and were sometimes unsure about what their parents wanted or expected them to do. This was also apparent from the questionnaire, where 37.5 per cent of the children replied that they did not know whether or not their parents wanted them to stay on at school (Table A3.1 in Appendix 2). The figure for those who themselves planned to stay on was a quarter but among the children planning to leave or unsure about their intentions it was well over half the parents who had not made their views known. These figures suggest that where parents did discuss educational plans with their children it was nearly always to encourage them to stay on; only one in twenty of the children reported that their parents wanted them to leave. Three-quarters of those planning to stay on reported that their parents wanted them to stay and virtually none reported that their parents wanted them to leave. But in many families discussions like this had not taken place and this was strongly associated with children planning to leave school or being unsure of their plans. This suggests that, in some respects, parental influence may be greater than is apparent from Table 3.2.


45

Thirty per cent of the children planning to stay on gave parental wishes as a reason. But other reasons such as jobs and qualifications may also reflect parental influences. There is certainly a very strong association between parental views and children's intentions shown in Table A3.1 in Appendix 2. Three-quarters of the stayers said their parents want them to stay and almost none said their parents want them to leave. In contrast, less than a fifth of the leavers and a third of those who are uncertain thought that their parents want them to stay on, and over a quarter of the leavers thought their parents want them to leave. Put another way, when children thought their parents wanted them to stay on, over 80 per cent planned to do so. But when children thought their parents did not want them to stay on, only 4 per cent planned to do so. Among children who did not know their parents' views, 40 per cent planned to stay on. The causal mechanisms underlying these associations are complex and cannot be simply interpreted as the influence of parental views. Children's own intentions may influence their perceptions of their parents and their responses to the experience of school may influence both their own and their parents' intentions. But the pattern of association is very strong indeed and shows that when parents are seen by their children as being positive about participation then the child is very likely to want to stay on at school. The figures also show that, although only a very small minority of parents are seen as clearly against participation, a very substantial number have not made their views known to their children and that this is negatively associated with their children's plans to stay on. Although many children talked about the discussions they had had with their parents about educational participation, virtually all saw it as their own decision. Only one of the children interviewed thought that this decision would be taken by his parents. Liam had wanted to leave school as long as he could get a satisfactory job. First he said that his parents were happy with his choice of job and with his plan to leave school. But then he said that they would only let him leave if they were happy about his job; Interviewer'. Liam'.

Interviewer'. Liam'.

What about your mum and dad? They are happy for me to do what I want. They agree that electrician is quite good and they let me pick what job I want and they agreed with it. So they are happy that you don't stay on at school? Yeah, they are happy with what my brother has done and if I can get a job like my brother then I don't have to stay on but if I can't get a job like that and need qualifications then they will probably send me back to post-16 to get better grades.

46


Only a minority of children said that a reason for staying on at school was that their friends would stay on and, even for those who did say this, it did not seem to be an important factor when they were interviewed. Many children had not discussed future intentions with their friends and were only guessing at their intentions, 'I expect they will all stay on but we don't really talk about it' (Bahia); 'I talk about it to my parents but not to my friends' (Zara); 'I think most of my friends will stay on but I'm not really sure. They all want good jobs so they will probably stay on' (Zainub). And Sophie thought that her friends would stay on but was not going to be influenced by this; 'I wouldn't stay on just because of my friends. I'd do my own thing'. Similarly when Edward was asked: Interviewer'. Edward'.

Is it important to you then, that your friends would be here too? No, it doesn't matter to me. I know what I wanna do and that's all that matters to me.

Almost exactly the same proportion of those planning to leave said that friends leaving was a factor as had those planning to stay on. For these children the fact that friends were leaving seemed to be a major influence; 'If I stay on and . . . [they do not] it won't be much fun' (Carl). However, this was a small group of children, less than one in twenty of the total sample. The figures in Table A3.2 in Appendix 2 show that three-quarters of the children could give an estimate of their friends' intentions. A fifth thought that all of their three closest friends would stay on and two-thirds thought that either all or some would stay on. Very few children expected none of their friends to stay on at school. There are two distinct groups in Table A3.2 where the child's own plans are firmly embedded in a friendship group. Just over a quarter of those staying on thought all their closest friends would do so and a slightly lower proportion of those planning to leave thought all their closest friends would leave. But generally the picture is much more mixed. Very few children did not have friends who they thought would stay on and only a minority thought all their friends would stay on. By far the most common response was that one or two of their three closest friends would stay at school. There was very little evidence of peer groups with a consistent rejection of school. Fewer than one in twenty of the children said that they would not stay on and nor would their friends. As is shown in Chapter 5, most children said that they enjoyed school and that they enjoyed school subjects. But enjoyment was not an important factor in the decision to stay on. Between 13 and 14 per cent gave each of these as a reason for staying on and about one in five gave one or the other, a lower figure than the influence of family or friends and very much lower than jobs and qualifications. This again reinforces the highly instrumental orientation


47

of most children to education. It is what education means for their futures that influences their intention to stay on, not that it is something they will find enjoyable, although most were enjoying their time at school. In contrast, a much higher proportion of those who planned to leave said that the fact that they did not enjoy school was a reason for leaving. Negative experiences of school seem to be more a factor in decisions to leave than are positive experiences a reason to stay on. Not enjoying school is experienced as a reason for getting out as soon as possible but the enjoyment of school is not in itself a reason to prolong it. It is not surprising that at the age of 11 or 12 some children were unsure about future intentions and about one in five said they did not know what they would do when they were 16. Many of these children were also uncertain about what their parents wanted them to do and what their friends would do. Nearly two-thirds did not know their parents' views (Table A3.1) and well over a third did not know what their friends' plans were (Table A3.2), much higher figures than those for other children. However, for most of the children who were unsure, the main reason was that this seemed a long time in the future and they did not know how they would feel by then or, in some cases, what their options might be. Lucy explained that she was deferring decisions until nearer the time they had to be made, "Cos I'm not sure if there will be other options and opportunities when I get to 16, like a job and that'. And Charlotte said that she had not made up her mind: 'I'm just going to wait and see how I feel when I get to year 11.' Similarly Max had not talked to his parents about staying on or leaving and did not know what they thought. He did not know what he would do: 'It's too far in the future to think about it now.'Jake had already given it some thought and knew about different post16 possibilities but he too was putting off a decision: Jake'. Interviewer'. Jake'. Interviewer'. Jake'.

I'm not quite sure. I'll probably stay on at the post-16 centre. Will you do A levels do you think? I'm not quite sure, I'll think about it in the later years. But you are looking towards staying on at school rather than getting a job at 16? I'm not quite sure. I'll probably think about it more in year 10. I might think about how it's going then.

For most children this uncertainty was presented in a very matter of fact way as something they would deal with when the time came. But for Jane not being sure what she wanted to do had become a major issue: [LJike I used to say that I wanted to be a lawyer but then when you discover over time all the other opportunities and things you can do, you become unsure and then it just gets depressing because you don't really

48

Children's Lives, Children's Futures know what you want to do yet . . . I get really stressed 'cause I don't know what I wanna do.

Most of the children who were undecided about future participation had thought about their educational futures and were aware that an important decision had to be made. Some were happy to put off the decision and others felt that they needed a better sense of their options, the possibilities for employment and more experience of how they were doing at, and enjoying, school. In some ways they were like the majority of those planning to leave in that they were attracted by the option to get a job and earn money but, unlike some of the leavers, they did not have firm occupational intentions and, like those planning to stay on, they saw the possibilities offered by further qualifications. But, unlike many of the children planning to stay on, they did not have the purposeful sense of the importance of future participation to their plans for the future. Some children could talk about staying on in terms of the qualifications they would need for the type of jobs they wanted, and some of those planning to leave either thought that they would have sufficient education for their career ambitions or felt that the need for an immediate income would take priority over other aims. In contrast, the children who were uncertain were not weighing up thought-through alternatives but were delaying decisions until they had a better sense of what the options were. Although the questions about staying on referred to all forms of post-16 participation, not just school, most children assumed that staying on meant staying on at school. A feature of the discussions over future participation with pupils at one of the schools was their very positive views of their sixth form. This was the school with the best examination results of all the schools in the sample, and both the school generally and its sixth form provision had a strong reputation locally. This had obviously been communicated to some of the pupils. Joanna said, T will probably stay here in the sixth form, it looks really good'. And Oliver had a clear view of his educational future based on the strength of what was on offer in the school: I think the point is. . . when you get to secondary school everything changes. When you see the sixth form you really want to do it, be part of it. At primary school, when you are in year 6, sixth form is just a word and you don't really care about it. Its not until you really know what a sixth form is that you want to do it. Children's sense of the academic performance of their own school is considered in more detail in Chapter 6. It was only in this one school that reference was made to the quality of sixth form provision as part of discussions about future participation but here it was recognized by all the pupils


49

interviewed. The sense among many children that post-16 participation is a natural part of their educational and later careers was strongly reinforced in this instance by the sense that an attractive option was readily available to them. In contrast, Nazreen who attended a school with poor examination results wanted to stay in education but not at her present school. She wanted to go to a school with a 'good' sixth form which she defined as having 'Good teachers, good subjects but mostly good exam results'.

Going to university Obviously, decisions about university were even further away than post-16 decisions and children did not necessarily understand what was involved in going to university or what they would need to do to get there. Nevertheless, for many children university was part of their career plans and this was often informed by a good understanding of what it involved in terms of school level qualifications and how it fitted into future plans. Most children were able to express an intention with regard to going to university, as can be seen in Table 3.3. About a third said that they were unsure, not surprisingly, a higher proportion than those who did not know what they would do post-16. However, two-thirds did express an intention and the great majority of these said that they wanted to go to university. Well over half of the total sample said that they wanted to go to university and only just over a tenth said that they did not. These children are expressing intentions about something a long way in the future; roughly as many years ahead as they have spent in school already; and also about a type of educational experience which they may be fairly unclear on. What is evident though is that aspiring to attend university has become a norm in the sense that a clear majority of children starting secondary school had this as an aspiration. In contrast, only about one in ten had decided at this stage that they do not want to go to university. Although a majority of children seem to have internalized a norm of university attendance, the extent of their knowledge of the process was very varied. The interviews showed that, while some children had a clear understanding of the processes involved, others were unsure as to what actually goes on at university and what they would need to do to get there. There is an interesting comparison between the intentions expressed in relation to continuing post-16 and attending university. Not unexpectedly, children were less certain about their intentions post-18 than they were about their intentions post-16. However, among those who did express an intention the ratio of participation to non-participation was about three to one for post16 but was about five to one for university. The percentage of those saying they wanted to go to university was less than five percentage points

50

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 3.3 Do you think you will go to university? Gender All

Boys

Parental occupation Girls

Professional

Manual

managerial

Skilled nonmanual

68.5% 24.6% 6.9% 232

60.1% 28.9% 11.0% 173

47.7% 39.7% 12.7% 301

and Yes

Unsure No N =

56.4% 32.7% 10.8% 822

48.1% 33.7% 14.9% 382

60.9% 30.2% 6.7% 440

lower than the percentage saying they would stay on post-16, while the percentage saying they would not go to university was about half the percentage saying they would not stay on post-16. The proportion saying they will definitely stay on post-16 is lower than the current post-16 participation rate, while the proportion saying they want to go to university is higher than the current higher education participation rate. In some respects, therefore, children are more positive about university than they are about the sixth form or other post-16 participation. Table 3.3 also compares the university intentions of boys and girls and of children from different socio-economic backgrounds. Similar gendered patterns can be seen with respect to children's plans for higher education as for their intentions for post-16 education. Over 60 per cent of girls said that they wanted to go to university compared with less 50 per cent of boys, and boys were more than twice as likely to say they did not want to go to university. In addition, three times as many boys as girls said that their parents did not want them to go to university. Comparing the university choices of students by socio-economic background, similar patterns to those of post-16 intentions are evident. Well over two-thirds of children from professional and managerial backgrounds want to go to university compared with under half of those from manual occupational backgrounds, with children from skilled non-manual backgrounds about halfway between these levels. Less than 7 per cent of children from professional and managerial backgrounds say that they do not want to go to university. For this social group the aspiration to go to university is almost universal even at a relatively early age. These results reflect the current patterns of involvement in higher education by children from differing backgrounds, which have given rise to concerns over the under-representation of those from less advantaged social positions. However, the results also reflect the massive upward shift in educational aspirations and participation in higher education of the last few decades. Nearly half of the children of manual workers wanted to go to university and only one in eight said they did


51

not. The very widespread nature of university aspirations is also apparent in Tables A3.3 and A3.4 in Appendix 2. When asked about their parents' views and their friends' intentions, only 4 per cent said their parents did not want them to go to university and only 6 per cent said that none of their friends were likely to go. So, despite the socio-economic bias in intentions, no substantial group of children from any background are cut off from higher education; most perceive it as at least a possibility, nearly all have friends who they think will go to university and very few think that their parents would be opposed to them going. As with post-16 participation, the children who expressed an intention for or against going to university were asked for the reasons for their intentions. By far the most important reason for going to university was to get a good job. This was cited by 90 per cent of the children. Seventy per cent agreed with a similar statement that you need a degree to be a success in life. Almost every child who hoped to go to university agreed with one or both of these statements. However, in contrast to the highly instrumental tone of most of the reasons, two-thirds of the children also said that they wanted to go to university so that they would be well-educated. Other reasons for going to university attracted much lower levels of agreement. Just over one in five said that parental expectations were a reason and only 6.5 per cent said that their friends going to university was a reason. As with post-16 participation, the figures in Table 3.4 may understate the extent of parental influence. Just over one in five of the children who wanted to go to university said that parental expectations were a reason. But the other reasons given in terms of jobs and the future may also reflect parental influences. In Table A3.3 we can see that 60 per cent of children were able to say whether or not their parents wanted them to go to university. Nearly all of those who knew what their parents felt about this said that their parents were in favour. Just as with intentions post-16, there is a very strong association between children's own intentions and their perceptions of their parents' views. Over three-quarters of those planning to go to university said that their parents wanted them to go and over three-quarters of those whose parents were in favour planned this for themselves. Less than 3 per cent of children whose parents wanted them to go to university definitely did not want this for themselves. In contrast, of the very small number of children whose parents did not want them to go to university very few said that they would like to go. And of those who did not know their parents' views, less than a third said that they wanted to go. As with post-16 participation, the causal processes here are likely to be complex. However, the association between parents' preferences and their children's intentions is very strong, and knowing what their parents think about higher education is associated with a positive parental view and with positive intentions from the children.

52

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 3.4 Reasons for university decision Attend university

Not attend university

In order to get a good job

422 90.9%

Better to get on with getting a job

62 69.7%

Need a degree to be a success in life

327 70.5%

Too expensive

31 34.8%

Want to be well-educated

308 66.4%

Parents will not want me to go

28 31.5%

102

Not for people like me

Parents will want me to

22.0% Friends will go

30 6.5%

Will not do well enough Don't need a degree

N = 464

26

29.2% 23 25.8% 11

12.4% N = 89

Figures on children's perceptions of their friends' intentions with regard to university are given in Table A3.4. Most children can also give an estimate of how many of their three best friends will go to university. Two-thirds could give a response and by far the most common estimate was that one or two of them would. For a few children their own intentions are strongly located in peer group intentions. The small group of children who said all their friends will go to university were almost all planning to go themselves. Only a minority of those who said none of their friends will go to university were definitely ruling this out for themselves. The great majority of children planning to attend university either did not know their friends' intentions or thought that one or two of them would go. This was also the case for children who were not planning to go to university or were unsure about their intentions. University intentions seemed less likely to be located in friendship patterns than they were in family preferences. Even more so than in the case of post-16 intentions, there was very little evidence of children being located in peer groups with a consistent rejection of university. As we have seen, only about one in ten of the children said a definite no to university. The most common reason was that it was better to get on with getting a job, which almost 70 per cent agreed with. As with staying on post16, employment dominates the reasons both for participation and nonparticipation. Jobs were overwhelmingly the most important reason for going to university and were also the most important reason for not going. These results almost exactly parallel the reasons for post-16 decisions. However,


53

other kinds of reasons also emerge as can be seen in Table 3.4. The absolute numbers of people giving reasons other than getting a job is small and the figures should be treated cautiously. However, some of them resonate with concerns over the way that universities do not attract sufficient people from certain parts of society. In particular, the issues of cost and of social exclusiveness are reflected in agreement with statements about university being too expensive and not being for people like them. Given the attention which has been paid to student debt and university fees it is perhaps surprising that only one in three of those who did not want to go to university said that cost was a factor. The figures for people agreeing with the statement that university is 'Not for people like me' is even lower. But, although the numbers are small, they provide some evidence that, alongside a positive and predominantly employment-oriented perspective on post-16 and higher education, there is a small minority of children who may already have formed the view that certain educational opportunities are closed to them. Table A3.5 in Appendix 2 shows the relationship of the different reasons for not going to university and parental occupations. The numbers in this table are small and should be treated cautiously but a clear difference between the children from different socio-economic backgrounds emerged with regard to two of the reasons given. Children from manual backgrounds were more likely than the other children to say that university was too expensive. And they were very much more likely to say that university was not for people like them while only one child from a professional or managerial family said this. The numbers are small and it was just 15 children from manual backgrounds who said that university was not for people like them. But where this view occurs it almost exclusively comes from children from manual backgrounds. In the interviews it became clear that some children had only a fairly vague notion of what a university was and what they needed to do to get there. However, nearly all the children understood that university was a more advanced and demanding form of education than school. Michael described university as being; 'for clever people and stuff. And Paul said that he might go to college, 'or even to university where you can study something deeper'. Liam said that he knew people who might go to university; 'because they are clever'. But Max had a more mixed view. He saw university as 'higher than school but lower than having a job'. Alongside the view that university is an advanced form of study and is for 'clever people' was a view expressed in the interviews that although university was a desirable outcome it might be beyond their academic capabilities. One in four of those who said they would not go to university gave not doing well enough at school as a reason. But this was also a concern among those who wanted to go to university and among those who were not sure. Thomas hoped to go to university and had been encouraged in this by his parents. He knew that it would be expensive but was sure that his parents would help him

54


with the costs. However, in other respects he does not think the path to university will be easy: 'it will need a lot of work and good grades'. He said 'it will be difficult for me' and that he finds it difficult at times to remain focused on school work. George also wants to stay on at school and do A levels in the hope that this will enable him to go on to university. He was 'not sure I'll get the grades' but said he would 'try hard and do my best'. Other children were unsure about university, mainly on the basis of their likely future academic performance. Adam was interested in university but uncertain about whether he would go. He talked about his future options and university as a possibility but said, 'I don't think I will though . . . it depends on what grades I get'. And Lucy was uncertain about whether her future performance would be sufficient for university: 'I am not saying that going to university is pointless but I am not sure if my GCSE grades would be good enough.' Other children thought that they needed to see how they got on at secondary school before deciding whether to aim for university: 'I need to work at school before deciding whether to go to university' (Christopher). The costs of university did not generally figure in the interviews. Thomas, quoted above, knew that it would be expensive but was confident that his parents would make it possible. In contrast Jane had also thought about future costs but saw these as something she would have to deal with herself. She had an unusually sophisticated understanding of the financial issues and explained that cost is not necessarily evaluated in direct terms but in relation to deferred debt and the anxiety associated with loan repayment from future salary. However, while she believed that debt would certainly make her think carefully about higher education, she also saw a university education as fundamental to her future identity. She believed that in the end she would go despite the financial problems: 'It [university] matters because education affects who you become . . . you just don't know it at the time.' There was just one girl among those interviewed who saw cost and future debt as a major barrier to higher education and, in particular, as a barrier to people from families such as hers. Helen said, 'my mum told me about debt. Debt puts you off, especially if you are poor. You might be really clever but you won't achieve it because you're poor. I think that's really sad. My mum signed a petition against university debt, loads of people did'. These children had a remarkably clear understanding of higher education and the financial and academic barriers there might be to university attendance. Other children were confused about higher education, sometimes seeing university as an alternative to going into the sixth form or as the same as a further education college. For example, Sarah wanted to leave school at 16 and go to university so that she could become a nursery nurse. Emma was also confused about alternative education routes although she did have an understanding of what university might offer and the relative status of different educational routes. First she discussed her post-16 options in terms of


55

choosing between sixth form and university and then between university and college: 'I might go to university instead of sixth form. I think you get a better education at university than at college. At college you don't study so much but at university you can get extra qualifications and you get to know more things about life.' Michael also wanted to go to university and had previously said that he wanted a career in law. He knew that at universities you take degrees and he knew that he needed to go to university to be a lawyer, but how he will get to university was very vague and he was not really aware of GCSEs and A levels, and like some other children he saw university and college as both being post-16 alternatives: Michael'. Interviewer'. Michael. Interviewer'. Michael.

I want to stay on, but I don't really know yet what I want to do, I haven't worked it out. So when you stay on because there is no sixth form you mean go to college? Yeah either college or university Do you know about GCSEs and A levels? I have heard of them but I don't really know what they mean or entail. But I think I would like to do A levels.

The confusion between further education colleges and universities may partly be a function of the way that 'college' is sometimes used in the UK as a term for university as it is, of course, widely used in North America. Liam is planning a career in the construction industry like his brother and father. He planned to leave school at 16 but also said that he would probably go to university. Later he explained that this would be like his brother who spent a day a week at college while working as a plumber. These confusions may also be related to the fact that many of the children interviewed did not know whether their parents had been to university. This was typically the case for children whose parents were in occupations which suggested that they had probably not had a higher education, although this inference may not always be correct. Alongside the uncertainty and confusion expressed by some of the children was a strong theme throughout other interviews of university as a key stepping stone between school and a good career, together with an understanding of what was needed in terms of performance at school in order to go to university. This was true of some of the children discussed above who were unsure about whether they would do well enough at school to go to university. But it was even more the case for children who were confident about higher education. Bahia was a girl of Pakistani heritage who wants to stay on at school and go to university because she wanted to 'do well and get a good job . . . [university is] necessary for the good jobs . . . [and this will] . . . help you get money and stuff. She is considering different careers of a

56


broadly scientific nature, including medicine, and knows she will need to study physics, chemistry and biology at A level as a preparation for a suitable university course. Zara also plans to stay on at school and then to go to university. She had said that she wanted a career as a vet and knew that you need to go to university to do this. But she also had a more general view that being well educated gives you the opportunity to 'Do a job you enjoy rather than one that is boring. You need a degree for good jobs'. She had discussed going to university with her parents, although not with her friends, and was reasonably confident about achieving this. Steven was also definite about university, as it 'Gives you a better education and a better job', and Edward, who was planning a career in information technology (IT), had 'Always wanted to go to university' (he was 12!) and said: 'It would be good to have a degree, it's something I really want to do.'

The coherence of educational plans As we have seen, a majority of the children said that they wanted to go to university and nearly all of these saw it in terms of getting a good job. However, the children also differed considerably in their understanding of the educational routes available to them. The fact that there was only a difference of five percentage points between those saying they would stay on at school and those who wanted to go to university immediately raises the likelihood of inconsistencies between various aspects of children's intentions. These are explored further in Table 3.5, which presents the intentions with regard to staying on post-16 for the 457 children who said they thought they would go to university and for whom we also have post-16 intention. As we would expect, most of those planning to go to university also planned to continue in education post-16. More than three-quarters did so, much higher than the 61 per cent for the sample as a whole (Table 3.1). However, it is also apparent that almost a quarter of the children saying they wanted to go to university did not definitely plan to stay on post-16 and nearly one in ten said that they definitely planned to leave. Table 3.5 Post-f 6 plans for children who plan to go to university Stay at school or college

351

76.8%

Not sure

62

13.6%

Leave school

44

9.6%

457

100%

Total


57

Of course it is not necessarily contradictory to plan to leave education at 16 and to go to university. There are different routes to university and, for example, one boy wrote on his questionnaire that he would probably have to get a job and earn some money before he could go to university. But there was only one comment of this kind and the interview data showed that this sort of strategic thinking is unusual. As was shown in the earlier discussion, some children had misunderstood the connection, at least for most people, between school qualifications and university admission. More generally however, these results may reflect a rather mixed attitude towards educational participation in which an expectation among many children that university is a norm is mixed with a more ambivalent attitude to school. We have seen that intentions for post-16 participation and for university differed across different groups of children. Girls were more positive than boys and children whose parents were in non-manual and, especially, professional and managerial occupations were more positive than children from manual occupational backgrounds. There was also an association between planning future participation and positive support for this from parents and, to some extent, perceptions of the intentions of friends. In Table A3.6 in Appendix 2 these patterns of association are shown for the joint occurrence of plans for post16 and for university participation. The figures show for different groups the percentage of those planning to go to university who also plan to stay on post16. This gives a picture of different levels of consistency in educational plans. As the figures show, the percentages for boys and girls are more or less identical. This means that although girls are more likely to plan to participate at both levels, they are not additionally more likely to have consistent intentions. However, for most other characteristics there are differences in levels of consistency between intentions in the same direction as the original differences in the two variables. Children from professional and managerial backgrounds have higher overall consistency than those from skilled nonmanual backgrounds who, in turn, have higher levels of consistency than those from manual backgrounds. Children whose parents want them to stay on post-16 are more consistent than other children, as are children whose parents want them to go to university. There is also an association with children thinking their friends will stay on: the greater the proportion of friends staying on post-16, the more likely children are to be consistent. However, there is no association of consistency with children thinking that their friends will go to university. If we can assume that consistency between university and post-16 intentions is likely to be associated with actually attaining higher education, these results show that group differences in the patterns of socio-economic and family and peer influence on intentions to go to university are amplified by the group differences in consistency. This may suggest that group differences in outcomes may be greater than the group differences in intentions alone would predict.

58


An overview The results presented in this chapter show clearly that most children starting secondary school have thought about their educational futures and have plans both for post-16 and for university. However, the extent to which these plans are informed by an awareness of the possibilities and constraints they will experience varies considerably. Some children can describe a thought-out educational career leading to employment. Others have much vaguer ambitions and are much less clear about what they will need to do to achieve them. The recent upward shift in higher education participation is reflected in these children's intentions, and a majority see themselves as going to university. On the one hand, there does not seem to have been as much of an upward shift in post-16 intentions, and these are well below what could be hoped for at a time when the age of compulsory participation is about to be increased. On the other hand, the joint figures for post-16 and university plans in Table A3.7 in Appendix 2 show a generally very positive orientation to future education. Taking those definitely planning to stay on post-16 together with those who definitely want to go to university, results in threequarters of the total sample planning future participation. And only one in twenty of the total sample said that they definitely do not want to stay on post-16 and definitely do not want to go to university. Many children are unsure and others are confused and inconsistent, but a norm of educational participation is very prevalent and very few are sure about future nonparticipation. The long-standing pattern of differences between the educational participation of people from different socio-economic backgrounds is reflected here, as is the much more recent pattern of higher female participation. Nevertheless, a majority of children from all backgrounds and genders planned to stay on post-16 and almost half of the children from manual occupational backgrounds thought that they would go to university. It is also apparent that family support was important in educational decisions. Only a minority of children said that their parents were an influence on their decisions, but there was a very strong association between how the children saw their parents' views on participation and their own plans.

Chapter 4


Introduction One of the themes of this book is that of children's sense of their personal futures. In considering children's hopes and expectations about the future, the centrality to these of future occupations became obvious as the research proceeded. It is evident that, for the great majority of children, the job they will be doing in their adult lives was a dominating aspect of their sense of the future. This comes across in what they said is important to them, in what they were hoping for and, perhaps most of all, in how they evaluated the experience of school and their motivation for succeeding at school. For example, when asked about what they wanted for their futures, 19 out of 20 said that a good job was something they wanted 'a lot' (Table 2.1), a much higher figure that for any other aspect of their future lives. The great majority of children, almost four out of five, also rated a good job as one of the three things they most wanted in the future. When asked about various aspects of school, the statement that 'School will help me get the job I want' was supported by 90 per cent of the children. Future jobs were also crucially important for decisions about whether to stay on at school and whether to go to university. Particularly striking was that jobs were the main reason both for future educational participation and non-participation. Nearly everyone who said they were planning to stay on at school or go to university said that the reason for this was that it was necessary for the sort of job they wanted or that it would prepare them for a good job. But, at the same time, the most common reason for leaving school early or not going to university was that they wanted to get a job. So, even at the age of 11 or 12, well before any employment decisions have to be made, future occupations are dominating children's thinking about the purpose and value of education and intentions about participation and non-participation. So far we have talked about 'jobs' as a general category and it was this general term that the children were using or responding to in their answers on

60


the purpose of school and whether they would stay on. However, more detailed information was obtained in the questionnaire about the specific occupations they planned and, for a sample of the children, these were followed up in the interviews. The children were asked to write down the job they wanted and these choices were then categorized into specific occupational categories and into broad categories based on socio-economic status. We were interested, first, in how far children had specific ideas about their occupational futures, and then in the extent to which these choices were ambitious in terms of wanting jobs which were well rewarded and of high status. Most children had said that they wanted a 'good' job and most of these had said they wanted 'a job people look up to'. But while almost everyone said that they wanted a good job, less than two-thirds said that they expected to get a good job. Their choice of occupation may show what they mean by a good job, the extent to which children have identified these at a relatively early age and the relationship between their expectation of a good job and their occupational choices. It is also possible to consider occupational choices separately for boys and girls to see the extent to which the actual gender differentiation that occurs in parts of the labour market are reflected in these early choices. We can also look at the occupational choices for children whose parents are in different types of occupations and see if there is an association between the choices they make and their parents' jobs. Some of these issues were then explored further in the interviews where children discussed the choices they had expressed on the questionnaire and the thinking behind their job choices. In Table 4.1 we see the most common job choices made by the children. First, it is clear that nearly all children, aged 11 or 12 at the time of the survey, were able to make job choices. Eighty-five per cent of children expressed a choice of future career, 716 out of the sample of 845. Of course this does not mean that these were necessarily thought-out career decisions but it does mean that the great majority were able to express a view on future job preferences. Some of these preferences can be characterized as fantasy or quasi-fantasy choices, at least for the majority of those making them. The single most frequent choice was a career in professional sport or as a professional entertainer. Overall, almost one in five of those making choices and about one in six of all the children made fantasy or quasi-fantasy choices. Boys were much more likely than girls to make this sort of choice and in nearly all cases they wanted to be professional footballers. Girls typically wanted to be singers, actors and models. An element of fantasy in career choices parallels the results of a large-scale survey of teenagers in the USA where careers as professional athletes and entertainers were chosen by far more people than could ever achieve these aims (Schneider and Stevenson 1999). There is also a more direct parallel with Croll's (2008) analysis of the career intentions of young people, based on evidence from 15-year-old

61

Children's occupational choices Table 4.1 Occupational plans: most frequent choices Occupation

All

Boys

Girls

All choices

716

330

384

Entertainment/sport

136

95

41

Science Engineering/computing Management/business/accountancy

83 66 51 31 31 27 25

29 15 16 8 20 21 14

54 51 35 23 11 6 11

Skilled trades Hair and beauty Police/fire service/armed forces Animals Childcare Nurse/paramedic Catering

69 57 39 31 18 16 12

66 0 25 4 0 3 3

3 57 14 27 18 13 9

Other

48

21

27

Doctor/vet Teacher Architect/designer/artist Law

children in the British Household Panel Study. Here, careers as entertainers and sports people were chosen by about one in ten of the sample. It makes sense that the proportions of children saying that they have these sorts of ambitions decline as they get older and have a more realistic sense of the different possibilities open to them and, for most of them, the extreme improbability of successful sporting and entertainment careers. However, we have used the term 'quasi-fantasy' and we shall return later in this chapter to what some of the children said about these choices. Apart from sports and entertainment the career choices children expressed fell into two broad groups. There was one group of choices of the traditional professions of the sort that children are likely to be aware of and to have come into contact with. In order of popularity these were careers in medicine, teaching, law, architecture and design, science, engineering and accountancy. These could be regarded as 'high profile' professions in the sense that they are widely discussed and portrayed in the media and that the two most frequently chosen, medicine and teaching, are ones all children will have come into contact with. The second broad grouping is of occupations outside the professions which are also 'high profile' in the sense that many children will know people doing these jobs or

62


will have used their services. The category 'skilled trades' refers to traditional skilled manual occupations such as electricians, builders, plumbers, and so on. The category 'hair and beauty' is mainly made up of children wanting to be hairdressers. Less frequently chosen were careers in childcare, nursing and catering. About 5 per cent of children wanted careers in the uniformed services. The occupational choices in Table 4.1 are given separately for boys and girls and show a very variable level of gender stereotyping of jobs. Some of the professional occupations had a degree of gender differentiation in choices. Medicine and, especially, teaching and the law were mainly female choices, while there was something of a male over-representation in science, engineering and management and accountancy. However, the really strong gender differences were in some of the manual occupations. Hair and beauty and childcare were exclusively female choices, and skilled manual work was almost exclusively a male choice. These gender differences are very similar to those found in Croll's (2008) study of the choices of 15-year-olds, especially with regard to the very strong gender bias with regard to skilled manual work, hair and beauty and childcare. As we saw earlier, nearly all children wanted a 'good' job but the actual choices presented in Table 4.1 include occupations with very different levels of likely rewards and status as well as very different levels of entry requirements and attainability. In order to get a sense of how ambitious the children in the survey were being, the detailed job categories in Table 4.1 have been classified according to the Registrar General's occupational categories. These are presented in Table 4.2 as choices of professional and managerial occupations, choices of skilled non-manual occupations and choices of manual occupations. In virtually every case of choices in the manual category these were choices of skilled manual occupations rather than the partly skilled and unskilled occupations that are also included in the Registrar General's scheme. Choices are presented separately for boys and girls and for children whose parents are themselves in these different categories of occupations. Table 4.2 also shows the 'fantasy' choices of careers in sport and entertainment, a few children whose choices could not be placed in socio-economic categories and the children who did not know what they wanted to do. Percentages in the socio-economic categories are given both for all children and just for those children who made choices which could be categorized in this way. Most of the discussion below is based on the 544 children who made choices which could be classified in socio-economic terms. (Note: Of course, occupations like professional sport and entertainment are contained in the Registrar General's classification but they have not been included in the socio-economic analysis here as the relatively high numbers involved would distort the picture of the socio-economic status of children's ambitions.)


63

Table 4.2 Socio-economic status of occupational choices Gender

Parents' occupation

Job choice

All

Boys

Girls


Skilled nonmanual

Manual


337 40.0% (61.9%)*

129 32.7% (56.6%)

208 46.3% (65.8%)

116 48.5% (73.4%)

72 111 41.6% 35.5% (62.2%) (55.0%)

Skilled nonmanual

42 5.0% (7.7%)

22 5.6% (9.6%)

20 4.5% (6.3%)

11 4.6% (7.0%)

8 4.6% (6.9%)

Manual

165 19.6% (30.3%)

77 19.5% (33.8%)

88 19.6% (27.8%)

31 13.0% (19.6%)

36 74 20.6% 23.8% (31.0%) (36.6%)

'Fantasy'

136 16.1%

95 24.1%

41 9.1%

41 17.2%

28 16.0%

48 15.4%

Not clear

34 4.0%

7 1.8%

27 6.0%

7 2.9%

9 5.1%

13 4.2%

Don't know

129 15.3%

64 16.2%

65 14.5%

33 13.8%

22 12.6%

48 15.4%

N =

843

394

449

239

175

311

Children in top three rows

544 64.5%

228 57.9%

316 70.4%

158 66.1%

116 66.3%

202 65.0%

17 5.5% (8.3%)

Note'. * Figures in bracket are percentages of numbers in the first three categories (i.e., the bottom row.)

As Table 4.2 shows, most children, two-thirds of the sample, made choices which could be placed in one of the broad socio-economic categories. Sixteen per cent of children made fantasy choices and 15 per cent did not know what job they wanted. Children's occupational choices were ambitious in the sense that a high proportion wanted professional and managerial occupations. Forty per cent of children overall, and over 60 per cent of those making choices which could be classified in socio-economic terms, chose such occupations, while only half as many chose manual occupations. Very few of the choices were in the skilled non-manual category. The ambitious nature of these job choices is particularly apparent if we compare it with the proportions of people currently in different occupational categories, which provides an indicator of the likely availability of different types of jobs. For example, an analysis of the occupations of people in two the British Cohort

64


Studies (Woods, et al. 2003) showed about 6 per cent in the professional occupations chosen by over half the children in our sample. About 10 per cent were in partly skilled or unskilled jobs, chosen by virtually none of the sample children. These results are similar to those reported in CrolPs (2008) study of 15-year-old children's career choices and in Schneider and Stevenson's (1999) study of young Americans. In all these studies the occupational aspirations of young people were far higher than the likely future availability of jobs to match them. Of course, this mismatch raises the question of not just who want particular occupational outcomes but also who is likely to achieve them. Table 4.2 also gives figures separately for the choices of boys and girls and for children from professional and managerial, skilled non-manual and manual occupational backgrounds. As we saw in Table 4.1, there are considerable gender differences in the specific occupational choices of children. With regard to the broad socio-economic classification of jobs, the differences between the boys and girls in the sample were much smaller than the differences with regard to specific occupations. However, girls were more ambitious than boys in that the figures for girls wanting professional and managerial jobs were nine percentage points higher than those for boys. Differences are also apparent with regard to the job choices of children from different socio-economic backgrounds. Children who themselves come from professional and managerial backgrounds are very likely to choose such jobs for themselves. Almost three-quarters of the children making choices which could be classified socio-economically chose professional and managerial occupations, while just one in five chose manual occupations. Children who come from skilled non-manual backgrounds are less likely to choose professional and managerial careers, although over 60 per cent do so, while just under a third chose manual occupations. The figures are lower still for children from manual occupational backgrounds, although well over a half of such children chose professional and managerial jobs, while just over a third chose manual occupations. The differences between the children from different backgrounds are in the direction expected. Children from professional and managerial backgrounds are most likely to choose such jobs for themselves and are least likely to choose manual occupations. Children from manual backgrounds are the group most likely to choose manual work for themselves and are the least likely to choose professional and managerial jobs. Children from skilled non-manual backgrounds are in between the other groups in terms of the socio-economic status of their ambitions. However, we should not exaggerate the socio-economic differences in job choice. In particular, the figures do not show the reproduction of patterns of social differentiation across generations coming about simply because of the choices children make. Although the children from manual backgrounds are less likely to choose professional and managerial jobs, nevertheless most of them did so, while a minority chose

65


manual occupations. One in five of the children from professional and managerial backgrounds said that they wanted manual jobs for themselves. The pattern to emerge is of children from all backgrounds mainly having ambitious choices but for such choices to be even more predominant for children who themselves come from more advantaged backgrounds. Another way at looking at the continuation of occupational patterns across generations is in terms of the occupational backgrounds of children choosing particular occupations. In Table 4.3 the family occupations of children choosing two specific types of occupation are presented. As was apparent in Table 4.1, the most common grouping of occupational choice was that of professional occupations such as doctor, teacher, architect, law, science, engineering and management and accountancy. The most common choice among those aiming for manual occupations was in the skilled manual trades such as electrician, plumber, motor mechanic, and so on. Of the 244 children choosing a professional occupation and for whom the occupation of one or more parents is known, 38.5 per cent have a parent in a professional occupation. Of the 62 children choosing a skilled trade and for whom the occupation of one or more parents are known, 56.5 per cent have a parent in this sort of occupation. In a way the difference is even more marked as the continuity in skilled trades is almost entirely a male phenomenon. Virtually all those choosing a skilled trade are boys and all the parents in such trades are male. The figures for the professions are much more balanced between males and females, both for choosers and their parents. These figures show that professional occupations are chosen by people from a wide range of backgrounds and well under half of those making such choices are themselves from these backgrounds. In contrast, work in skilled manual trades is chosen by boys and well over half of these have fathers doing this kind of work. As before, we must emphasize that these choices are being made by children who are a long way from the labour market and, in particular, are a long way from a professional career. They are, however, much closer to a career in skilled manual work. This suggests that movement into what are generally regarded as desirable and well-rewarded jobs may be open in the sense that children from all backgrounds aspire to them. But movement into traditional forms of skilled manual work is less open in that Table 4.3 Parental occupations of children choosing the professions or skilled trades Occupational choice

All

Profession Skilled trade

N 244 62

One or more parents in this occupation N 94 35

% 38.5 56.5

66


those aspiring to these sorts of jobs mainly come from this background themselves.

Children's socio-economic futures Children clearly see jobs as a key element of their futures and children's job choices can be categorized in terms of the socio-economic status of different occupations. However, it is not clear from the questionnaire data whether the children themselves see the socio-economic implications of different occupational destinations. Some of the interview data reveal aspects of children's thinking about their future economic situation and material circumstances and the role that jobs will play in these. For some of the children we can get a sense of the extent to which they see the possibility of comfortable, or even wealthy and successful, futures and the extent to which they see their futures as economically and socially negative or problematic. Our concern with children's sense of the economic possibilities offered by different types of jobs and any risks children perceive as associated with a lack of success occupationally is informed by the theoretical perspective on socio-economic reproduction of John Goldthorpe. As we saw in Chapter 1, Goldthorpe (2007a) argues that educational choices are influenced by decisions made by individuals and families about the costs, risks and benefits associated with different actions. This is claimed to explain the different rates of educational participation by young people from more and less advantaged backgrounds and the consequent higher levels of educational attainment and occupational success of the more advantaged. The main driver of this process is the aim to preserve the economic situation of families across generations and, in particular, to avoid downward social mobility; that is, children ending up in a worse economic situation than their parents. As we have argued elsewhere in this book, decisions about commitment and orientation to school made at a relatively early age can have important implications for children's educational participation and attainment much later in their school careers. It is therefore important to establish if children see educational and career choices in terms of their future economic situation. Do they have a sense of the need to preserve particular levels of prosperity or security? Do they see the threat of moving down economically or the possibilities of moving up? In the interviews children were asked to expand on job choices they had expressed in their questionnaires but were not asked explicitly about the economic or social consequences of different jobs or to compare their future situations with those of their parents. However, in the discussion of future jobs, comments made by many of the children illuminate this aspect of their sense of their futures and give insights into the extent to


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which children's thinking includes the idea of preserving or improving on particular economic situations. Nearly all the children interviewed (25 out of 30) made some reference to their future economic situation when talking about their futures and their occupational choices. For some of the children this was simply a reference to a job or future life more generally with 'good money' or 'enough money'. But most of the children had a more thought-out sense of their economic futures and of economic risks and possibilities. Mainly the children were looking for futures involving economic security and material comfort rather than ideas of riches or extravagant lifestyles. For some of the children this aspiration involved either a comparison with the disadvantaged situation their parents were in or with a future of either destitution or dead-end jobs. A desire for future economic security was the predominant theme to come out of this part of the interviews. The connection between good jobs, income and lifestyle was explicitly made and many children also referred to future security. Children said things like: 'If you have a good job you will have good money and a good life' (Zainub) and 'My dad wants us [Steven and his brothers] to get a good job with good pay so that we can be secure' (Steven). The notion of future prosperity and security was linked with the type of domestic arrangements they saw themselves as having in the future, especially in terms of families, children and home ownership. Wanting their own home was an important part of the future for many of the children, and this was often linked to a perceived future need to provide for families. Simon wanted to leave school at 16 said that this was because T really want my own home . . . a good job means you can buy a house, furniture and food and keep you going'. Sophie wanted a job and an income so that she could 'pay the bills and be able to keep my own house and things like that' and said that she would need 'to keep a roof over my head so I need a good job'. Mark planned to stay at school and go to university so he could have a professional career. He was also thinking about a job which provided a good income when he had children: 'if I earn money I can buy them things and treat them well . . . everything is more expensive now so you need to earn well'. There did not seem to be gender differences, either with regard to the idea of a domestic future that would have to be paid for, or the idea of assuming responsibilities for home and family. Boys were as likely as girls to refer to children and families, and girls were as likely as boys to cast themselves in a future role as provider. Most of the economic ambitions expressed were relatively modest in that they were for comfort and security rather than extravagance and luxury. Max explicitly said that he was; 'not worried about lots of money as long as I have enough to be okay'. Other children talked about fairly ordinary and attainable types of holiday and leisure activities such as 'a job that provides money so that you can travel and do other things that you want' (Charlotte).

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And Michael, who had recently been on a foreign holiday with his family for the first time, wanted 'a job that would let me do that more often'. The idea of a job as providing security, with the implication that the future contained risks was expressed by Jake in terms of: 'You need skills for a good job. That's always something you can fall back on whatever happens to you.' However, for some of the children, about a quarter of those interviewed, hopes for the future were more economically or socially ambitious, either in terms of material rewards or status and the perceptions of others. For some children this was linked to aspirations to 'fantasy' occupations in sport or entertainment, such as Matthew who wanted to be a footballer and 'be famous and have a lot of money', or Emma who wanted to be a pop singer like in Girls Aloud and 'be famous'. For other children economic success was seen as something that might be realistically attainable. Michael, who wanted a career in law, was influenced by knowing the parents of a friend who were both solicitors: 'and their house is really posh and that'. He also knew a friend of his parents who was so successful that he 'can work just when he likes and gives money to charity. I'd like to be like that'. But for other children career success was seen not just economically but also in terms of a worthwhile, and, especially, a well regarded and respected future. David said that said he wanted 'a job that is respected and people look up to'. He was typical of many of the children, as was George who wanted 'a job that people look up to and respect. I want to be able to encourage other people'. The idea of a career which is personally fulfilling, well regarded and well rewarded is combined by Steven who said that he wanted 'to make something of my life. I want people to see it and to be able to say, well I earn this and I work hard'. The concern with their future economic security, expressed by most of the children, has so far been considered in positive terms, children wanting comfortable futures or, in some cases, highly prosperous futures. Any sense of risk is implicit: saying that you want a good life or to be able to afford a home and support your family has an implied negative of not being able to do these things, but the downside was not spelt out for most children. But, for a substantial minority of the children, a sense of future risks to be avoided was explicit, either as a comparison with the current economic situation of their families or with reference to the position of people who do not have good jobs. Well over a third of those interviewed expressed views of this kind. Several children made reference to the problems their parents had with economic security. Jane is the daughter of a single mother and talked at length about the problems her mother was having bringing up four children and paying a mortgage. She said: 'My mother's had a hard life. I don't want that.'Justin, referring to future jobs said: T don't want to be like my parents, always short of money.' Michael talked about the importance of a secure job:

Children's occupational choices Michael'. Interviewer'. Michael'.

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I will have more security if I have money. Do your parents have security? Not really.

Elizabeth said that financial security was essential for a future job and made an explicit comparison with her parents: 'It has to be a job that brings in good money . . . [my] parents don't have enough money.' And as we saw in Chapter 3, the reason Carl gave for leaving school at 16 was that he would need to work to help his parents financially. Other children saw the dangers of ending up in poorly paid jobs, often jobs which were explicitly looked down on by other people. Steven said: 'My friends and I have a saying, well it probably isn't true, if you don't do well at school you will end up working in a chip shop.' Many other references of this kind were made:'I don't want to end up working in McDonalds' (Lindsey) and 'My parents want me to stay at school so I have a better life so I won't end up working for 50 years out in the rain' (Michael). Lindsey also stigmatized a career looked on as desirable by some of the female pupils: 'Everyone you see who does hairdressing has done badly at school and I don't want that.' Children also saw the prospect of unemployment and its consequences, 'If you don't [get a good job] you just end up living on the street' (Carl), and were aware of negative stereotypes associated with unemployment: 'When I'm older I don't want to be seen as one of those people who sit around all day and live off the taxpayer' (Steven). What comes out of the interview data overall is a rather realistic picture of the possibilities and risks with regard to employment and an economic future. A small number of children expressed 'fantasy' aspirations for fame and money associated with sport and entertainment and a few had aspirations for professional and business careers that would bring high status and financial rewards. But most were much more low key in their aspirations and emphasized levels of comfort, security and leisure pursuits associated with ordinary working lives. This was very frequently expressed in terms of home ownership, providing for families and children, and affording holidays. For a substantial minority of the children the risks of failing to secure a good job were an important aspect of their thoughts about the future. Some of these children were very conscious that their parents were in precarious financial situations and wanted to avoid this for themselves. Others were aware of the risks of a future life involving unsatisfactory jobs or no jobs at all and the very negative financial and social consequences of these. As was apparent in Table 4.1, by far the most common non-fantasy occupational choices of children were either professional occupations such as medicine and teaching or skilled manual work, either in traditional male skilled trades or traditional female occupations involving personal appear-

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ance and childcare. Both kinds of occupation are compatible with the aim expressed by most children for enough money to have a home and support a family. Aspirations to have jobs that people 'look up to' and incomes that allowed for a display of wealth were typically associated with intentions for professional and management careers as well as with fantasy destinations. In Table 4.2 we considered the socio-economic status of different future job choices and showed that children from all backgrounds were occupationally ambitious in terms of tending to want professional and managerial jobs. In particular, a substantial majority of children whose parents were in manual occupations wanted professional and managerial careers for themselves. The results from the questionnaires and interviews do not support the arguments of theorists who emphasize cultural differences between different socio-economic groups, or different treatment of children from different backgrounds within school, as explanations for persisting patterns of inequality in the occupational destinations of children from different social backgrounds (e.g., Bourdieu 1974; de Graaf et al. 2000; Reay, 2006; Willis 1977). The majority of children from all backgrounds have ambitious occupational aspirations and, as we see in Chapters 5 and 6, feel that their efforts will be rewarded and that their schools are supporting them. The situation with regard to Goldthorpe's (2007a) theories of rational choice and differential risk aversion are more complex. It is certainly true that the children in this study, at the age of just 11 or 12, have a strong sense of the importance of their occupational futures and the economic consequences of employment decisions. In this respect they have the capacity and understanding to be rational economic decision-takers: they know that the jobs they end up doing will have important consequences for their abilities to support their family, own their home, and so on. It is clear that these things matter a lot to them. We can also argue that the results are compatible with the idea that a major motivating factor in children's plans for their futures is the desire to avoid downward economic mobility. Although this idea is not generally explicit in the interview data, it can be seen as implied by the emphasis on families and homes and on providing satisfactory material standards. In addition, for some children, the need to avoid dead-end jobs and unemployment is expressed quite explicitly. To that extent we can see the children as economically driven actors looking for 'ordinary' standards of material comfort. Where the results are less compatible with Goldthope's approach is in the way that the main emphasis on upward mobility comes from the children who are themselves in the most disadvantaged economic circumstances, at least by their own account. It is children who perceive that their parents have had, and are having, difficult lives because of a lack of financial resources who stress the need to improve their own future economic situation. Discounting the future footballers and pop stars, the children most


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likely to say that they wanted to improve on the situation of their families were those who saw their parents struggling financially. Of course, this is a perfectly rational position and is not incompatible with theories of rational choice. But it does not match the view that children in less advantaged situations are less likely to have ambitions to be upwardly mobile. Of course, the upward mobility hoped for may be of a fairly limited kind; moving, for example, from unemployment into a job or from very poorly paid work into modestly paid employment.

Fantasy occupations As we have seen, about one in six of the children made occupational choices we have characterized as fantasy or quasi-fantasy. Most typically these were boys who said they wanted to be professional footballers and girls who said that they wanted to be pop singers or actresses. Clearly, only a very small proportion of these children will realize their ambitions. Nevertheless, examination of the comments made in interviews by the children making these types of choices reveals a more complex view of the future than the idea of fantasy choices suggests. Unrealistic choices of this kind are more common with younger children and become less common as children get older. CrolPs (2008) study of 15-year-old children in Britain showed choices of careers in professional sport and entertainment at half the level of the 11- and 12-yearolds in our study, suggesting that children tend to abandon these ambitions as they grow older. Moreover, the comments made by the children themselves sometimes recognized that they had unreal ambitions of this kind which they would leave behind them. In a group discussion at a preliminary stage of the research we recorded the following exchange: Edward'.

Rachel'.

. . . yeah, when I was at primary school all I wanted to be was a footballer but that changes when you get here [secondary school]. 'Me too! I wanted to be singer, some sort of star!' [All laugh]

Children were also aware that their friends had ambitions for sporting and similar success which they were not going to achieve. Liam was talking about what his friends would do after school and was clear that their ambitions were essentially fantasies: 'When I asked them in year 7 they all said they did not want to do office work and wanted to be footballers. But that is hard to get into so they will probably work in an office.' Other children qualified their ambitions to be football or singing stars with a recognition that these might not be fulfilled and that other careers were more likely. The difference between a dream of what you might do and what the possibilities really were

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was explicitly recognized by Paul who said: 'Well there is realistic stuff I want to do and stuff that is unrealistic. I'd like to do something in sport, something in cricket but the realistic stuff is I want to be a project manager or an architect.' Adam had put on his questionnaire that he wanted to be a footballer but in the interview stressed that he also wanted good qualifications: 'and if I want to be something else after football or if I don't get to be a footballer then I will need a good education to get a good job'. This recognition that they might not make it in sport was quite common. When Ben, who had said he wanted to be a footballer, was asked in the interview if he thought he would achieve this, he said: 'No, not really, it depends, you need to be good.' But like some of the other boys he also went on to say that even if he did not become a player he might be able to get a job associated with football, in his case 'as a physio or a coach'. This idea of a sports- or entertainment-related career as a substitute for a career as a performer occurred in a number of the interviews. George had put that he wanted to be footballer but knew that this was unlikely to happen and talked about a career as a sport scientist where he could 'devise fitness programmes and diets'. The idea of young people with strong interests in sport or entertainment considering substitute careers in coaching, administration and similar areas related to their interests also occurs in Ball et al.'s (2000) study where a young man with dreams of a career as a professional footballer, also wanted sports-related qualifications and was thinking more realistically about a job in the sports or leisure industries. However, not all the children had this sort of qualified perspective on a sporting or entertainment career. Matthew claimed to be a star of school teams and had no other plans than professional football. His sense of a football career seemed to be largely taken from the tabloid press and was going to involve: 'To be famous, get a lot of money, get a lot of girls . . . lots of people like you and stuff and respect you and that.' But this aspect of fantasy futures was very unusual and most children with what we have called fantasy ambitions were much more low key. Matthew, quoted above, did not see the point of school because he was going to be a famous footballer. But Emma, who at first said that the only thing she wanted was to be in a pop group, also talked about the importance of education and her post-16 options. Of course, these ambitions may not all be fantasies. One girl who wanted to be an actress did not say anything about being famous. She was a member of a drama group and said she wanted to study drama and literature in school. She did not know how university might fit into these ambitions but was interested in the possibilities they might offer. Overall, the fantasy choices were associated with a more realistic view of the occupational future than our use of the term might suggest. Many children recognized that these ambitions were unrealistic and had also thought about alternatives. Sometimes these alternatives involved drawing on


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their interests in sport or entertainment as the basis for a more ordinary career associated with these activities. Very few of the children saw their hopes for fantasy-type careers in terms of rejecting school or neglecting their educational futures.

Some proposed occupational routes Some of the children had very clear ideas about their future careers and about the kind of educational route that would be necessary to achieve it. In the case of those who had identified a professional career this meant that they planned to stay on at school, go to university and, in some cases, undergo additional training. Those who had thought this out in most detail also knew the types of A level subjects and degree course they should take. Steven was attending school in a local authority in the north of England. The local authority had generally below average levels of GCSE performance and of post-16 participation rates. The particular school attended also had below average examination results. Steven's parents were both in managerial jobs; his father an area manager for a large company and his mother an accounts manager. He was in the top set at school, planned to stay on post-16 and said that he had a long-standing ambition to go to university. This was because he wanted a good education and wanted 'to make something of my life'. He had thought about his future options and had talked to his father about going to university. He believed that university would give him a chance to get a better education and open up opportunities in terms of jobs. He strongly agreed that you need a degree to be a success in life. More recently he had decided that he wanted to be a doctor. He knew that you have to train for seven years to be a doctor and that additional training is needed in order to specialize. This information seemed to have come from a television advert for a university but his father had also advised him about different possibilities. He knew that he would need science-based A levels to be a doctor and said that his ambitions were achievable as he was willing to work hard and do extra work: T do extra work after school now, so I don't mind.' Doing well at school, particularly in tests and examinations, was very important to Steven. He spent a lot of time revising, spent free time in school with friends doing school work and considered himself a high achiever: T don't want to sound like I am boasting but I get very high marks in most of my subjects.' His father offered support by helping him revise. Steven was not attending an academically strong school but he had many advantages in terms of the material circumstances of his family, the type of family support he was receiving and his own academic attainment. His detailed career planning, although not typical, is not unique and is not restricted to children from relatively affluent homes. Mark went to school in a

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local authority in the south of England. The authority has high levels of attainment and post-16 participation and the school has the best examination results of the 15 schools in the study. Mark lived with his mother who was a laboratory assistant. Mark was only in Set 3 but planned to stay at school and go to university. He had decided that he wanted a career in law and knew that he would need A levels and a degree. He had used the Internet to find out the sorts of degrees and qualifications he would need. He also realized that going to university was expensive and knew that his mother struggled financially. Nevertheless, he thought that the cost was worth it if he could reach his ambition of becoming a lawyer. He said, 'being a lawyer is a good job' and will provide, 'money behind me'. He has not talked to his father, who has left home, but said that his mother was really pleased he was thinking about this and has promised to support him. Zainub, a girl from a Bangladeshi background, is at school in a local authority in the south of England. The local authority is in an affluent area but does not have very good examination results and her school has experienced a lot of difficulties and had recently been in special measures. (Note: This is an indicator that the schools inspection agency in England, OfSTED, judges that the school is failing. However, at the time of the research examination results had been improving). Zainub is in Set 2. She said that she could not explain what her father did and her mother did not work. Zainub wanted to stay on at school and go to university. At first she said that she was not really sure why she wanted to stay on at school, she just knew that if you stay on you learn more and then you can go to university and get a good job. But later in the interview she said that she really wanted to be a teacher when she is older. She has three much younger siblings and enjoyed; 'playing school' with them: [T]hey actually really do listen to me and I give them work and that. They treat me like a teacher and I try and teach them stuff that I did when I was in school, you know, so that when they are older it will be easier for them. I just do it 'cause I like it and now they come to me for help. When they have homework they do not understand they come and ask me to help them. Her family was very encouraging about education and her ambitions, and her father was extremely supportive and just as encouraging as her mother. She had received lots of awards at school and when certificates are awarded her parents telephoned the whole of the family to tell them. Zainub has not got the very clear-sighted view of her future that was shown by Steven and Mark. She was very enthusiastic about the idea of a teaching career and wanted to go to university but she did not know anything about types of routes into teaching and had not thought about the kind of teaching she


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wanted to do. Her interest in teaching seems to come mainly from her own enthusiasm for school and the way that her family celebrated her achievements and encouraged her ambitions. Not all children who have clear career plans are intending to stay at school or go to university. Charlotte attended the same school as Steven in a local authority in the north of England. The local authority and the school both had below average examination results. Her father was in a skilled manual trade and her mother did not work. She was in Set 5 at school and has not decided whether to stay on when she is 16. Charlotte's favourite subject at school is art and she said she wanted to be a wedding-dress designer: I make a lot of little dolls at home out of dough and put clothes on them. You cook it and it goes hard. I make the patterns and sew the clothes on them. I just have a friend who is an artist and she has a shop in her house to buy material and stuff from her. During the interview she said she was thinking again about her educational future although not about her future career choice: 'It has changed a bit now, I would like to go to college and then to university. I would like to still do dress design though.' However, she was not very sure what university was about and what she would study there, and was uncertain what subject she would need to do to be a designer. She was also not sure what different level qualifications were and where you might be able to study for them. Her parents were supportive in a general sense but were not offering any direction: 'my mum says that I should just do what I want. They don't mind what I do as long as I do my best'. Although Charlotte's ambition to be a dress designer was not informed by any sense of qualifications and routes into employment it was not an unconsidered choice and she had thought about what the job might involve and different types of employment within it: I think it [dress designing] can be [a good job] it depends if someone spots you and offers you a better job. You might just stay working for someone rather than have a company of your own . . . I would like to start off with the experience of working for someone and eventually get a place of my own. She had also thought about what she might do in school to match her ambitions. When asked about areas of the curriculum she would have liked to study she immediately said: 'Textiles. They used to do that here, but then the teacher left. It would be good because that does design and sewing. We need someone who can work with soft materials.' Another child with a clear career direction in mind not of a professional occupation was Jake. He was at school in a local authority in the south-west

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of England. The local authority had average levels of attainment but the school was below average. Jake's father was a self-employed electrician and his mother worked as a barmaid and a part-time childcare worker. When he was interviewed he said his career plan was to become an electrician like his father: ' my dad's an electrician and he does things like big stadiums . . . so I might get a job with him . . . and he is 60 now so when I am older I will probably take over the job from him'. Although he sees a straightforward route following his father into skilled manual work, he later expressed some reservations and considered what he regarded as more ambitious possibilities: Interviewer'. Jake'. Interviewer'. Jake'.

You have said that you want a good job, so you agree that being an electrician is a good job? Umm yeah? You don't sound too sure? Umm, well it is a good job, yeah well, but if I get a better grade then I might decide to do a better job than that.

Jake's view of a future occupation was obviously influenced by his father's occupation and a tradition of boys following fathers into skilled manual work. But he was also aware of other possibilities. He knew that there were jobs which could be seen as more attractive than a skilled trade and that if he could achieve academic success these might become available to him. Another boy planning to follow a family route into skilled manual work was Liam, who was at the same school as Jake. His father was in a skilled manual job with a large construction company and his mother worked at a large out of town DIY store. Liam had said that he wanted to leave school at 16 but might stay on if he did not get a 'good set of qualifications'. Interviewer'. Liam'.

What do you consider to be a good set? Well I'm not sure really, I am not really clever so I don't expect to get As, but I hope to do OK.

Asked if he would study further he said: Liam'.

Interviewer'. Liam'. Interviewer'. Liam'. Interviewer'.

Probably. I would like to do what my brother does, he goes to college two days and he works three days with an employer, so I would like to do something like that. So does he work in construction? Yeah sort of he is a plumber. So would you like to be a plumber? An electrician. You have said that you think you will be able to get a job as an electrician.

Children's occupational choices Liam:

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Yeah, well my uncle is an electrician, but he is not fully qualified anymore, but he knows a few people that might be able to help me get qualified. He is who my brother got a job off, cause he has a mate who is a plumber and works with him.

These are very traditional patterns of using family connections to move into various kinds of skilled manual work. All the children interviewed intending to follow this kind of route in the present study were boys, and a high proportion of those proposing to move into skilled manual work came from these backgrounds themselves. As we saw in the earlier discussion of the survey data, there is a much greater degree of family continuity in traditional male-dominated skilled manual work than in other popular occupational choices. While professional careers were planned by children from all types of backgrounds, skilled trades were mainly proposed by children who came from these backgrounds themselves. Not surprisingly at this age some of the children were very unclear about possible careers and the directions which would lead to different occupational outcomes. But nearly everyone talked about future jobs in some form, although sometimes what these would involve was very vague. Michael was at school in a local authority in the north of England. The local authority has low levels of post-16 participation and the school had the second lowest examination results of the schools in the study. Michael's father was a joiner and his mother did not work. He was in the top set at school. On his questionnaire he had said that he wants to be a lawyer and that he plans to stay on at school and go to university. On the face of it this seems like the kind of clear career direction and alignment of occupational and educational intentions that we saw with Steven and Mark. But in the interview it was clear that he did not appreciate the nature of the educational routes he would need to take and was unsure about future careers. He knew that at universities you take degrees and he knew he needed to go to university to be a lawyer, but he also thought that going to university may have been an alternative to staying on at school and had only a very vague awareness of GCSEs and A levels and the relationship of these to going to university. But he did know that 'University is for clever people and stuff where you can get degrees and the like'. Michael's ambitions for a career in the law may have an element of unreality and are not informed by any sense of what this might involve. When the interviewer asked him about his questionnaire response, 'It says you want to be a solicitor or a lawyer?', he replied: [T]hat is what I were thinking of. A friend of my dads is a lawyer, but he is the gaffer on a job — on a construction site — and he is a multi millionaire so that has influenced me a bit. He says he can work the hours he likes and he gives money to charity. I'd like to be like that.

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He has decided that he does not want to be a joiner like his father as this involves long hours and is not well paid. His parent's ambitions for him are of a very general kind: 'they just want me to have a good job, with a lot of money and a good life'. Finally, Christopher is an example from the small number of children who had very little to say about possible careers. Christopher was at school in a local authority in the south-west of England. Both the authority and his school had very low levels of average attainment and had experienced considerable educational and social difficulties. Christopher's father was a taxi driver and his mother did not work. He was in Set 4 at school and said that he wanted to leave at 16 and did not want to go to university. He wanted to leave school so that he can get a job. He had not thought about what that might be but wanted to start earning money as soon as possible: 'If I want to move onto the next stage [of education] then I won't be able to earn any money. I will learn stuff until I am 16 — the stuff I need to know — and then go and get a job.' He also felt that he has plenty of time to think about future jobs. Asked if he had considered carrying on in education he said: 'I would rather get a job — it is a long way off. I have to do a lot more years before I need to think about that.' Later on in the interview he said he might like to work in Tesco when he leaves school: I might want to do the till job, because you are normally checking what is the price and when you do the fruit or something like that you have to say what the fruit is and press a button and it tells you what the price and that I would like to do that. This is the sort of job that other children had said they were anxious to avoid but Christopher did not think of it in terms of a second-best or unsatisfactory job. As he had said, this was a long way in the future. Through most of the interview he had said he did not know what he would do and working at Tesco seemed to be something he had seen people doing and had just thought of. Similarly, Sophie talked about possible choices in terms of the pros and cons of working in McDonald's, a job explicitly rejected and stigmatized by several children. But Sophie had a more balanced view: 'Well, with McDonalds you get to cook which is good, but at the same time you get greasy and dirty so that is a bad side to it.' As is apparent from the examples given above, there were some very different planned career trajectories apparent in the interview material. These range from Steven who had planned out his route through science A levels to study medicine at university and on to a career as a doctor, with the additional qualifications needed for his specialism and with the advice and support of his parents. In contrast was Christopher who wanted to leave at 16


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to get a job and who, during the interview, speculated that it might be working on the till at Tesco. Of course, for all these children, and again as Christopher pointed out, careers are a long way in the future. We have no way of knowing how far any of these ambitions will continue to be held or whether they will be realized. But they were an important aspect, in some ways the most important aspect, of children's sense of the future. The questionnaire data showed that nearly all the children gave answers to the question about their future occupation and the interviews showed that most children could elaborate on these choices and often showed considerable awareness of the nature of their chosen occupation and the educational routes that would take them there. The main differences between the children were in the extent of their ambitions, in particular the contrast between professional and other jobs, and the extent of the alignment of occupational ambitions and educational achievement and intentions.


Chapter 5


Introduction The previous three chapters have focused principally on various aspects of children's views of the future: how they see their futures in terms of taking part in education, getting jobs and having homes and families. In this chapter we are mainly concerned with the present and, in particular, what children think about the experience of school. Of course, as we have seen, children's feelings about school are heavily influenced by their views of the future and the relevance of school to that future. But here we are concerned with the school in the present and children's responses to the everyday experience of attending school. School is a major part of the day-to-day lives of children. It occupies a significant proportion of their waking time and structures their lives both on a daily basis and in terms of the way that years and longer periods of time are organized. As well as taking up a great deal of children's time and being a key factor in how their lives are organized, school is also, for nearly all children, their first and most significant experience of the social world beyond the family. It is where they first encounter the public or civic sphere and engage in patterns of stable and semi-permanent social relationships that do not depend on close family ties. It is in school that they meet impersonal rules and norms, ordered patterns of social relationships and hierarchies, and the need to negotiate a social world of strangers. Of course, children do not necessarily see the school experience in this way. For them, school is made up of day-to-day and immediate concerns: lessons and the demands of learning; friendships and social relationships, teachers and control over their lives in school; conflicts with adults and other children; and many other aspects of the everyday life of school. One of our concerns in this chapter is the extent to which these many aspects of responses to school are structured in a coherent fashion so that we can locate individual pupil responses in terms of typologies of pupil responses and underlying dimensions

82


which organize views of schooling. We are also concerned with the distinction between attitudes to school and orientations to school. Attitudes are defined in terms of dimensions of affect: aspects of school which children like and dislike. Orientations are seen in terms of a sense of the value and purpose of schooling: what children think school is for and how far they endorse these purposes. In the rest of the chapter we shall first consider the various aspects of responses to school and the structure of these responses. We shall then explore in more detail the nature of dimensions to emerge, patterns of similarity and difference in children's responses and what they mean to the children in terms of concrete descriptions to come out of interviews. The relationship of attitudes and orientations to school to the decisions about educational participation, discussed in Chapter 3, will then be considered and variations across different groups of children presented. Finally, we shall look at what children say they would like to change about their schools. The focus here is mainly on school in the present and school as a social institution. The relevance of school to the future has been discussed in the previous three chapters and children's sense of themselves as learners is discussed in Chapter 6, although both of these areas will be touched on briefly in the following section.

The structure of children's views of school The main source of data to be considered in establishing the range and structure of children's views of school come from a lengthy attitude scale they completed. As part of the questionnaire, children were presented with a list of 28 statements relating to their feelings about school and were asked to rate each of them on a five-point scale from 'Strongly agree' to 'Strongly disagree'. Using factor analysis we then identified a smaller number of underlying dimensions which structure the responses to particular individual statements. To the extent that coherent dimensions emerge, these can then be treated as sub-scales providing measures of particular facets of responses to school. Details of the factor analysis procedures and a more detailed account of the results are presented in more detail in an article by Croll et al. (2008). The actual statements used are presented in Tables 5.1 to 5.6 below, where the extent and strength of agreement with each item are given. The analysis showed that views of school could be organized along six dimensions or factors, each defined by between three and six of the statements. The six dimensions were as follows: 1. The importance of school. This factor contained statements about it being important to do well at school and school being significant with regard to your personal future.


83

2. Enjoyment of school. This factor was defined by statements about how far the experience of school was liked or disliked and to what extent, for example, children enjoyed coming to school. 3. The commitment of teachers. This factor related to how far children saw their teachers as committed to their success and as enjoying respectful relationships with pupils. 4. School as a difficult environment. This factor was about aspects of the social experience of schooling and how far school was seen as difficult to negotiate socially in terms of the extent of bullying and 'hassle'. 5. School and friendships. This factor was also related to the social aspects of school and focused on the extent to which school was a site for friendships and children felt able to fit in socially. 6. Rejection of school. This factor contained statements rejecting the purpose of school and its relevance for the children. We can see these six dimensions as falling into two broad groups. The dimensions importance, teacher commitment and rejection are related to the value and purposes of school and are partly concerned with school as a preparation for the future. The dimensions enjoyment, a difficult environment and friendship relate to the affective and social aspects of school and are mostly concerned with the present. The first group could also be described as an instrumental response to school. Factor 1 describes how far the children see the central purposes of school as important to them and how far they believe that success at school will be rewarded. Factor 3 describes how far they see teachers as committed to supporting them in getting the most out of school. Factor 6 shows the extent to which they reject some or all of the purposes of schooling. The second group of factors could be described as an affective response to school. Factor 2 describes how much they enjoy school. Factor 4 describes the extent to which they find school a difficult place to be and factor 5 describes how far they are involved with the friendship and social patterns of the school.

The importance of school The first factor, presented in Table 5.1 is the importance of school. This can be regarded as an instrumental response to schooling in that it relates to the value of qualifications and success at school and the importance of doing well at school with regard to the future and, in particular, future employment. To some extent we have already considered the themes discussed here in Chapter 3 in terms of educational intentions and in Chapter 4 in terms of occupational aspirations. In these chapters it was clear that children saw the central purposes of education in terms of obtaining qualifications and jobs, and were highly committed to these purposes. It is again evident from Table 5.1 that

84

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 5.1 The importance of school (percentage) Strongly Agree agree

It is important to do well at school (N = 811) If I do well at school it will help me get what I want from life (N = 809) School will help me get the job I want (N = 804) School will help me get good qualifications (N = 805) Most of the things you learn in school are useful for the future (N = 801) What I learn in school will benefit my future (N = 803)

Not sure

Disagree Strongly disagree

74.2

21.8

2.3

1.0

0.6

68.1

23.6

4.9

2.5

0.9

60.9

89.1

7.8

2.7

0.4

66.7

26.8

5.2

0.6

0.5

54.6

33.7

8.9

1.6

1.2

63.4

26.2

8.6

1.0

0.9

this instrumental aspect of schooling is very highly valued by the pupils. Almost three-quarters of the pupils strongly agreed that it is important to do well at school and almost all either agreed or strongly agreed. The other five items also had very strong levels of agreement, with around 90 per cent of pupils saying they agreed or strongly agreed. These items covered school helping to get what you want from life, getting you the job you want, getting good qualifications and being useful for and benefiting your future. It is noticeable that, unlike most of the other statements presented in Tables 5.2 to 5.6, statements about the importance of success at school provoked particularly strong positive feelings. The great majority of the children said that they strongly agreed with these statements, while for most of the statements associated with the other dimensions the extremes of the scale were less commonly used than the more moderate 'agree' and 'disagree' ratings. Very few children disagreed with any of the statements, and disagreeing and being unsure together only came to about 10 per cent of these children. The implications of this highly instrumental approach for the great majority of children who accepted it have been considered in earlier chapters. The perspectives of the small minority who rejected these views are considered in Chapter 7. Clearly this aspect of response to school involves a strong orientation towards the future and a recognition that the things they learn at school and the qualifications they obtain will be very important in determining future employment and future lives. The following two quotations are typical of many pupils: 'Getting good qualifications is really important 'cause they last you your whole life. So, I think getting good qualifications is probably the most important thing in my life' (Zainub); and 'Education is very important


85

when it comes to certain things in life and if you don't do that good in education you won't really get that far in life' (Lucy). It was also noticeable that this view was held by children with very different intentions about their educational future. Mark who was aiming for a successful educational career said: 'This school is the best way of getting all the help I can. That will get me on to university and a career'. And David who was adamant that, despite being in the top set he would leave at 16, was equally positive about the purposes of school: 'like you can't get nowt without a good education and I rather have some education than none'. These data also show that children see their childhood and their school experiences as being, in an important sense, a time of preparation with a clear view of it leading to adult life and employment. They also have a sense that what they do as school children will be a major determinant of the nature of their future lives ('What I learn will benefit my future'). The idea of preparing for adult roles through their school experiences seems very important to the children in the survey. A further aspect of the instrumental aspect of the orientation to school is that of trust. As well as seeing that qualifications and the knowledge acquired at school are important, children's responses to this group of questions show a belief that effort and achievement will pay off for them and that the school will keep its side of the bargain ('School will help me get good qualifications'). So the strong positive responses to the questions that make up the 'importance of school' factor indicate an acceptance of a meritocratic view that academic success will be rewarded and that school offers routes to such success. Although there was little active dissent from these propositions, a minority of children were not sure about them. There is potentially a distinction between seeing the instrumental purposes of schooling as valuable in principle and believing that they will pay off for you personally. The figures in Table 5.1 show that most children go along both with the general principle and the personal pay-off, but the possibility that some have reservations about school's personal relevance must also be considered.

Enjoyment of school

The second factor to emerge from the analysis and shown in Table 5.2 is enjoyment of school. The four statements to load on this factor relate to school as a pleasant or unpleasant experience. These include T enjoy coming to school', T enjoy most school subjects', T like most of my teachers' and 'School is a good place to be'. While factor 1 was essentially about school as a preparation for the future, factor 2 is about school as an immediate experience. The children tended to be on the positive side of the items on this dimension, although not in anything like the extremely strong way they were for the instrumental and future-orientated aspects of school, and more children were

86

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 5.2 Enjoyment of school (percentage)

I enjoy coming to school (N = 812) I enjoy most school subjects (N = 809) I like most of the teachers (N = 812) School is a good place to be (N = 804)

Strongly Agree agree

Not sure

Disagree

Strongly disagree

12.4 17.2

45.7 50.4

25.7 18.5

9.0 10.2

7.1 3.6

18.1 24.0

41.6 40.0

26.2 26.1

8.3 6.1

5.8 3.7

prepared to disagree with these positive statements about school. As Table 5.2 shows, nearly six out of ten of the children said that they enj'oyed coming to school and about the same proportion liked most of their teachers. Over twothirds of the children said that they enj'oyed most school subj'ects and almost two-thirds that school was a good place to be. Considering that school attendance is compulsory and that there is very little curriculum choice at this age, this suggests that most children are relatively happy school participants. However, most of the children giving positive responses are at the more moderate rather than the enthusiastic end of the scale. A substantial maj'ority of children agree that they enj'oy school but relatively few are prepared to say they strongly agree that they enj'oy school or like teachers. One exception was Zainub who was extremely positive about all aspects of school: 'I love school, it's like we are a big community, a big family. Every one of us are in the same place, wearing the same clothes and the teachers really care about us.' Not surprisingly given these views, Zainub's ambition is to be a teacher. She finished the interview saying: 'Memories of school will stay with me forever, it's where my learning started and so, that is another reason why school is so important to me.' There were many other positive comments, although not of this extreme kind. The general impression in the interviews was that children were surprised they were being asked about whether they enj'oyed school. They had plenty to say about the value of school, about what they thought of their friends and teachers, and about complaints over things like bullying. But actually coming to school was mainly seen as a given. There were enthusiasts like Zainub and Steven who said; T hated missing school.' when referring to a minor accident which had kept him off. But even this was mainly with reference to the opportunities school offered rather than the strong affective feeling of Zainub and a small number of others. Most comments were fairly low key, on the lines of 'Yes, I suppose so', 'Mostly school is okay' and 'Usually I look forward to coming to school'. Charlotte had said some negative things about school but nevertheless decided she mostly enj'oyed being there:

What children think about school Interviewer'. Charlotte'.

87

If you had the choice of not coming to school would you still comer I would still come to school but I might have days that I might get up and not want to but most days I would.

Unlike the instrumental items in factor 1, there is also a distinct minority who disagree with the statements about school being an enjoyable experience. About 16 per cent said that they did not enjoy coming to school and about 14 per cent said that they did not like their teachers. Even larger proportions, about a quarter for most statements, were not sure where they stood on enjoying school. The figures also show that children were more likely to say they enjoyed the academic aspects of school than they were with regard to other aspects. Enjoyment of school subjects had the highest level of agreement and lowest level of disagreement of this group of statements. So children were more likely to enjoy school subjects than they were to enjoy school overall or like their teachers. Some aspects of this result are considered in the next chapter. For many children their enjoyment of school is linked to social relations with other children and their sense of academic confidence and enjoyment of the curriculum. For example, Sophie said: 'The [best things about school are] friends and learning new things.' Nazreen said: T don't say I look forward to coming to school, but I don't want to miss seeing friends or lessons.' But George, who felt that he had 'does quite well' at school and is 'quite bright' also said that his dislike of some school subjects dampens his overall enjoyment of school: T only really enjoy school on the days that I do things I like.'

Teacher commitment

The third factor, presented in Table 5.3, is the children's perceptions of teacher commitment', how far they see their teachers as committed to supporting them, having high expectations for them and giving credit for pupil effort. It also includes having respectful relationships with the pupils. The statements which load on the scale are 'Most teachers do their best for you', 'Most teachers expect me to do well', 'Teachers give you credit when you try hard' and 'Teachers here respect the pupils'. The statements describe the extent to which teachers are seen as performing an appropriate professional role in terms of their commitment to and recognition of their pupils' success and professional relationships with children. This is not necessarily the same as liking the teachers. The statements making up this factor are not necessarily concerned with affect but with pupils recognizing the nature of the teacher role and seeing them as fulfilling it. The distinction between liking school and teachers and seeing teachers as fulfilling professional roles shows a degree of

88

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 5.3 Perception of teacher commitment (percentage)

Most teachers do their best for you (N = 806) Most teachers expect me to do well at school (N = 806) Teachers give you credit when you try hard (N = 799) Teachers here respect the pupils (N = 798)

Strongly Agree Not agree sure


33.3

41.3

17.3

4.6

3.2

39.7

40.8

16.6

1.4

1.5

36.0

38.1

14.6

6.7

4.4

26.7

38.3

24.9

5.5

4.5

sophistication which may be surprising in children of this age. There is, however, other evidence that perceptions of teacher professionalism is important to children. For example, Attwood and CrolPs (2006) study of persistent absentees showed that some of the young people had stopped attending school because, as they saw it, teachers were failing to act appropriately with regard to providing instruction or keeping order. Both of these issues are concerns of the children in the present study, as discussed below. The figures in Table 5.3 show that children are generally positive with regard to their perceptions of the way teachers perform their professional roles. Three-quarters agree that teachers do their best for pupils and that teachers give credit for effort and four-fifths agree that teachers expect them to do well. A rather lower proportion agreed that teachers respect pupils but this is still two-thirds of all children. These figures are not as high as the ratings of the instrumental value of school but they are rather higher than the values for enjoying the experience of schooling. In particular, the 'Strongly agree' category is considerably higher than those strongly agreeing that they like school. It is only for a minority of children that these aspects of the professional role of teachers were seen negatively. About one in ten felt that teachers do not give credit and a similar proportion felt that teachers did not respect the pupils and some children were unsure about these statements. The most positively rated statement was with regard to teacher expectations and very few children said that their teachers did not expect them to do well. So while children were very positive about the purpose and value of school (factor 1) they were also fairly positive about the commitment of teachers to help them realize these purposes.

89

What children think about school School as a difficult environment

Although relatively few children said that they actively disliked coming to school, there is ample evidence that, at least for some, aspects of school present difficulties associated with the nature of school as a social environment. Naturally, most attention has been paid to the problems of bullying at school and the difficulties this creates for children (e.g., Attwood and Croll 2006; Sharp 1995). However, there is also evidence that a less extreme and more generalized perception of school as a place where unruly and disruptive behaviour predominates is a factor in the perceptions of many children (Attwood and Croll 2006; Attwood et al. 2003). The fourth factor consists of statements relating to children's experiences of the school environment and the extent to which they find the experience of school as a physical and social setting to be personally stressful and disagreeable. This factor is presented in Table 5.4 and has been labelled School as a difficult environment. Of course, one of the variables making up this factor relates to bullying. This has been shown to be an important element of some children's responses to school in a variety of studies such as those cited above. The question asked in the present study was of their perceptions of bullying ('There is a lot of bullying in this school') rather than of the experience of being bullied personally. One-third of the pupils agreed with this statement and one in eight expressed this as a strong agreement. The perception of school as a socially or personally difficult environment is not only a matter of bullying. In a study of young people who had become disaffected at school, Attwood and Croll (2006) found that it was often the more general atmosphere of the school, a concern about rowdy and disruptive behaviour and 'tension' that had alienated many, rather than specific bullying incidents. In the present study these aspects were considered through the statements 'There is a lot of hassle at school' and the rather more low key, 'School is too noisy'. Just over a third of the pupils agreed that there was a lot of hassle, almost exactly the same proportion as those saying that there was a lot of bullying. Almost half of the children said that school is too noisy. Taken together these results show that many children would like school to be a more Table 5.4 School as a difficult environment (percentage)

There is a lot of bullying at school (N = 806) School is too noisy (N = 803) There is a lot of hassle at school (N = 793)

Strongly agree

Agree

Not sure

Disagree

Strongly disagree

12.8

21.1

37.2

21.7

7.2

16.8 12.6

29.5 22.0

31.5 38.2

15.8 18.5

6.4 8.7

90


peaceful place and, as the interview evidence discussed below shows, see this as a problem both with other children and with their teachers. The sense of school as a difficult environment was explicitly linked by some children to the way they were, as Year 7 and 8 pupils, the youngest and the smallest in the school and were easily pushed around by older children: Everyone gets pushed about. It doesn't matter that we're year seven. The left and right thing doesn't work, especially on the stairs. Nobody pays attention to it. When you are in year six you are at the top of the school but here we are at the bottom . . . the older ones don't care, they just push you out of their way. (Helen) You get squashed [in the canteen], especially on a Friday when it's chips. There's a lot of pushing and not enough staff and the queue is very long. It's the bigger kids that push. The bigger ones call us 'year sevens'. It makes me uncomfortable to say anything if I get pushed 'cause they're bigger. Then they shout at us. They call us little children 'hey you! little girl!' (Sabia) The teenagers are massive compared to us, like people who are twenty or thirty. When you're walking you can get knocked down 'cause the big uns can't see ya. (Carl) Clearly these sorts of difficulties are nothing like as severe as those caused by personal bullying, but they show that the problems of negotiating school as a social environment and the disruption of various sorts caused by the behaviour of other pupils was significant for a substantial minority of the children.

School and friendships The other side of school as a difficult environment is school as a socially enjoyable space: a place to make and meet friends and develop social skills and social relationships. Although very different from the previous factor, these two aspects of responses to school are not inconsistent. Other studies have shown that children who have been bullied or have other difficulties with fellow pupils, nevertheless usually also have friends at school and value some aspects of the school as a social space (Attwood and Croll 2006). The fifth factor to emerge from the analysis is school and friendships. The statements which load on this dimension are T have plenty of friends', T get on well with other pupils' and, negatively associated with the other statements, T find it hard to fit in'. A substantial majority of children are positive about school as a site for friendships and social relationships, and the view that friends were an

91


essential part of the schooling experience was frequently referred to in interviews: Interviewer'.

What is the best thing about school?

Rachel.

Meeting new people. I have made a lot of new friendships. When I came here I was the only one who didn't know anybody. I was the only one from my junior school who came to this . . . school. But I have made a lot of friends now.

And David said: 'they [your friends] help you get through it. Like, if you are down and you've got a monk on (sulking, in a bad mood) then they help you get through it'. The figures in Table 5.5 show that 90 per cent of the children said that they had plenty of school friends and more than two-thirds of these were in strong agreement. Only the statements about the instrumental importance of school had the levels of strong agreement that the children expressed about their school friends. The statement about getting on well with other pupils is a more general one than that about having plenty of friends; children can have close friends yet still find it hard to get along with many other pupils. However, this seems generally not to be the case. Although there was not such a high level of strong agreement with this statement, almost 90 per cent were in agreement and less than 5 per cent disagreed. The figures for not having friends and not getting on with other children are very much lower than the figures for thinking that there is a lot of bullying, hassle and noise at school reported in Table 5.4. This suggests that the perception of school as a difficult social environment is more to do with a general atmosphere in the school than with immediate personal relationships. In response to the negative question about finding it difficult to fit in, only 15 per cent agreed and only half of these were in strong agreement. 'Fitting in' is not necessarily about friendships but this was the way most children seem to have interpreted it, as reported difficulty in fitting in was strongly negatively associated with having plenty of friends and getting on well with Table 5.5 School and friendships (percentage) Strongly Agree agree I have plenty of friends at school (N = 812) I get on well with other pupils (N = 800) I have difficulty fitting in at school (N = 799)

Not sure


62.7

28.2

4.9

3.0

1.2

39.3

47.2

8.9

3.6

0.9

7.0

8.1

18.9

35.2

30.8

92


others. So alongside the very general positive response to the social aspects of school, there is a fairly small group of children who do not have friends at school and find it difficult to fit into the school environment and form satisfying personal relationships.

Rejection of school The sixth and final factor in the analysis relate to a group of statements expressing negative views about the nature and purposes of schooling. These statements are listed in Table 5.6 and range from a fairly ordinary statement about school having too many rules to the statements 'School does not have much to offer me' and 'My parents/carers don't think that school is important'. Positive responses to these statements suggest some degree of rejection by the child or the parents of aspects of schooling and the factor has been labelled, Rejection of school. Of course the extent of rejection of school suggested by agreeing with a statement varies considerably across the items. It is perfectly possible to value the central aims of school while believing that your school has too many pointless rules, 'like having your top button done up all the time' and 'not coming to school in your trainers'. This item is an extremely mild version of rejection of school and has by far the highest level of agreement, at 40 per cent. The general acceptance of the necessity for rules at school is indicated by a third of children disagreeing with this statement and 60 per cent either disagreeing or saying they were not sure. However, for some students, believing school has too many rules also appeared to reflect negative relationships within school, with children feeling singled out and victimized; They [teachers] don't know what they are on about and, like my tutor, they pick on people for no reason, or, like they pick on just one person for Table 5.6 Rejection of school (percentage) Strongly Agree agree School doesn't have much to offer me (N = 808) School has too many rules for no reason (N = 810) My parents/carers don't think school is important (N = 804) School has nothing much to do with the outside world (N = 799)

Not sure


5.1

11.9

26.3

30.8

26.0

15.7

25.1

28.6

20.0

10.6

4.4

2.6

4.9

12.8

75.4

8.3

11.6

28.5

26.9

24.7


93

doing what everyone else is doing . . . I'm treated differently to my friends and if they got no respect for me then I'm not gonna respect them. (Lindsey) A much more extreme item is the statement that the child does not think his or her parents regard school as important. Here only 7 per cent of pupils agree and the great majority of the children see their parents as putting a high value on schooling. Three-quarters of the children strongly rejected this statement, the highest value in either the strongly agree or strongly disagree categories. Although the figures are low, there is a small minority of children who seem to be getting a very negative view of school within their families, although the great majority of these children said that they personally valued school. About one in six children thought that school did not have much to offer them and one in five thought that school had nothing much to do with the outside world. As was suggested earlier, it is possible for children to believe in the importance of success at school and its value for determining their futures and, at the same time, to think that these things will not work for them. The figures for children saying school did not have much to offer them are much higher than the figures for those rejecting statements about school helping them to get qualifications and school teaching them things that are valuable for the future. In the following chapter we shall explore how children's perceptions of themselves as learners relates to feelings about what school has to offer, and in Chapter 7 we return to the issue of children who appear to reject school.

The best and worst of school The results presented above come from a structured question presenting the children with specific statements about a wide variety of aspects of school. The fact that the responses to these statements interrelate in a coherent fashion, as demonstrated by the factor analysis, shows that the ideas in the statements were meaningful to the pupils and that they covered a range of dimensions corresponding to the ways the children organized their feelings about school. However, we cannot be sure from these data that they represent the aspects of school which are most important to the children or that they cover all the things that inform the children's views of school. Responses from the open-ended interviews with 30 of the children are considered later in this chapter. However, in the questionnaire all children were given a chance to say what they felt about school in an open-ended way, not constrained by the specific statements used for the factor analysis. In a section of the questionnaire completed before they were presented with the structured

94


statements or any other questions about their school, children were asked, 'What are the best things about this school?' and then, 'What are the worst things about this school?' The results from these questions are presented in Table 5.7. Over 90 per cent of the child could name something they regarded as best about their school although under half came up with two or more things and no one identified more than three. Just under 90 per cent could think of something that was worst about their school and a quarter named two or more worst things. In Table 5.7 the best things have been grouped into things connected to people and things connected to the academic or quasi-academic aspects of schooling. As might be expected from the previous analysis friends were the things children were most likely to say they liked best about school. Friends were named by well over a third of the children as one of the best things about school and in nearly all cases friends were mentioned first. Teachers were identified by one in five of the children as one of the best things about school and the more general 'people', which may refer to fellow pupils, teachers or both, by 5 per cent. In all, well over half the children mentioned some people-oriented aspect (friends, teachers or people) as one of the best things about school. This shows that the interpersonal aspect of school and school as a social space is very important to children and is probably the main influence on how they feel about the day-to-day experience of being at school. The results also show that the fairly positive view of teachers to emerge from the structured responses to statements is, for some children at least, confirmed spontaneously when they are asked to say what they like about school. Teachers were nominated as a best thing more frequently than any other category apart from friends. The other things that children mention when they are asked what is best about school are sports and physical education (PE), nominated by 16.9 per Table 5.7 The best and worst things about school Best things (%) Friends Teachers People

Sport/PE Specific subjects Learning Academic standards

Worst things (%)

35.8 20.7 5.1

16.9 15.1 15.1 8.4

Teachers Academic work/specific subjects Rules /punishments Homework Boring lessons

16.4

Bullying Other pupils Rowdiness

11.7

Buildings/environment

17.4

14.8

9.1 7.1 4.9

7.6 5.5


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cent, and other school subjects of various kinds, mentioned by 15.1 per cent. The other school subjects include art and music and some children may be referring to these as extra-curricular activities rather than as academic subjects. However, 15.1 per cent nominated 'learning' as one of the best things about school and 8.4 per cent mentioned academic standards. So while school as a social experience was what most children thought of when asked about what they liked best, plenty of children also mentioned academic aspects, defined broadly. The reference to academic standards is particularly interesting and a number of children said how pleased they were that they were at a 'good' school, meaning one that had good academic results. As well as being the second most common best thing about school, teachers also featured as the second most common worst thing. Some children just wrote 'teachers' in the space for worst things, sometimes qualified as 'some teachers'. Others elaborated on what they thought was wrong with their teachers. These included teachers being too strict and unfair in the application of rules and sanctions but also teachers not having sufficient control over pupil behaviour and poor and 'boring' teaching. Pupils also complained about specific subjects or academic work in general, homework and boring lessons. Just under 10 per cent felt that rules and punishments were among the worst things about school. The second group of worst things in Table 5.7 contains aspects of school which relate to the idea of it being a difficult environment socially. Bullying was mentioned by nearly 12 per cent of pupils as the worst or one of the worst things about school. Slightly more mentioned either other pupils or rowdy behaviour. In all, nearly a quarter of the children mentioned one or other of these. As with the responses to the structured questions, both bullying and a more general perception of disagreeable behaviour are things that spoil the experience of school for a substantial minority of children. The single most common category of worst things about school are aspects of the physical environment. Children wrote of problems with the buildings, general shabbiness, litter, graffiti and the toilets. Overall one in six of the children mentioned some aspect of the physical environment. Although the state of school toilets is sometimes considered a problem, only a quarter of the complaints about the physical state of the school mentioned toilets. This amounts to comments from fewer than one in twenty children. The main impression to emerge from these open-ended comments by children is a broad acceptance of the nature and functioning of the school. There were few complaints about the academic demands of school, and these were mostly about specific subjects people disliked. There is almost no sense that children find the content of what they are taught overall to be irrelevant or over-demanding. Similarly, there were also virtually no complaints about the extent of assessment and testing, although this may not impinge on the Year 7 children in the way it will later. There were also relatively few

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negative comments on the need for schools to maintain order, and complaints were mainly directed at the behaviour of particular teachers seen as overstrict or, in particular, unfair and inconsistent, rather than at the nature of the teacher role. A second theme is the importance of personal relationships in responses to school. Friendship and good relations with other children were the best things about school, and teachers the second best. On the negative side, it was the failure of these relationships and the behaviour of other pupils which children most disliked about school. More generally, when children are asked to reflect on school in an open-ended way, rather than being prompted by specific statements, it is the immediate day-to-day experience, especially the social experience but, to some extent, the experience of the curriculum, which dominates their responses. In the earlier analysis of the children's responses to statements about school, we saw that virtually all children agreed that school was important for their futures and that success at school would bring desirable outcomes in the future. But this aspect of school hardly figured at all in the open-ended responses. No one said that the best thing about school was that it would lead to jobs and qualifications. The nearest to this view came from the children (about one in twelve of the sample) who said that it was good that their school had high academic standards. The absence of a view of its relevance for the future in these responses to school may partly explain the way that, despite believing that education and qualifications were very important, only just over 60 per cent of children definitely planned to stay on at 16. Although almost all children recognize and accept the instrumental importance of school, for many of them it is their immediate social and academic experiences that determine how they feel about being at school.

Social and personal relationships in the school As we have seen, social and personal relationships are very important influences on how children feel about being at school. In the interviews it was possible to explore some aspects of these relationships, and some of the themes from these discussions are considered below. These have been grouped under three headings: friendships, hassle and bullying, and relationships with teachers.

Friendships The comment that, 'Friends are the best thing about school', or something very similar to this, was made repeatedly in the interviews. As was apparent from the questionnaire data, nearly all the children described themselves as


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having friends at school, and the extent and importance of these networks of friendship emerged very strongly in the interviews. For many children friendships were seen in a positive and unproblematic way and school was an important social space and a way to meet people they liked: Jake'. Interviewer'. Jake'.

. . . most of my friends are here and they like live a long way from me, so I get to see them here. So school is somewhere social for you? Yeah I get to see my friends from primary that are in a different tutor group from me, so that good.

For a few of the children friendships were the only good thing about school: ^ara'. Interviewer'. £ara:

Friends are the best thing about school . . . That's why I enjoy coming into school, to see them. Other than friends do you enjoy school? No, only friends.

But much more commonly, friendships were one of the positive things about school and were explicitly put alongside learning as a feature of school that was valued. Earlier we quoted Sophie who thought 'the best thing about school is my friends and learning new things'. And Charlotte thought: 'if you never came to school you wouldn't have friends because you make your friends at school and if you never came to school you wouldn't learn anything'. However, friendships were not only valued for their own sakes and, for many of the children interviewed, were seen as a support and buffer against the strains and difficulties of school. This was implied by Sarah who explained, like many others that, for her, friends were the best thing about school and added: 'They trust me and I trust them', suggesting that you needed people you could trust in school and that others might not be trustworthy. This sense of friends as sources of support came out more explicitly when Nazreen had been explaining that she liked most of her teachers but added: '[But] . . . teachers wouldn't understand problems or be able to do anything about problems. Friends do though. Friends are the best thing about school'. Thomas, who had really enjoyed primary school, described how he had found the transition to secondary school a very anxious time. When he arrived at school he found it 'a big shock' but, when he got placed in a classroom he was relieved to find himself'sat next to four of my friends from primary school'. This had made all the difference to the process of transition. Lindsey explained the way friends helped her cope with the pressure of school: 'at home I am very confident but at school I can only be confident with my friends'. While nearly all children were positive about their friends and many saw

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them as the support they needed to cope with the problems of school, for a few children, friends were a source of some of the problems they experienced. Jane had experienced problems with her peer group, both in terms of pressure not to do school work but also of friends then wanting to copy her work when she had resisted this pressure, which she resented. She said: 'It gets hard sometimes . . . they don't want you to work when . . . [friends] aren't working . . . then they use your work'. And Thomas described the tension between needing to fit in with his friends who could be 'A bit disruptive' and his own commitment to learning and doing well at school: 'I need to learn and it doesn't help . . . and sometimes I have to join in. If I do I won't learn but if I don't I won't have friends. I know I shouldn't do it.' George had problems with the friends he had in Year 7 as they have 'Got naughtier', while he wants to get on well at school. This sense of some pupils' behaviour as being different from hers was also true of Elizabeth who felt that she 'Gets on well' with most children but not with the disruptive pupils: 'they are from a different world'. This sense of both implicit and explicit differentiation in the social world of the school was apparent throughout the interviews. There were the people you could trust, the people who would stand up for you and the people who understood your problems; implicitly contrasted with those you could not trust, who did not understand and who had to be stood up against. More explicit, though less common, was the distinction between children like you and those whose behaviour put them into a different world. An important distinction to emerge from the data on friendship is between friends as source of support and friends as a source of influence. Almost all the children felt their friends were there to support them but far fewer described their friends as influential with regard to educational decisions. As the questionnaire data presented in Chapter 3 showed, less than a quarter of the children who planned to stay on post-16 said that one of the reasons for staying on was that friends would stay on. Exactly the same proportion of those planning to leave said that one of the reasons was that their friends were leaving. An even smaller proportion said that they might change their minds in the light of what their friends were doing. Even more strikingly, very few children said that a reason for going to university was that their friends would go. It was also apparent in the interviews that relatively few children mentioned what their friends were doing or discussions with friends when talking about either their educational or occupational futures. There were some exceptions to this. Steven wanted to go to university so that he could get a good job and said: ' most of my best friends will stay on at school and most will go to university'. He had changed his friends since coming to secondary school. At first he had a group of friends who were mainly from primary school. Now he had a new set of friends who were more like him in their ambitions. Post-16 plans


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are discussed a lot among these friends, particularly what they would like to be in the future in terms of higher education and jobs. He did not directly say that these friends influenced his ambitions and he seemed to have chosen to be with this group because they shared his ambitions rather than the ambitions coming from being with them. However, it was clear that this group of children reinforced each others' ambitious plans for the future and created a climate in which continued educational participation was the norm. The only example in the interviews of someone directly attributing educational choices to peer influence came from Carl who planned to leave at 16. He said that this is because his friends are all going to leave. All his friends want to leave school as soon as they can and they talk about it a lot. Friends are important because 'they make school fun . . . if I stay on and they are all playing out then it won't be much fun'.

Hassle and bullying Interviewer'. Justin'.

Is there a lot of hassle at school? Yeah, there is lots of fighting and bullying.

Friendships are mostly about school as an enjoyable social experience although they are also often seen as a defence and support against the difficult aspects of being at school. The other side of the social experience of school is that of bullying and what we have called the 'hassle' of school life. In the questionnaire children were not asked directly if they had been bullied but were asked to respond to the statements that 'There is a lot of bullying at school' and 'There is a lot of hassle at school'. One in three of the children agreed with each of these statements and fewer than one in three definitely disagreed. In all, 46 per cent of children agreed with one or other statement, so many children see school as a difficult social environment. Of course, 'hassle' may refer to difficulties with teachers as well as with other children. Some aspects of what children meant by these responses and their own personal experiences of these difficulties emerged from the individual interviews. Some children reported seeing a lot of bullying although they said that they had not personally been bullied or bullied others. Paul talked about there being 'a lot of bullying' at school but says he has never been bullied and has only bullied 'unintentionally'. Fatoumata who had fairly recently arrived from Somalia said that she had found the school 'very friendly and very welcoming. But there is a lot of bullying at the school'. Interviewer'. Fatoumata'.

Have you been bullied? No I haven't but I know a lot of people that have. I know people that don't report it because they are scared that it might come back on them.

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Others have more direct experiences as the victims of bullying, such as the boy who explained that it is because he is bullied that he does not like coming to school. He has spoken to his parents about it and his mum would come to the school if he wanted them to, but no one has actually hurt him so he does not want her to yet. He does not feel that he has many friends at the school. Those he does have he calls just 'messing about friends'. Another, Carl, who did not enjoy coming to school said this mainly because of other pupils who are 'Too loud and rough'. Bullying also plays a big part in this and he has experienced bullying. He said that he does not usually report this to the teacher; If they're only messing then I guess it's alright but when I ain't done nowt then I will tell sometimes . . . if I have done something and they start hitting me then there is no point telling 'cause they just won't own up to it and I leave it as it is 'cause I know I done wrong. Carl also talked at length about a boy in his class with learning difficulties who is constantly targeted by bullies: His behaviour his odd 'cause he's a bit slow like . . . he hits himself and screams . . . and people take his pencil case off him and like deliberately sit next to him to get him going but it ain't his fault, it's the way he were born and I just feel really sorry for him. Bullying was also one of the reasons Justin gave for not staying on. He said that things had changed over the last year and he was no longer enjoying school. He had been bullied by other boys in his year, including being flicked by rubber bands. Although he said he had told the teachers, nothing had changed. He felt that no one could help him, including his parents, because he could not show any proof that it had been happening. His friends were either afraid of being bullied themselves or sided with the bullies. Fortunately bullying is not always permanent. Elizabeth was bullied in Year 7 but it has stopped and she had 'let that go in my head'. She had been picked on for her nickname but they had got fed up with it and it just stopped. Other children were more low key in their views on bullying and seemed to regard it as more of the rough and tumble of school life rather than anything more serious. Michael said how he: '[Does not] . . . like some of the kids here, they walk around thinking their hard . . . they just make comments because I am in the top set and that.' And Charlotte complained about other children's behaviour in class: T don't like it when you want to get on and finish doing stuff, but people just behave silly and disrupt things; I just ignore them and get on with my work. I think they are doing it for attention or because they


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can't do the work.' When Liam was asked about bullying, he also downplayed it: Interviewer'.

Do you think there is a lot of bullying at this school?

Liam'.

No not really. There is some bullying, but it is mainly year 11s. They take your ball, they don't steal it they just take it from you and chase it. They will give it back to you at the end of break, but sometimes a teacher has to come and take it for you. That's it really they just take your ball.

Some children were uncertain whether name-calling should be regarded as bullying, like Charlotte who told us, 'There's no bullying, just calling names'. And Thomas who was very unhappy about being 'picked on' by older students who called him, 'ginger and that', nevertheless was adamant that it should not be seen as bullying but as being picked on. A positive feature of the discussions of bullying in the interviews was that several children talked about how the school was very good at dealing with bullying. These comments came especially from children in two of the schools but were also made by children in other schools. Sophie had said on her questionnaire that bullying was the worst thing about the school but in the interview said she is now unsure: 'Some of the year group bully and some of the year group don't, so I don't know if there is any going on a the moment. But the school deals with it quite well when there is.' And Charlotte commented: I don't think there is a lot of bullying at the school, just name calling and that is because the teachers are quite quick to deal with bullying. Occasionally someone will go into an argument or call some one a name and if it doesn't get sorted immediately it will get sorted eventually. Sometimes someone will tell on you for doing something when you actually haven't done anything and that's a bit difficult because you can't explain yourself because they are on you so quick — the school. Similarly, Lindsey felt 'the best thing about school is that it is very strict on bullying'. One of the themes to come out of the interviews was the transfer from primary school to secondary school and the experience of moving from Year 7, the first year of secondary school to Year 8. Talking about bullying at the school, Adam said that it was not as bad as it was in his first year there because now many of the bullies have been excluded. He was not bullied himself but some of his friends were bullied and that has stopped this year. Children had very mixed views on the transition from primary to secondary. Some of them had been happier in primary school and found

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secondary school to be too big and impersonal. Others, however, had welcomed the transition as a move from a claustrophobic environment into a more varied and grown-up world offering them much wider academic and social possibilities. But although views differed on moving from primary to secondary, the children were pretty much universal in welcoming the move within their secondary school from Year 7 to Year 8. This was almost entirely because of the hassle associated with being the newest and smallest and feeling picked on by older and bigger children: 'lots of people in year seven were bullied because they were the smallest in the school but now we're in year eight there isn't so much bullying' (Max) and 'School is better now than . . . year 7 'cause you're not bottom of pile no more and you all blend in' (David). Matthew was happier in Year 8 for a variety of reasons. He felt his behaviour had changed for the better and that the work was easier. Also 'in year 7 a lot of big people push you around and stuff but not in year 8'. Sarah, who found school 'a little easier' now that she is in Year 8, said that she did not like being in Year 7 which she felt was quite intimidating as the older students would say things like 'Oi you! Get out of my way'. It is perhaps surprising how much difference moving up one year made, the children were, after all, still among the youngest in the school, but was a very consistent theme in the interviews. It may be connected with the newness and unfamiliarity of the secondary school as well as being the smallest children in a sometimes rowdy environment. Rudduck and Flutter (2004) also noted the pressures on children of the switch from being at the top of the primary school to the bottom of the secondary school. However, it was also the case that most of the behaviour the children described had not caused them major difficulties. In general, with regard to the sort of social environment children were presented with, the benefits of friendships outweighed the negatives of rowdiness and hassle. However, for a few children, being bullied or witnessing distressing bullying had been a very negative feature of their time in secondary school.

Teachers

'The best things about school are the good teachers but, teachers are also the worst thing about school' (Thomas). Thomas summarizes, albeit in a somewhat extreme form, the views of many children on their teachers. Most children's opinions of their teachers are mixed and contain positive and negative elements. As was apparent from the analysis of the questionnaires, the balance of pupil views was positive. About 60 per cent agreed that they liked their teachers, nearly three-quarters agreed that teachers did their best for pupils and two-thirds agreed that teachers respected pupils. But a minority disagreed with these statements and up to a quarter were not sure about them. In the interviews a very few children were either entirely positive


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or negative. Bahia said she enjoyed school mainly because 'staff are so encouraging . . . particularly . . . [their] helpful comments on work'. And Steven gave a series of positives about school including: 'The teachers are good and that helps too.' Zainub listed a series of positive aspects of school and finished with 'and the teachers really care about us'. In contrast Lindsey was unhappy about coming to school and really did not enjoy being there. She said that it was because of her relationships with teachers that school is such a negative experience. She felt that she was singled out and treated differently to her friends; 'and if they [teachers] got no respect for me then I'm not gonna respect them'. She says this is why '[I] . . . find myself being disruptive in the lessons and with the teachers I don't like'. This gets her into trouble and had set off a negative spiral of responses to school which she blamed on teachers. Other children had a more nuanced response to their teachers and were able to reflect on the relationship of their own behaviour and teacher perceptions of them, and the ways that this could change over time. Adam, who had put on his questionnaire that teachers did not respect the pupils, had shifted his perceptions by the time of the interview: Interviewer'. Adam'.

You disagreed that the teachers respect the pupils. Well not in year 7. I said before that I didn't really like any of my teachers and I don't think they liked me, but that has changed a bit now. I think in year 7 they had me down as a trouble maker. Though some of the others aren't very respectful to the teachers or other kids.

Nazreen reflected: T think my teachers would be surprised to know what I am like at home. At home I am more relaxed . . . I don't have to think about certain stuff.' The relatively thoughtful view of the teacher role and teacher—pupil relationships that came out of the discussion with the great majority of pupils could be characterized as the children's perceptions of teacher professionalism. The children did not use this term but it describes the kind of concerns they had involving criticisms they made of teacher behaviour and the criteria they used in differentiating good and bad teachers. The aspects of teaching behaviour that were focused on were fairness and consistency, the quality of teaching and the teachers' role in maintaining order. Fairness and consistency were constantly mentioned by students in terms of different treatment of the same behaviour from different pupils and different teacher responses on particular occasions. We were given many examples of unfair and inconsistent behaviour. Of course, it is not being argued here that teachers actually were unfair in any of these instances. We have no way of knowing what actually occurred and in some cases children

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undoubtedly either could not see the full picture or are engaged in selfjustification. The point is that the notion of fairness was repeatedly invoked, was important to the children and that unfair and inconsistent actions are seen as a legitimate criticism of teachers. Children would talk both about specific personal unfairness to them and more general inconsistent teacher behaviour that was perceived as unfairness: 'some teachers may be fun they are not always fair . . . some teachers let kid move seats in class [despite] a seating plan, but not for all students' (Lindsey). Michael liked most of his teachers but also thought: 'some are unfair . . . one will let the class talk for five minutes without saying anything and then just sends them outside for talking'. And Paul thought that teachers are, 'really unfair' and gave an example about how he was given a detention when he was not even in class: I were late from a different class because I were talking to the teacher about some homework I didn't understand it. I arrived at classroom someone shouted and he said that's it final warning. I said it wasn't me, and he sent me out of the classroom. He came outside and said he had given a final warning and I said I wasn't there to get it. He smiled and sent me to reception anyway and I got a 30 minute detention. Lindsey was quoted earlier as saying that the best thing about school was how it dealt with bullying. But she then went on to complain about unfairness from some teachers: 'they don't know what they are on about and, like my tutor, they pick on people for no reason, or, like they pick on just one person for doing what everyone else is doing'. Many of the examples of unfairness and inconsistency will be familiar to readers from classroom experience and the difficulties of managing the behaviour of large numbers of children. None of the instances we were given seem very extreme cases of injustice in school. Nevertheless, although individually we might dismiss these kinds of incidents as misunderstandings or the 'rub of the green', it is striking how many children talked about fairness. It is also the case that the cumulative impact of many small instances may create a sense among pupils of unfairness at school, rather in the same way as the cumulative impact of minor transgressions by children in the classroom can create an overall sense of a disorderly and disruptive environment for teachers. The second aspect of teacher professionalism to concern the pupils is that of the quality of the teaching they receive. This concern was not as widely expressed as that about fairness but was nevertheless a theme for a substantial minority of children. Children complained about the quality of explanations and feedback and teachers not fulfilling obligations with regard to managing lessons and the curriculum. For example, Nazreen had a list of complaints


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about the teaching she received and said this implies they are not respected or cared for: Worse things about school are that some lessons are poor . . . and some teachers are not very good. This spoils school . . . my favourite lessons are when the teacher makes it interesting . . . Lessons are harder to understand when teaching is poor . . . The teachers that make lessons boring and who aren't liked are the ones [the poor teachers] . . . Teachers don't always turn up for lessons and they don't arrange cover or work . . . Sophie also had a long complaint about teaching, although she finally qualified this by saying it did not apply to all teachers: sometimes the teachers are happy and then you go to their lesson again and they are all moody and grumpy and they are like in a bad mood all the time and they will stay stuff and something there and then just sit at the computer and when we have handouts they don't come over and help they just let us get on with it and then when they ask us why we haven't done the work and we say it is because we were waiting for their help they say we are lying. That is some teachers right. When Max was asked what he would change about school he said: 'The way things are taught because the teachers don't explain things properly.' An aspect of teacher behaviour related to the quality of teaching is that of teachers recognizing and giving credit for effort and achievement. In the questionnaire most pupils said that teachers gave credit when you try hard but some children felt that this was not always the case. Zara said: 'it makes you feel like, what's the point if you done something good they don't notice so what's the point, they only notice when you do something bad'. The third aspect of teacher professionalism to come out of the interviews was the teachers' role in maintaining order. As previous research has shown, children expect their teachers to maintain order in school (Wheldall and Glynn 1989) and the importance of maintaining an orderly environment came out strongly from the interviews. Many children felt that the disruptive atmosphere in some classrooms affected both their learning and the extent to which they felt comfortable in school. Lack of teacher control was sometimes explicitly linked to these problems and sometimes by implication. Elizabeth explained that that the teachers 'try their best' but sometimes other pupils were disruptive which makes things difficult for the teachers. She also told us that when OfSTED (the school inspection agency in England) was at the school some of the pupils were excluded from classes so that inspectors would not see their behaviour! 'The school tries to help but sometimes classes just don't get taught because

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the pupils are so disruptive which affects everyone's learning' (Elizabeth). Elizabeth preferred it in the subjects where they are broken up by sets rather than tutor group because then she is in the top group and away from all the; 'disruptive kids'. Other children were also clearly aware that pupil behaviour created problems for teachers but also said that teacher responses to misbehaviour created problems: 'When teachers shout at the pupils . . . some kids are sent out and that disrupts the class for the rest of the group' (Sophie); 'I don't like it when the teachers shout at other people that upsets me a bit' (Jake); and 'A few people in the classes are disruptive which puts me off, especially when the teacher shouts at them' (Elizabeth). Disruptive behaviour clearly creates issues of fairness discussed above. Lucy felt: 'some teachers are unreasonable and don't treat you fairly in the class, like they don't give as much attention to the quiet ones, they only notice the noisy ones'. Children were aware that some teachers are more accomplished than others at maintaining order. A particular issue picked up by some of the children interviewed was that supply teachers, brought in to cover for teacher absences, were likely to have difficulties managing their classes. Elizabeth told us: 'People think they can behave differently with a supply teacher.' She went on to talk about how a class that is normally good were disruptive for a new supply teacher. And Justin told us how he got upset when the children in his class made his teacher cry because they were so horrible to her: Justin'. Interviewer'. Justin'. Interviewer'. Justin'.

The others just kept being horrible to her and the teacher she got so upset that she just started to cry. Was this a teacher that was standing in for someone else? Umm well yes she was. What happened? Um well another teacher she came in and she told the class off and took the rest of the lesson.

The final theme with regard to children's relationships with their teachers was that of respect and reciprocity. Two-thirds of the children had agreed on the questionnaire that teachers treated pupils with respect, although this was slightly lower than the other positive responses to teachers. In discussing the extent of respect in the interviews the issue of reciprocity was central. This occurred in two ways. Some pupils emphasized the responsibility of the pupils: they could only expect to be treated respectfully by teachers if they showed respect to the teachers: 'if you respect them the teachers will always respect you and if you show them more respect than they will respect you even more' (Fatoumata); 'If you treat the teachers with respect they will respect you and help you to get on in school' (Charlotte).

What children think about school Interviewer'. Jake'.

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Do the teachers respect the pupils? Yep, as long as the pupils respect them back, otherwise no!

'If you respect them [teachers] they will respect you back' (Liam). Other children emphasized the need for the teachers to behave with respect to pupils and argued that if they did not they could not expect to be treated with respect themselves. Nazren disliked: [Teachers] . . . who don't give us respect. They always say you must respect the teacher but they don't respect us, they think by always shouting they will get through to us but they don't. They never admit when they are wrong yet we are expected to say sorry when they want us to. 'They [teachers] only get respect from the pupils if they show respect' (Sophie). This second view tended to be associated with a more negative overall view of teachers than the first approach to reciprocity, and issues of respect tended to be raised by pupils who were critical of teachers. Max's view of school was dominated by 'Teachers shouting at everyone and not showing respect'. Max was more negative than most of the children but both shouting and not showing respect were frequently mentioned as criticisms of teachers. Overall, the interview data confirmed the questionnaire analysis in showing that, from the point of view of the children, there were generally good relationships between teachers and pupils but that, for a minority of pupils, these relationships were problematic and, at times, mutually antagonistic. The data show a very clear sense from most of the children that teachers should perform a professional role appropriately and that this is the main basis on which they will be judged. An appropriate professional role includes behaving consistently and fairly, maintaining an orderly classroom environment and effectively facilitating their pupils' learning. Most children disliked having either their academic work or their social environment disrupted and mainly saw this as an issue for the teacher. Respectful relationships were important to all the pupils but issues of respect were especially prominent for those who had difficult relationships with their teachers.

Group differences in attitudes to school So far in this chapter we have looked at children's attitudes to school from the point of view of children in general. In this final section we consider whether different groups of children have distinctive patterns of response to school. In

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particular we consider whether the variation across the types of response apparent in Tables 5.1 to 5.6 are associated with other characteristics of the children. We saw in these tables that most children were positive about most aspects of school but that a minority of children expressed negative views. The question obviously arises as to whether there are systematic differences in patterns of negative response so that we can say that certain categories of children are more or less likely to be positive and negative. In the analysis below we consider possible differences associated with gender, with the occupational group of a child's parents and with children's intentions with regard to staying on at school post-16. These will be dealt with briefly here as there will be a more extended discussion of the children planning to leave school early in Chapter 7 and of children from different socio-economic backgrounds in Chapter 8. In Table 5.8 the patterns of association between selected attitude scale items and other characteristics of the children are presented. Six statements have been selected to represent each of the six dimensions of attitudes to school to emerge from the analysis and are given in summary form here. The first statement represents the items in Table 5.1, the second represents Table 5.2, and so on. A more detailed analysis is given by Croll et al. (2008). In Table 5.8 the percentage agreement with each of the statements is given separately for boys and girls, children from non-manual and manual backgrounds, and for those saying they will stay on and those saying they will leave. The main conclusion to emerge from the analysis is that with regard to gender and occupational background there are very few differences in attitudes to school. Boys and girls had very similar levels of agreement with all six statements and, in particular, they were almost identical in saying that school was important and that they mainly enjoyed being there. For most of Table 5.8 Group differences in attitudes to school (percentage) Gender

Important Enjoy school Teacher commitment Bullying Friendship Not much to offer

Parental occupation

Post- 16 intentions

Boys

Girls

Nonmanual

Manual

Stay on post- 16

Not sure

Leave at 16

95.7 57.4 78.9

96.3 59.0 71.2

96.7 61.0 77.0

95.3 57.2 74.1

97.8 65.8 79.5

96.1 51.0 70.3

89.6 39.6 64.3

35.7 89.5 16.7

32.3 92.0 17.0

34.9 91.4 12.4

33.2 91.0 21.5

34.6 92.1 12.7

25.7 91.0 18.1

39.3 86.2 30.8


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the attitude items the same is true for children from different occupational backgrounds. Children from manual and non-manual backgrounds were very similar with regard to the importance of doing well at school, enjoying school, having friends at school, awareness of bullying at school and seeing teachers as committed. The only difference of any substance to emerge is with regard to the item 'School does not have much to offer'. Almost twice as many children from manual as from non-manual backgrounds agreed with this statement. It is still very much a minority view with just over one in five of the children from manual backgrounds feeling that they personally were not likely to get much out of school. But the difference between the groups is quite striking and suggests a possible explanation for part of the later differences in participation rates for children from different socioeconomic circumstances. Although there were generally very few differences between children from manual and non-manual occupational backgrounds with regard to attitudes to school, among the small proportion of children who had begun to doubt the personal value of school to them, children from manual backgrounds were heavily over-represented. This result may partially reconcile the marked difference between survey evidence and the results of small-scale qualitative studies discussed in Chapter 1. It is not the case that children from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds generally do not value and enjoy school or feel that their teachers do not support or value them. But, in the small subset of pupils who are beginning to reject school, children from these backgrounds predominate. Tables 5.8 also shows differences in responses to the attitude items for children who have expressed different intentions for post-16 participation. In contrast to the gender and socio-economic groupings, most of these show a clear pattern of difference. Children who plan to leave are less positive about thinking that school is important, enjoying school, believing their teachers are committed to them and thinking that school does not have much to offer. However, they are no different from other children in their perceptions of levels of bullying and, like other children, they have plenty of friends at school. It is important to note that, despite having lower levels of ratings of the importance of school, this is within the context of very high overall ratings of this aspect of schooling. Nine out of ten of the children who plan to leave at 16 say that it is important to do well at school. The really large differences between the intending leavers and the intending stayers are with regard to enjoying school and believing that school has something to offer them. A majority of those planning to leave are not positively enjoying school and a third do not feel that school has something to offer. Children who plan to leave school early do not have such positive attitudes as other children but they are certainly not generally negative about school.

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They see the social aspects of school, friendship and perceptions of bullying, in the same way as other children. Most are positive about the value of school and the commitment of teachers, although not to the same extent as others. The biggest differences are with regard to enjoying coming to school and, for a minority, feeling that school does not offer them much.

Chapter 6


Learner identities In this chapter we look at the evidence on how children see themselves as learners. In previous chapters we have seen that children are highly instrumental in their approach to school and see the importance of school in terms of preparation for the future. We have also seen that their response to the experience of school in the present is heavily influenced by the nature of school as a social environment and their relationships with teachers and other children. None of this relates strongly to the central purpose of school in terms of learning and children's achievements in mastering the school curriculum. Here we are turning explicitly to children's identities as learners in terms of the extent of their commitment to learning and the sense they have of their success or otherwise as learners. One aspect of this idea of learner identities refers to how children see their own performance against the academic demands of school. We are concerned with the extent to which children can make judgements about their own academic performance and the extent to which they make these judgements through comparisons with other pupils and in terms of their experience of and expectations for, examination performance. The analysis draws on a variety of questions included in the questionnaire and followed up in interviews: how well they think they did at their primary school and how well they think they were now doing at secondary school, how they see their performance relative to that of other pupils, how well they expect to do in examinations and how they see the expectations of their parents and teachers with regard to their performance. Learner identities, particularly with regard to views of current and future achievements, are an important aspect of children's experience of school and are potentially very important in understanding future patterns of educational participation and attainment. How children see their own academic performance is likely to be relevant to choices they make about levels of commitment to school work and about the likely pay-offs of investment in

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continuing educational participation. If we are to consider children and their families as actors, consciously making educational choices, then judgement about their prospects of educational success are likely to be important in informing these choices. For example, the version of Rational Action Theory put forward by Goldthorpe (2007a) to explain socio-economic differences in educational participation, suggests that children (or families) from different socio-economic backgrounds make different judgements about whether or not they will achieve academically, and these judgements then inform decisions about whether it is worthwhile to invest in educational participation. The idea of learner identities is also related to, but not identical with, the idea of academic self-efficacy, the beliefs children have about their own academic capabilities (Bandura et al. 2001). Like academic self-efficacy it is concerned with the judgements children make about their academic performance. Bandura et al. argue that children's sense of what is possible for them — their sense of efficacy — will determine the goals they pursue. If children think that particular achievements are beyond their capabilities they will simply eliminate them, however desirable they may be. Their own evidence suggests that academic self-efficacy is more important than actual academic performance in terms of influencing children's aspirations. In the present study we are concerned with academic self-efficacy as defined by Bandura et al. in terms of children's belief in their own capacity, but also their image of themselves as learners in terms of how they rate their previous and current achievements. Other studies have suggested that some children develop a very negative perception of their academic performance and academic prospects at an early age. Some small-scale qualitative research studies have suggested that children at primary schools have internalized ideas about themselves as academic failures, as 'thick' and 'a nothing' (Reay, 2006), largely as a response to being characterized in this way by their teachers. While these assertions are based on snippets of quotations from a very small number of children, some very large claims are made about the relevance of this to the relationships of'the working class' to the education system. The present data make it possible to establish whether, and to what extent, some children perceive themselves as educational failures at an early stage and whether they see their teachers as regarding them in this way. It has also been suggested that the very much increased level of formal testing, especially in primary schools, has increased pupils' awareness of variations in educational performance and that, for lower attaining children, this has led to a decreased sense of self-worth and an early indication that they are educational failures. The review of primary education in England conducted by Robin Alexander and his colleagues (Alexander and Flutter 2009) has suggested that, as well as having a restricting impact on the curriculum, high-stakes summative testing has a demotivating effect on pupils and creates a sense of failure for many children (Harlen 2007).

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Some of these issues are addressed below in our analysis of the commitment of children to education, their perceptions of their achievements and expectations for future achievement, the expectation they think others have for them and the extent to which they had developed negative learner identities.

Commitment In this study we wanted to see how committed children are to success at school, how they view their current and past educational performance, what their expectations are for future performance, how they see themselves in relation to other children and how they think others view them academically. In Table 6.1 we can see how important it is to children to do well at school, how important they think it is to their parents and how hard they are prepared to try in order to achieve it. As the figures show, children are very highly committed to success at school and see their parents as highly committed. Well over 70 per cent say that is it very important to them and nearly all the rest say that it is important. The figures for parents have even higher levels of'very important' and only 1 per cent of children do not think it is important to their parents that they do well at school. Children also mostly say that they are prepared to put in a lot of effort in their school work. Almost 90 per cent agree and less than 3 per cent disagree that they try their hardest at school. As would be expected from the analysis in previous chapters, children express a high level of commitment and perceive their parents as sharing this. Table 6.1 Pupil effort and the importance of success at school (percentage) Very important

Quite important

Not very Don't important know

How important is it to you to do well at school?

72.4

24.3

1.6

1.6

818

How important is it to your parents/carers that you do well at school?

79.5

15.8

1.0

3.7

818

Strongly agree

Agree

Not sure

Disagree Strongly N disagree

45.8

42.3

9.1

2.0

I try my hardest in my school work

N

0.8

800

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In interviews many children elaborated on their feeling of commitment to school work. Doing well at school is very important to Steven and doing well, particularly in tests and examinations is fundamental to feeling happy about himself. He said, 'If I don't do well then I know I will get down'. Steven spends a lot of time revising and spends his free time in school with friends doing school work. Jane describes herself as 'conscientious . . . I like to do the work set'. She said how she absolutely hates the idea of being in trouble or receiving a detention. It mattered to her that she does well at school and does well in her GCSEs, 'because I want my mum to be proud'. Many of the children talked about doing well to please their parents, while others wanted the teachers to be pleased with them. Emma was happy at school and confident in her own academic abilities. Apart from her friends, the best thing about school was 'learning new things'. She said this was partly due to the fact that she got a lot of praise when she does things well. Her favourite lessons were those where the teachers give a lot of encouragement: 'they say like we are the best class and that and it makes me really happy'. One of the themes from the interviews was the way that children felt they had settled down since joining the secondary school and had discovered a commitment to work. Mark spoke very positively about how the school has a lot to offer in terms of extra-curricular activities but then said that he could not take part much as he has a lot of homework to do: 'I used to hate doing homework but now I realize that it is helping us and I like to spend time on it now.' And Liam and Max both expressed a new level of commitment now they were in Year 8: Liam'.

Max'.

I really want to do well and learn stuff now but last year I wasn't very good so this year I have got to start working. Last year I wasn't very good I have got to start learning. Last year I did the work but mucked around between the lessons, but this year I am learning because I want good qualifications. '. . . now I think it is very important to do well at school. In year seven I knew people who were really clever but they didn't bother to go to school and they were still doing well, but know I think it is important because I don't think I am as clever as them so I need to come to school . . . If I didn't have to come to school I would still come now, because I want to learn.

Even where pupils think they are not going to do well academically they still recognize the importance of school and are worried about the prospect of disappointing outcomes. Sarah would like to do well in school but did not think she would as she feels she is 'Not as clever' as the other pupils and that is why her results have not been good. Sarah was already thinking about her


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GCSEs and believed she would fail them, while at the same time recognizing them as important. She has tried to get her mother to let her change school but her mother has refused. Her sister had done well at the school, getting all As and A*s and her mother believed she could do the same: 'She thinks I can do as well but I can't and she is gonna be disappointed and I try to tell her but she just don't listen.' This has made Sarah feel; 'pressure and stress'.

Perceptions of achievement The last example above raises the issue of how children see their academic performance both currently and in the future, and the sorts of comparisons they makes between themselves and others. In Table 6.2 data are presented describing how children rate their performance at primary school and in their current school, how they think they will do in future examinations and how they see their performance relative to that of other children. We look first at how children think they did at primary school and how they were doing towards the end of their first year in secondary school. The children were asked about their performance at primary school and were asked to say if they thought they had done 'Pretty well', 'OK' or 'Not so well'. They were then asked about their present school in the same way. The figures in the top row of Table 6.2 show the overall response to primary school. More than seven in ten of the children thought that they had done 'Pretty well' at primary school and nearly a quarter thought they had done 'OK'. Only one in twenty of the children rated their primary school performance as 'Not so well'. Clearly these figures do not support the view that a substantial proportion of pupils develop negative learner identities at primary school or that the current testing regime has created a sense of failure for any but a small minority. The figures in the second row of Table 6.2 show the equivalent results for the question about how they were doing at their present school. Pupil ratings of performance in the first year of secondary school were also positive, although not to the same extent as the ratings of primary school. Well over half said that they were doing 'Pretty well' and almost a third that they were doing 'OK'. This represents something of a shift from the positive 'Pretty well' to the more neutral 'OK' but there is still no evidence of any widespread sense of academic failure. While the positive end of the spectrum had shifted down, the negative end was unchanged: virtually the same proportion of children, under one in twenty, said 'Not so well' in response to the secondary school as had done so in response to the primary school. The shift downwards in ratings parallels the well-established phenomena of a 'dip' or 'hiatus' in performance associated with primary to secondary school transfer (Croll 1983) but there is no evidence of an increase in the most negative self-ratings.

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Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 6.2 Perceptions of attainment (percentage) Pretty well

OK

Not so well

N

How do you think you did at your primary school?

71.1

24.0

4.9

795

How do you think you have done so far in this school?

57.2

38.1

4.8

796

Yes, definitely

Probably yes

Probably not

No

38.0

56.1

4.8

1.1

Do you expect to do well when it comes to examinations?

Better than About the same as most most people people In most school subjects do you do:

26.2

63.3

814

Not as well as most people 10.5

812

The cross-tabulation of the responses to these two questions shows, as is to be expected, a strong association between the sets of responses. This is shown in Table A6.1 in Appendix 2. The great majority of those who said they had done 'Pretty well' at primary school said the same for secondary school, and the same was true of those saying they had done 'OK'. Almost a half of the total sample said they had done 'Pretty well' at both primary and secondary and over 90 per cent said that their performance had been at least 'OK' in both primary and secondary. However, this continuity is nothing like as marked at the negative end of self-ratings. Only a quarter of those who had been most negative about their performance in primary school were equally negative about secondary school and one in five said that they were now doing 'Pretty well'. The numbers are small in absolute terms but most of the children with negative self-perceptions of their primary school achievements had not become locked into this learner identity and were more positive about their achievements at secondary school. Only 1 per cent of the sample was uniformly negative about their performance in both primary and secondary schools. The other side of this relationship is the children who had been positive about their achievements in primary school but now said they were doing 'Not so well' in the secondary school. Fifteen children who said they had done 'Pretty well' in their primary school said that they were doing 'Not so well' in


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secondary school. This is a very small proportion (2.7 per cent) of those positive about primary school but amounts to about four in ten of those negative about secondary school. Almost exactly the same number of children shifted from being 'OK' with regard to performance in primary school to a more negative position at the secondary school. For a small number of children (3.6 per cent), therefore, moving to secondary school had been negative academically, while for about the same number it has moved them out of a negative self-perception. The children were also asked about how they expected to do in examinations. They were asked if they thought they would do well in examinations on a scale of 'Yes, definitely', 'Yes, probably', 'Probably not' and 'Definitely not'. These responses are also given in Table 6.2. The children in the study were generally optimistic about future examination performance. Nearly all the children, almost 95 per cent, thought that they would do well in examinations. The majority thought that they would 'probably' do well but well over a third thought that they would 'definitely' do well. One in twenty said they would probably do badly and one in a hundred said that they would definitely do badly. The finding that children rate their future performance highly matches that of Sullivan's (2006) study of older pupils, which found that children generally overestimated their educational performance. As would be expected, children who rated their current performance at school highly were more likely than other children to say they would do well in examinations. Nevertheless, about two-thirds of those saying they had done 'Not so well' in their first year in secondary school still expected good examination results. These results do not suggest that, with just possibly a few exceptions, the experience of the heavy-testing regime that characterizes English primary education has given children a negative view of their prospects in future educational assessments. In terms of academic selfefficacy and children's belief in their educational capacities, it is apparent that, at this stage in their secondary school career, only 5 per cent of children were thinking that some degree of academic success was beyond them. The ratings of performance at school, discussed above, did not ask children to compare themselves with others, although, of course, they may have done so. Much of the assessment of educational performance is normative in the sense that it ranks people in terms of their standing in relation to other people rather than against some absolute criterion. The fact that so few children had negative views of their school performance and that a substantial majority thought they were doing 'Pretty well' suggests that relative or normative judgements did not dominate the responses to the question, although they may have been present to some extent for some children. There is plenty of evidence that children are aware of how they stand in school in relation to the performance of other children (Abbott 1996; Hargreaves 1967). To get a sense of children's awareness of their relative

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standing they were asked, 'In most subjects do you do better than most people, about the same or not as well as most people'. These results are given in the bottom row of Table 6.2. The children's ratings of where they ranked against other pupils show something of a positive bias in self-assessments, but to nothing like the same extent as in their absolute ratings of achievement. It also shows a somewhat undifferentiated view, not dominated by a sense of ranking. Nearly two-thirds of the children said that in most subjects they were much the same as other pupils. About a quarter said that they were doing better than other pupils and a tenth said that they were not doing as well. In Table A6.2 in Appendix 2 the children's ratings of how they stood in relation to other children are cross-tabulated against their ratings of how well they had done in their current school. As would be expected there is a relationship between how children see themselves in relative terms and how they see themselves in absolute terms. Those who said they were doing 'Pretty well' at school were much more likely than other children to say they were doing better than others. And those saying they were doing 'Not so well' were ten times as likely as those saying 'Pretty well' to say they were doing worse than others. However, the main sense from the table is that relative judgements do not dominate children's perceptions of their performance in school. Most children who thought they were doing 'Pretty well' did not think they were doing better than others, and less than half of those saying they were doing 'Not so well' also thought they were doing worse than others. The majority of children saying they were doing worse than others described their performance as 'OK' and only a tiny fraction of the children (0.2 per cent) said both that they were doing 'Not so well' at school and that they were doing less well than other children. In the interviews it was possible to explore some of these aspects of learner identity in more detail. As would be expected from the questionnaire responses, the majority of children discussed their performance at school in positive terms, although there were others who had more tentative and, occasionally, negative perceptions of their learning. Usually, children who were hesitant or negative about their school work expressed this explicitly in terms of comparison with other pupils. Children who spoke positively did not usually make these explicit comparisons with others, but comparisons were often implicit in that they described their school attainments in terms of the sets they were in. For example, Elizabeth said she was only 'quite good' at mathematics but was 'Still in the top set'. She was also in the top set for other subjects and was 'doing very well at languages'. Max had put on his questionnaire that he was doing 'OK' at secondary school. Now he said: T was middle at my old school and I am doing OK here. I am in the top set for some of the classes.' Adam was 'in the top set for everything and I am quite good at English and Maths. I don't like history that much though'.


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A few children were highly positive and confident academically. Steven said that he generally performs well in tests and considers himself a high achiever: 'I don't want to sound like I am boasting but I get very high marks in most of my subjects and in some I am getting a level 6, which is considered quite high for someone of my age apparently.' On a more cautious note Nazreen is 'fairly confident' about her academic abilities She said she was in Set 2, and thinks she has the potential to do well in GCSEs. But she was worried about examinations. She felt: 'exams are wrong . . . grades should be given for class work and effort rather than one exam'. And Liam said: 'I did OK [at primary school] my grades weren't low, but they weren't high, but I have started improving now.' The comparison with primary school was also made by Ben who explained his questionnaire response that he did not fit in at school in terms of the difference between his primary and secondary school performance: Ben'.

Interviewer'. Ben: Interviewer'. Ben'. Interviewer'. Ben:

. . . yeah, when I was at primary school I was the brainiest of the bunch and there was a lot more like brainier kids and that. Are you the brainiest now? No. How does it make you feel not to be the brainiest? Well I don't really mind not being the brainiest. Is that what makes you think you don't fit in as well? Yeah, a little bit.

Like Ben, in discussion in the interview most children showed a clear sense of how their performance related to that of others, either through direct comparisons or through the sets to which they had been allocated. However, these comparisons did not necessarily dominate how they felt about their school performance. Children generally were pleased when they were in the top set although there were exceptions to this as will be apparent in the discussion of setting below. But being in the top set did not always make them confident academically. Children could feel that their attainments were not as high as others but were nevertheless satisfactory. Lindsey had said that she had done 'OK' at school but added, 'well, I'm not at the top . . . like the clever kids . . . I'm not very clever'. She felt that in class everyone 'gets' what they are having to do except her. Liam, talking about how he might do in examinations, did not have high expectations but thought his results would be satisfactory: 'Well I'm not sure really, I am not really clever so I don't expect to get As, but I hope to do OK.' Later in the interview he went back to examinations: 'I hope I will [do well] but I will have to work a lot harder if I want to do well in my grades.' Sarah was unusual in that she had internalized a view that she was not

120


doing well at school and was not going to do well in the future, and felt that her teachers did not expect her to do well. She said that she finds school work hard but will not ask for help or go to after-school classes for help. Sarah did not feel that she will do well in examinations either: 'I always talk in the exams and don't do nothing.' She has given up on getting help from teachers: 'Whenever I put my hand up in class to ask for help they just say, "You already know the answer Sarah" so I have stopped bothering.' Sarah is not getting uniformly negative messages about her academic potential. As we saw in the earlier discussion, her sister got good results at GCSE and her mother expects her to do the same. But for Sarah this was not a source of support but of extra worry about failing. She also felt that what she described as her bad behaviour at school came about from not understanding much of what she was required to do, together with the pressure of her mother's expectations. In marked contrast to Sarah, and much more typical of the children, was Michael whose attitude to tests and to problems with his school work was to increase his effort and find out what was wrong; Interviewer'. Michael.

Do you not like tests? I don't mind tests because I get to find out how I am doing. If I don't do as well as I think I should I get upset and try harder. I look at them as an incentive. They are an incentive to try harder. If I get something wrong I get upset. We got a maths test back yesterday and I got four wrong and I am upset about that. I got a calculator test and I got 8 wrong out of 24 and it has put me down a bit. I want to be able to do the test again.

A further aspect of children's learning is their response to particular subjects. This was not addressed specifically in the questionnaire except that children were asked to say what they would like to change about what they were learning. The were relatively few replies to this open-ended question and where children did say something it was about wanting more or less of particular subjects. But in the interviews several children reflected on particular subjects and subject preferences. For some children their view of a subject was determined by how good they thought they were at it. When Charlotte was asked about subjects she did not like she said: 'Well I am not good at geography, so I didn't really like that, and English I am not as good at as others so I am not really keen on that.' But other children had a more complex view of subjects. Liam had clear preferences for what he described as 'physical' subjects but also distinguished between subjects being enjoyable and being valuable. While Paul sees being good at something he dislikes as part of his overall high level of academic confidence.

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Children as learners Liam:

Paul:

I like doing PE and tech. Tech is very good because it is physical. All the lessons are good, even though I don't like them, they are good. I don't like maths and English but they are still good, I think. I like science because it is physical, PE is physical. . . . yeah but I like the drawing as well and I like the subject. Well I don't really like maths but I am good at it. I got 99 out of a 100 on the SATs and I am really annoyed with myself coz when I look back on the paper I knew the answer, I just wrote the wrong one down that's all.

Parent and teacher expectations Learner identities are likely to be influenced by children's experience of their own educational performance but also by the impressions they get from adults about how their performance is judged. A measure of how children think that their parents and their teachers view their performance at school was incorporated in a scale of attitudes and orientations to school. Two of the statements making up this scale were 'My parents expect me to do well at school' and 'Most of my teachers expect me to do well at school'. Children were asked to respond to these statements on a scale on 'Strongly agree', 'Agree', 'Not sure', 'Disagree' and 'Strongly disagree'. The children's perceptions of adult expectations are presented in Table 6.3. Well over 90 per cent of children agree that their parents expect them to do well at school and nearly two-thirds strongly agree. Only a very small fraction of children (1.6 per cent) thought that their parents did not expect them to do well. The perceptions of teacher expectations are very similar, although not quite as strongly positive. Over 80 per cent of children said their teachers expected them to do well and half of these strongly agreed. Less than 2.5 per cent of children said that their teachers did not expect them to do well. Table 6.3 Perceptions of parent and teacher expectations (percentage) Strongly agree

Agree

Not sure

Disagree Strongly N disagree

64.6

27. 7

6.0

1.0

0.7

804

My teachers expiect me to 39.7 do well at school

40. 8

16.6

1.4

1.5

806

My parents /carers expect me to do w ell at school

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There may be a degree of ambiguity in the statement 'Expect you to do well'. It is generally interpreted as a statement of anticipation: the adult thinks that the child will do well. However, it could be interpreted as statement of standards required of the child: the adult requires that the child will do well. (A teacher saying, 'I expect absolute silence all afternoon' is not necessarily anticipating this.) But both interpretations of 'expect' are a positive expression of how the children see their parents and teachers in relation to their education, and either can be seen as a positive contribution to the child's identity as a learner. In the interviews no child said anything to suggest that their parents were not supportive or did not expect them to do well. In the case of Sarah, her mother's positive expectation was a source of worry but for most children it was something they were pleased about.

Negative identities? The results from the analysis of learner identities have been very largely positive with regard to the way children see themselves as learners. This contrasts with the very negative accounts of some other researchers of the experiences many children have of school, which emphasize the negative view that some children have of their own learning capacity and their perceptions of teachers as not valuing them as learners. We can look at the interrelationship between the various learner-identity indicators used here in order to get more of a sense of how far some children have negative views of themselves as learners. The most extreme negative selfimage of the child as a learner is if a child views themselves negatively on all four of the self-ratings discussed here; that is, if they think they have not done well at primary school, have not done well at their present school, perform less well than other pupils and probably or definitely will not do well in examinations. This extremely negative self-image as a learner is held by virtually no one. Just three children, 0.4 per cent of the sample, have negative self-perceptions on all four indicators. A slightly less extreme but still very negative view is children who have negative self-perceptions on the three indicators relating to secondary school, ignoring the retrospective question on their performance in the primary school. Again, only a very small number of children, eight in total, making up 1 per cent of the sample, are negative with regard to how they are doing at secondary school, their performance relative to others and their prospects in examinations. So, while the present study does contain a few children with strongly negative learner identities, the numbers are very small. This means that such negative identities cannot be characteristic of particular subgroups, such as children in less advantaged socio-economic circumstances. If the strong version of negative learner identities is virtually non-existent


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it may be that a weaker version can be found among a larger proportion of children. The weakest version of a negative self-image of a learner is a child who, in response to at least one of the learning-identity questions, give a negative reply; that is, children who say either that they did not do well at primary school, or that they are not doing well at secondary school or that they perform less well than others or that they probably will not do well in examinations. Of the total sample, 147 children, 18.7 per cent, give negative responses to at least one of these questions. This means that while four-fifths of the sample had uniformly positive learner identities, just under one in five were negative in some aspects. This is, though, a weak version of negative learner identities, balanced in virtually every case by more positive responses. An overall view of children's sense of themselves as a learner shows a generally positive picture. Nearly all children think that they are doing at least satisfactorily in school and that they are likely to do well in examinations. They overwhelming think that their parents expect them to do well and a large majority think that their teachers expect them to do well. This is a picture which emerges both from the questionnaire responses from a large-scale representative survey and from the detailed interviews with a smaller sample of children.

Normative judgements A further issue is the extent to which children make comparisons with others in assessing their own performance. Much educational assessment involves, explicitly or implicitly, normative elements. National curriculum assessments are formally criterion referenced against set levels, but these levels are set in terms of what a child of that age is expected to be able to achieve, which clearly involves normative judgements (Croll 1990). Many other assessment procedures such as standardized reading tests and the tests to assess cognitive abilities, which most secondary schools administer at entry, are explicitly norm referenced. Other accounts of children's reactions to Key Stage assessments have emphasized the relative aspect in terms of which children will perform well and which badly (Reay and Wiliam 1999). In considering the extent to which children in our study make normative judgements, slightly different conclusions emerge from the questionnaire data and the interview data. If we focus on the results from the questionnaire analysis it seems that comparing their performance with that of others plays a smaller part than might be expected in children's sense of themselves as learners. Most children in the sample say that they perform at much the same level as other pupils, suggesting that strong elements of comparison are not present. Moreover, most children who think that they are not doing very well in school do not

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think they are doing worse than others, and most children who think they are doing worse than others do not think that, in absolute terms, they are doing badly. In particular, although one in four of the children said that they were doing better than others, only one in ten said that they were doing worse than others. These results do not generally support the argument that schools, at least for children at this age, have created a strongly hierarchical sense of achievement in which most children see themselves in terms of either superior or, in particular, inferior achievement. But in the interviews, when achievement was discussed, comparisons were almost always made both implicitly and explicitly with other children. Children talked about being the 'brainiest', 'in the middle', 'not at the top', 'not like the clever kids' and 'not as good as others'. On the whole these explicit comparisons were made by children saying that their achievements were relatively modest. (Ben, who used the expression 'brainiest', was saying that he was no longer among this group.) Children who were saying that they were performing well tended to refer to being in the top set for some or all subjects, which is clearly an implicit comparative judgement. In reconciling these different perspectives it is important to note that the great majority of children were relatively content with their performance in school. Those who were saying that they were not like the cleverest children did not think of themselves as doing badly but as doing satisfactorily. In this sense they saw themselves as being much the same as other pupils. As Table 6.2 shows, many more children said they were doing better than others than said that they were doing worse, and some of the higher achieving children clearly saw their set allocation as an indicator of this. A more detailed analysis of the comparative performance data in Table A6.3 in Appendix 2 shows that nearly all the children saying they did better than others were in the top set. However, more than half the top set children did not say they did better than others and three-quarters of the bottom-set children did not say that they were doing worse than others. A combination of the questionnaire and interview data suggests that children are aware of a hierarchy of attainment in school but mostly see their own attainments as being within the ordinary middle range. While some of the higher-attaining children see themselves in terms of being at the top of this hierarchy, far fewer of the lower-attaining children think of themselves as being at the bottom.

Setting and school-level attainment In the discussion above, children's position in their school's setting system was something mentioned in the interviews when attainment was being discussed. Setting is a very common organizational feature of English secondary schools (Hallam and Iveson 2006) and was employed in nearly all the schools in the


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present study. Setting reflects the heterogeneity of attainment and (presumed) ability within most schools and is seen as a way of ensuring an appropriate match between class teaching and children's learning needs. Setting is a grouping strategy where children are put into classes according to levels of attainment for particular subjects so that they may be in different sets for different curriculum areas. It is also common, especially in the early years of secondary school, for certain subjects to be ability grouped while others are not. A variety of grouping strategies were used by schools in the present study but all except two employed some degree of setting. Children were asked about the set(s) they were in on the questionnaire and 608 gave responses to the question. Of these 37.5 per cent were predominantly in the top set, 43.4 were predominantly in the middle sets and 19.1 were predominantly in the lower sets. It is likely that there was more non-response to this question from pupils in the lower sets than from those in higher sets. A further way in which the children in the sample were differentiated by attainment was in terms of the schools they attended. Average attainment level was one of the stratification criteria in the selection of the sample, and the schools in the survey varied considerably in overall attainment levels. The measure of achievement used was the proportion of pupils attaining a grade C or better in five or more subjects at GCSE, including English and Mathematics. This is a criterion used by government in publishing information about secondary schools. (Note: The General Certificate of Secondary Education is an examination taken by pupils in England usually at the age of 16. A C grade is regarded as a good pass and five Cs or better as a good overall result.) There was a very large range across the schools from almost three-quarters gaining five Cs or more in the highest-attaining school to under 20 per cent gaining this level in the lowest-achieving school. For the present analysis schools have been placed into three broad groups. There were three high-attaining schools where 55 per cent or more of pupils attained the benchmark figure; eight middle-achieving schools where the range was from 49 per cent to 38 per cent; and four low-attaining schools where 35 per cent or lower of pupils attained this level. Setting and streaming are controversial issues in education. A streamed school is one where children are put into classes on the basis of achievement levels and stay in these achievement-graded classes for all subjects. As a strategy it has the advantage of grouping pupils together who are at similar levels of attainment, which means that teachers can match the level of their class teaching and the work they set to the levels pupils have reached and so avoid the difficulties created by having a wide range of attainments within the classroom. However, many disadvantages have been suggested, including low expectations and negative stereotyping of pupils in lower streams and a rigid categorization of pupils, which, in practice, is slow to change. Studies have also found that students are advantaged by being placed in higher streams

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and that a sense of alienation from school can develop in the lower streams of a streamed school. Hallam and Iveson (2006: 2007) provide a review of some of the work on streaming and setting. Setting is a system in which children are not grouped by registration class but are grouped by achievement in specific subj'ects. Children could therefore be in different sets for different subj'ects and some subj'ects may be taught without setting. This more flexible strategy has largely replaced streaming in secondary schools. It has the same advantages as streaming but has also been subj'ect to the same criticisms (e.g., Abraham 1995). Despite these criticisms, Hallam and Iveson in their large-scale survey of pupils' attitudes to setting found that a substantial maj'ority of children were in favour of setting in school. By far the most common reason they gave for this was that it allowed work to be pitched at an appropriate level. However, they also found that on average across three subj'ects about 30 per cent of the children wanted to change their sets. Most wanted to be in a higher set and receive more demanding work but some wanted to be in a lower set and have easier work and some wanted to change sets to be with friends. In the present study the issue of setting mostly arose in response to discussions about how children were getting on at school. Children who volunteered their set placement in the interview were nearly all in the top set or in the top set for some subj'ects and, as was apparent in the earlier discussion, regarded this as an indicator of academic success. Children in the lower sets did not mention setting either positively or negatively and hardly anybody, whatever their placement, was critical of the setting system or their place in it. Michael who was in the top set wanted classes to be set for all subj'ects: 'not j'ust the important ones' (sic). This was because he did not want to be with children who were not taking school work as seriously as he did: 'We are still in forms for history and religion so people still mess around. I do j'ust as well, but I don't really like it as much. I j'ust keep my head down and keep quiet in those classes.' In contrast David had mixed feelings about sets. He was in the top set at school but feels; 'under pressure', particularly as his friends are not in the same set as he is. At one point he said that he would prefer to be with his friends rather than be in the top set. But although he finds the work hard and misses his friends he also said that he '[tries] to stay in there' as being in set one makes him 'feel quite smart and I like that'. The only child to express serious discontent about her set was Fatoumata, who had recently arrived from Somalia. Because she had been at primary school for less than a year, the school was not able to determine her attainment level and so they had put her in the bottom set for each subj'ect and were going to determine from there whether she should move up sets, depending on her attainment. She disliked this because she thought she should be doing harder work and because of the other people in the classes:

Children as learners Fatoumata: Interviewer: Fatoumata:

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... because it is the bottom set, they sit you with people that you don't want to sit with and the people in the class are naughty and I have to be in the class. So how are you finding the work? Are you finding it easy? Yeah, I am hoping they will move me because I would like to be in the class with my friends so we can learn together.

[Note: It emerged later that she had already been moved for some subjects.] A number of familiar themes with regard to setting came out of these interviews. There is a status issue with regard to the desirability of being in high sets, but there is also a tension between set placements and the attraction of friendship groups. There are also possible misplacements in the cases of David and Fatoumata. The issue also emerged of the types of people children want to be with in school. As we saw in Chapter 5, children often complain about an atmosphere of rowdiness in school and the way that some children's behaviour disrupts classes and causes problems for everyone with the teachers. Some of the children clearly saw setting as an element of this problem. For Fatoumata, lower sets were characterized by children being 'naughty' and, for Michael, mixed ability grouping for some subjects meant that he had to be with people who 'mess around'. For these children the academic hierarchy and the behavioural order of the school are closely linked. As we have seen, the schools in the sample varied considerably in terms of their levels of attainment as indicated by the GCSE examination usually taken by pupils after five years in secondary school. In the interviews very little mention was made of the overall academic ranking of the school and children talked about their future examination prospects without reference to their school's overall results. The only exception to this was in comments with regard to staying on post-16, discussed in Chapter 3, when some children made reference to their school having a good sixth form and one girl was aware that her school did not. However, in the open-ended section of the questionnaire children had been asked to list the best things about their school. Eight per cent of children said that one of the best things was that the school had good academic standards. At the extremes there was a relationship between these comments and the examination performance of the school. The only school where no one mentioned academic standards was the school with the poorest GCSE results. And the school with the highest level of children mentioning academic standards (28 per cent) had by far the best GCSE results and was the school with the sixth form discussed in interviews. This was a school where places are in much demand locally and which gets mentioned in estate agents' details as an attractive catchment area for marketing purposes, so it is not surprising that children were aware of its reputation. However, what is surprising is that all but one of the schools had

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pupils commenting favourably on standards even though many of these schools did not have good examination records. For example, two schools where only about 40 per cent of children get good GCSEs had 13 per cent and 16 per cent of children in the sample mentioning academic standards. This suggests that, with the exception of the one high-profile successful school, children do not have a strong sense of the academic ranking of their schools. This issue will be considered in more detail below. In Table 6.4 we present the patterns of association between, first, the sets children are in and, then, the attainment level of the school they attend and their academic self-perceptions and their attitudes to school. The children have been grouped according to whether they were mainly in the top sets, mainly in the middle sets or mainly in the bottom sets. Schools have been grouped into attainment bands as described above. In general, the figures show that setting is related to children's self ratings but not to their attitudes to school, while school-level attainment is related to attitudes but not to selfrating. The most dramatic difference between different categories of children in the table is that between children in different sets and self-ratings of performance relative to others. As would be expected, children in the top set were much more likely to say that they did better than other people, although this was still under half of the top-set children. In contrast, only one in ten of the bottom-set children said this. To some extent children may have been making comparisons within the sets in which they were taught, so that a few bottom-set children saw themselves as doing better than others and over half of the top-set children did not think they were doing better than others. However, the message of the setting system was clearly getting across and, as was apparent in the interview data, awareness of relative achievement is strongly linked to setting. With regard to the other measures of academic self-perception, there are also differences between children in different sets but not to anything like the same extent as the direct comparison with the performance of others. Almost half of the children in the bottom sets thought that they had done 'pretty well' at secondary school compared to just under three-quarters of the top set children. And it is apparent that being in the bottom set has not diminished the confidence of the children with regard to future examination performance. Nine out often of the bottom-set children say that they expect to do well in their future examinations and well over a third say that they 'definitely' expect to do well. These figures are not as high as those for the topset children but they show that being in the bottom set has not led to these children becoming resigned to academic failure. Attitudes to school show little difference across the sets. Children in different sets were very similar with regard to enjoying school, seeing teachers as committed to them, perceptions of bullying and having friends in school.

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Children as learners Table 6.4 Setting, average school attainment and children's self-ratings and attitudes

School attainment band

Set

Top (%)

Middle (%)

Bottom (%)

High (%)

Medium (%)

Low (%)

Do better than most people: 'Yes'

44.0

18.0

10.6

23.7

25.5

30.5

Expect to do well in examinations 'Yes' (Yes, definitely)

98.2

92.7

89.4

92.2

94.8

93.5

(45.1)

(37.4)

(36.8)

(39.0)

(36.9)

(40.2)

72.4

53.6

44.7

60.4

58.1

51.6

Enjoy coming to school: Agree

59.9

58.6

62.0

66.2

59.3

47.6

Important to do well at school: Agree

99.3

95.5

91.2

93.6

96.8

95.8

Teachers do their best for you: Agree

76.5

72.1

78.7

84.1

72.8

72.3

A lot of bullying at school: Agree

29.8

37.4

35.4

31.2

28.1

53.7

Plenty of friends: Agree

93.4

92.7

85.9

95.6

90.1

89.1

8.9

18.7

21.9

7.9

17.1

23.5

228

264

116

145

520

180

How have you done at this school: 'Pretty well'

School does not have much to offer: Agree N =

Numbers of children in the bottom set were not as high as those of the top-set children in agreeing that it was important to do well at school, but this was in the context of very high overall agreement with this statement and more than nine out often of the bottom set children were in agreement. The analysis of the attitude statements does not support the view that a setting system leads to alienation from school, at least at this early stage in a secondary school career. However, the small number of children who doubted the relevance of school to them were disproportionately in the lower sets. Over one in five of the bottom-set children agreed that school 'does not have much to offer', as did nearly as many of the middle-set children, while top-set children were much less likely to think this. We return to the issue of children who may become alienated from school in the next chapter. In contrast to grouping by sets, the grouping of children by the attainment

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level of their school shows little association with academic self-perceptions. Being in a higher-achieving school was not associated with thinking you were doing better than others, presumably because comparisons are made within the school. However, children at low-attaining schools were rather less likely to say they had done 'pretty well' at secondary school. What is very striking is that children at schools with very different levels of examination success had virtually identical levels of confidence in their future examination prospects. The proportions of children saying that they expected to do well, and even that they 'definitely' expected to do well in examinations, was the same across the three attainment bands, spanning schools where nearly three-quarters of the pupils had been getting good GCSEs and schools where fewer than one in five had been doing so. Of course, these attainment bands are based on results from examinations taken six or seven years before the children in the sample will take GCSEs, but a long-term continuity in levels of examination results is a long-standing feature of the UK secondary school system and the schools' results are unlikely to change dramatically over this time period. In contrast to the similarity of academic self-perceptions across attainment bands, some aspects of children's attitudes to school do show differences associated with school-level attainment. Children in the high-achieving schools are considerably more likely to enjoy coming to school than children in lower-attaining schools, and are more likely to have plenty of friends and to see their teachers as committed to them. Children in the lowest-achieving schools are very much more likely to think that there is a lot of bullying. These results suggest that high-achieving schools are nicer places to be than low-achieving schools and that the degree of hassle and the negative affective elements of school are associated with lower achievement. It is very striking that, despite some aspects of less positive attitudes, children in lower-achieving schools are just as likely to think that it is important to do well at school. This measure of the instrumental value of schooling is constant across attainment levels, even though some disillusion with school ('school has nothing much to offer') is more common when attainment is lower. The combination of uniformly high levels of commitment to the instrumental aspects of schooling and uniformly high levels of expectations for examination success, presents a paradox for those concerned with maximizing young people's involvement in, and rewards from, the education system. The children in this study, in their first year at secondary school, have taken on board the message that it is important to do well at school and have good expectations for their own educational performance. But many of them are attending schools where only a minority of pupils achieve even moderate levels of success in conventional academic terms. Clearly schools do not want to create low expectations or to stereotype children as academic failures. But, at the same time, they are faced with the problem of how children who believe in the meritocratic message of the school


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system will respond when it becomes apparent that academic success and, presumably, the rewards that follow from it, are not going to be available to them. This clearly raises issues for post-16 participation and what the school system has to offer less academically successful learners.

Setting and pupil attitudes and relationships A number of earlier ethnographic studies of secondary schools in England have focused on the negative consequences of the practice of streaming for the attitudes to school of lower-stream pupils and for the relationships in school of pupils from different streams. The early and highly influential work of Hargreaves (1967) described how lower-stream boys (the study was of a boys only school) developed highly negative approaches to their school, which he attributes to their feelings of low status or status deprivation and which developed as the boys became older and identities consolidated. Another classic study, by Ball (1981), also argues that what he identifies as pro-school and anti-school subcultures relate to the streaming system of the school, although this is qualified by emphasizing that it did not apply to all pupils and was an emerging process. Both of these studies also describe very antagonistic relationships developing between pupils in different streams. Hargreaves describes the relationship of higher- and lower-stream boys in the school he studied as 'hostile' and Ball refers to the 'negative and antipathetic attitudes . . . towards each other' (1981: 51) of pupils in different streams. An even more extreme version of this sort of antipathy can be found in Willis's (1977) account of the group of anti-school boys he studied and their highly oppositional stance with regard to teachers, the school and other pupils perceived to be more academic and conformist. The present study is not directly comparable with these ethnographic studies. The children in our study are younger than those who were the main focus of Hargreaves's and Willis's studies, although Ball deals with secondyear pupils who were the same age as the children interviewed in our project. The Hargreaves and Ball studies were also of schools with streaming as opposed to the more flexible setting systems of the present study (it is not clear how streaming worked for the young people studied by Willis). The present study was also conducted more than 30 years later than the most recent of these ethnographies, which may be relevant to the very different picture of differences across sets that emerges compared with the rather extreme differences across streams in the earlier studies. As is apparent from the comparisons presented in Table 6.4, there is nothing approaching distinct subcultures characteristic of children in different sets. The lower-set children were slightly behind the top-set children on some, although not all, of the positive indicators, but the main picture is one of similarity across sets in a

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positive view of school. The interview data discussed in Chapter 5 also showed little evidence for antipathy between groups of pupils defined by set or by academic attainment. The closest to this is a few children who felt that pupils from lower sets were disruptive in mixed ability lessons and wanted a more academically exclusive atmosphere and not being with 'people you don't want to sit with'. But this is very mild compared with the mutual antipathy described in the earlier studies. There was also absolutely no indication of dislike or resentment among less academic or lower-set children towards children seen as more academically successful. Children referred to not being in the top set or not being 'one of the clever ones' in a neutral fashion and did not have anything critical to say about the 'clever ones'. This is in marked contrast to the strong dislike expressed in all of the earlier studies discussed. These differences may relate to the more flexible setting arrangements in the present study and the fact that the pupils studied by Hargreaves and Willis, although not Ball, were younger than our children. However, the 30- to 40-year time gap may also be relevant. Hargreaves argued that many of the difficulties and dislikes he noted resulted from the behaviour of the school and teachers towards different groups of pupils and that schools needed to get better at dealing with the consequences of streaming. It may be that schools are now better at handling the consequences of academic diversity and with regard to how they relate to lower achieving pupils. Certainly the schools in the present study seem to have developed setting arrangements which, at least for the younger pupils in the school, are not associated with negative subcultures or strong antipathies between children.

An overview In summary, the great majority of children in the sample had positive learning identities. They were satisfied with how they were performing in school and expected to do well in the future. There was no evidence to support the view that many children, especially those from less advantaged backgrounds, have very negative self-images as learners as a result of being labelled in this way by teachers. Hardly any children disagreed with the statement that their teachers expected them to do well. Although most children characterized their attainments as being broadly similar to those of others, they were conscious of a hierarchy of attainment and children in the higher sets often referred to this during the interviews. However, there was no sense of tension or dislike between children on the basis of perceived ability or set, although there were complaints that the behaviour of some children disrupted classes. There was no evidence of children's sense of themselves as learners being influenced by the overall attainment level of the school they


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attended and little sense of them being aware of the schools' academic standing. However, children in the higher sets of all schools had more positive learner identities than others. Nevertheless, nine out often of the lower-set children were moderately confident about future examination success. There are possibly the seeds of future disillusion with school here. Children say how important it is to them to do well at school and generally are expecting to do reasonably well but, at the same time, many of them are attending schools where only a minority achieve any sort of academic success.


Chapter 7


Introduction In this chapter we focus on some of the children in the study for whom school is in some respects not working as well as it might. These are children who planned to leave the education system as soon as they could, who were not enjoying the experience of school or were not fully engaged with the academic life of the school. As with much of the analysis in this book we are concerned both with children's experience in the present and children's sense of the future. In the case of negative orientations to school these two aspects are negative intentions with regard to educational participation in the future and negative feelings about their time at school in the present. Of course, it is likely that these are at least partially interrelated. In Chapter 3 we saw that nearly one in five of the children said that they wanted to leave school as soon as they legally could, at the end of Year 11. Further, one in twenty ruled out further engagement with education saying that they would definitely not go to university. These figures, especially the one in five planning to leave, seemed high in the context of the general view expressed by children that education was important and, at least for most, that school was fairly enjoyable. These views were also expressed by most of the children planning to leave. It is therefore important to look for factors which may explain the plans to move out of education and to try to establish the relative weight of 'pull' factors — the attractions of the world outside school — and 'push' factors- unattractive aspects of the experience of schooling. These negative aspects of the experience of schooling, whether or not they are associated with an intention to leave, are our second focus here. Most children were positive about the value of school and enjoying school, and about their academic achievement and expectations. But in all of these areas there were also a minority of negative responses. It is important to establish the balance between these negatives being thinly spread across the sample

136


and being concentrated among a small subgroup of the children. On the one hand, the negatives might be something that quite a lot of people might give as a very occasional response within an overall positive view of school. On the other hand, they could be the typical pattern of response of a small number of children reflecting a subgroup seriously disaffected with school.

Leaving at 16 Just under one in five of the sample said that they wanted to leave school at the age of 16, the legal minimum age for leaving. In previous chapters some of the differences between the children planning to leave and other children have been discussed, and these are presented together in Table 7.1. The table compares those who said they would definitely leave with the intentions of all other children, including those who were definitely planning to stay on and those who were not sure. First, it is apparent that there is a large gender difference. Boys are very much more likely than girls to plan to leave. Second, there is a considerable difference between white children and ethnic minority children. Ethnic minority children are considerably less likely to plan to leave, and make up only a tenth of the leavers while constituting more than twice that proportion of those not planning to leave. Third, there are socioeconomic differences in terms of children with parents in different types of occupation. In particular, children whose parents are in manual occupations are a clear majority of the potential leavers but make up only 40 per cent of the non-leavers. Finally, the leavers and non-leavers are compared in terms of their place in their school's setting system. Here, perhaps surprisingly, the differences between the two groups are fairly small. As we would expect, topset children are under-represented among the leavers but bottom-set children are only slightly over-represented. Overall, boys, children of white ethnicity, children from manual occupational backgrounds and, to some extent, children in lower sets are more likely to plan to leave. But as well as these patterns of association, Table 7.1 also shows both that the factors identified are weak predictors of plans to leave and that the group of potential leavers is highly heterogeneous with regard to these characteristics. A comparison of the two columns of Table 7.1 shows that for every category of children there are many more in the non-leavers column than in the leavers. Three-quarters of the boys are not planning to leave, 80 per cent of the white pupils, 80 per cent of those from manual occupational backgrounds and 80 per cent of those in the bottom sets have not decided to leave. The figures in the leavers column also show that the potential leavers include many girls, many children from professional and managerial backgrounds and many top-set children. It has sometimes been said that

137

Early exits and negative attitudes Table 7.1 Characteristics of leavers and non-leavers Non-leavers

Leavers Gender: Boys Girls N =

93 60 153

60.8% 39.2%

298 377 675

44.1% 55.9%

Ethnicity: White Minority N =

125 15 140

89.3% 10.7%

486 146 632

71.9% 23.1%

Parental occupation: Prof, and managerial Skilled non-manual Manual N =

23 29 64 116

19.8% 25.0% 55.2%

210 145 238 593

35.4% 24.5% 40.1%

23 50 22 95

24.2% 52.6% 23.2%

197 208 93 498

39.6% 41.8% 18.7%

Set: Top Middle Bottom N =

early exits from school are characteristic of white 'working-class' boys and it is true that for the children in this sample there is an over-representation of boys, white pupils and pupils from manual occupational background among the potential leavers. But for the 108 leavers for whom data on all three variables are available, just 30 are white boys from manual occupational backgrounds. For the 558 non-leavers for whom data are available the figure is 79. So 27.8 per cent of the leavers could be described as white 'workingclass' boys while the same is true for 14.2 per cent of the non-leavers. As with the socio-economic variables individually, there is an association between being a white boy from a manual occupational background and planning to leave school, but the great majority of such children are not planning to leave and most potential leavers are not in this group. As we saw in Chapter 3, when children were asked about their reasons for not continuing in education they cited the need to get a job and earn money, not liking school, friends leaving, there being 'no point' in staying on, not doing well enough to stay on and parents wanting them to leave (Table 3.2). Getting a job was by far the most common reason given, followed by not liking school. Only about one in ten said that they would not do well enough to stay on and even fewer said that their parents wanted them to leave. Some of these possible influences on leaving are explored in more detail in Table 7.2.

138

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table 7.2 Attitudes to school and employment of leavers and non-leavers Leavers

Non-leavers

Job plans: Professional and managerial Sports/entertainment Manual Unsure N =

28 30 54 24 136

20.6% 22.1% 39.7% 17.6%

303 104 110 102 619

48.9% 16.8% 17.8% 16.5%

Enjoy school: Yes Not sure No N =

57 34 53 144

39.6% 23.6% 36.9%

406 169 77 652

62.3% 25.9% 11.8%

No N =

125 21 146

85.6% 14.3%

625 27 652

95.9% 4.0%

Parents want you to stay on: Yes No Don't know N=

27 40 81 148

18.2% 27.0% 54.7%

431 6 225 662

65.1% 0.9% 34.0%

13 53 36 47 149

8.7% 35.6% 24.2% 31.5%

156 328 21 162 667

23.4% 49.2% 3.1% 24.3%

Expect to do well in examinations: Yes

How many of 3 best friends will stay on: All

One or two None Don't know N =

Future occupations dominate children's aspirations for their personal futures and are by far the most frequently given reason for staying on in education, going to university and getting qualifications. However, jobs are also by far the most common reason given for leaving education at 16. Most of the children planning to leave said that at least part of the reason was to get a job and start earning money. Of course, only a limited range of employment possibilities are open to young people looking for jobs at the age of 16 and it is likely that some of those saying they would leave and get a job were not aware of the restrictions on their employment possibilities. Most of the children in the sample had ambitious occupational aspirations but the more ambitious


139

destinations are not likely to be available to those planning to leave early. The first analysis presented in Table 7.2 compares the occupational intentions of the early leavers with those of other children. Just over one in five of those planning to leave said that they wanted professional or managerial occupations. (Note: A very small number of children wanted jobs classified as skilled non-manual and these have been excluded from this analysis.) The jobs they had identified included teaching and medicine, and these jobs, like the rest of the professional and managerial category, are very unlikely to be attained by children moving out of education at 16. Another substantial category is that of careers as sports people or entertainers. We have described these as 'fantasy' or 'quasi-fantasy' aspirations but over one in five of the leavers expressed them. The most common category of occupational choice for the early leavers is skilled manual work. For boys this was very frequently in traditional skilled trades in manufacturing, construction and motor vehicle trades. For girls it was often work in the hair and beauty industry or in childcare. Some jobs of this kind may well require education, either full- or part-time beyond the age of 16, but these are the types of ambitions not ruled out by leaving early and can therefore be seen as occupational choices appropriately aligned with educational intentions. Overall, forty per cent of the leavers have occupational ambitions more or less in line with their educational plans while twenty per cent have clearly misaligned ambitions. More than a fifth of the leavers have fantasy ambitions where education is unlikely to be of much relevance. However, we have suggested in Chapter 4 that most of the children expressing such ambitions realize that they are not likely to be achieved. In that analysis it was shown that at least some children saw education as a valuable fallback position if their dreams of sporting and singing success were not realized. It may be that the early leavers who said that they wanted to be sports people and entertainers had not given much realistic thought to their futures. In comparison with the leavers, the non-leavers were very much more likely to want professional and managerial jobs, were less likely to have fantasy ambitions and were also less likely to plan careers involving manual work. Although there is an overlap between the career intentions of leavers and non-leavers there is also a strong association between educational plans and careers. The largest group of leavers have career plans which, at least to a certain extent, match their plans to leave school but another substantial group have career plans which require much longer in education. Also, to a greater extent than the non-leavers, the leavers include children whose career aims are largely fantasies but which may support an aim to move out of education. After getting a job, the most common reason given for planning to leave school was that the child did not enjoy it. Well over a third of the leavers gave this as a reason (Table 3.2) and this is also explored in more detail in Table

140


7.2. Four out of ten of the leavers had disagreed when presented with the statement, 'I enjoy coming to school' and almost a quarter had said that they were unsure. This is a very much more negative response than that from the children who do not plan to leave and this analysis is in line with the reasons for leaving given by the children. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that disliking school is not generally a reason for leaving. As Table 7.2 shows, the majority of those saying they did not enjoy coming to school still planned to stay in education. The third most frequently given reason for leaving presented in Table 3.2 was that friends would leave, and the figures for friends intentions in Table 7.2 show that the leavers were much more likely than other children to think that their friends would also leave. In particular, one in four thought that all their friends would leave compared with only 3 per cent of other children. Few of the leavers think that all their friends will stay on but over 40 per cent thought that at least one or two would and about a third did not know their friends' intentions. Only just over 10 per cent of the children had said that they thought they would not do well enough at school to stay on, and this also seems to be a relatively minor factor from the figures in Table 7.2. Overall, children are very confident about how they expect to do in future examinations and this is almost as true of the leavers as it is for those who are not planning to leave. The proportion of leavers saying they will probably not do well in examinations is more than three times as high as the figure for other children but it is still a small proportion of the leavers, and the great majority of leavers are expecting satisfactory examination results. Finally the figures in Table 7.2 compare the reported views of the parents of leavers and non-leavers. Parents wanting the child to leave was given as a reason by very few of the leavers (Table 3.2) but, as we suggested in Chapter 3 and as the figures in Table 7.2 show, the situation with regard to parents may be more complex than the original figures suggest. Just over a quarter of the leavers say that their parents want them to leave and just under a fifth say that their parents want them to stay on. So a minority are leaving against their parents' perceived wishes while a rather larger minority are leaving in accordance with perceived parental wishes. But by far the largest group, well over half the leavers, do not know their parents' views. In contrast, only a third of those planning to stay on did not know what their parents thought about this and virtually all of those who did know their parents' views said that their parents wanted them to stay in education. Where children reported that their parents wanted them to leave at 16, over 90 per cent were planning to do so. This could be interpreted as a very effective negative parental influence for some children, although there may also be an element of children interpreting their parents' views in line with their own preferences. However, from these figures, direct parental pressure to leave could only


141

apply to, at most, just over a quarter of the leavers and is reported as an influence by only about a quarter of these (the 7.2 per cent in Table 3.2). But the absence of direct parental influence to stay in education may be just as significant for the leaver group as parental influence to leave. When children know what their parents think, and have presumably discussed this with their parents, then parents are nearly always positive and the child nearly always wants to stay in education. Only 6 per cent of those who said their parents wanted them to stay on said that they would definitely leave, an even stronger match between parental and child preferences than that for leaving education. In contrast to these very close matches where parental views are known is the much more varied situation for child intentions when parental views are not known. The children planning to leave are very much more likely than other children to come from families where parental views have not been made known, and not knowing your parents views was much less positively associated with participation than knowing that they were in favour. In the interviews, children who were planning to leave were only slightly more likely to have negative comments to make about school than were the other children. Four out of nine potential leavers, four out of the twelve who wanted to stay on and three of the nine who were unsure made some negative comments about school although these were usually balanced by more positive comments. Over half of the children interviewed who said they would leave saw getting a job as a priority. Simon said that he liked school but by the time he was 16 he thought he would be 'happier working'. Getting a job and having his own money was very important to him and he did not want to put it off: 'like, 'cause then I'd be able to get my own stuff. If I have no money and my mum and dad can't lend me any then I'd be stuck 'cause I really want my own house so I can learn to do stuff by myself. Similarly, David said, T want to earn good money in a job', and Christopher did not want to delay employment and earning: 'If I want to move on to the next stage [of education] then I won't be able to earn any money. I will learn stuff until I am 16 — the stuff I need to know — and then go and get a job'. Justin also felt that education up to 16 would be sufficient for him: T feel by then I've learned enough to start my career.' Carl said that he mainly wanted to leave because his friends would leave and so school would no longer be fun, but also said, T want a decent job', and Liam said, 'If I can get a good job I will leave'. Children who did not talk about the importance to them of getting a job did not have alternative clear reasons for leaving and did not generally dislike school. Some of them seemed to see no obvious reason for staying on rather than having a definite reason for leaving.

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Negative attitudes to school Although the overall pattern of attitudes to school was positive there were also plenty of negative responses from the children. As was shown in Chapter 5, a substantial minority of children agreed with negative statements about bullying and hassle in school, and smaller but far from negligible minorities disagreed with positive statements about, for example, liking teachers. One of the things we want to consider is how far these negative comments reflect occasional negative feelings from many pupils and how far they are concentrated among just a few pupils who have a uniformly negative view of their schools. The analysis of responses to 27 attitude statements are aggregated in Table 7.3. A negative response is defined as either saying 'agree' or 'strongly agree' to a negative item (e.g., 'School has nothing much to offer me') or saying 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree' to a positive item (e.g., T like most of my teachers'). An extreme negative response is defined as saying 'strongly agree' or 'strongly disagree'. (The attitude scale had 28 items but one of these, T feel a different person at home and at school' has not been treated as reflecting attitude to school.) Of course, the degree of negativity of the statements varies considerably. There is a lot of difference between saying that school is too noisy and saying that teachers do not do their best. As we saw in Chapter 5, the milder critical statements get more support than the stronger ones. The figures in Table 7.3 are for numbers of children giving different numbers of negative responses. For example, 262 children gave at least one but not more than two negative responses and of these 230 gave one or two extreme negative responses. Some degree of negative responses by the children is common but a lot of negative responses are unusual. Only one in five of the children did not agree with at least one negative statement about school but half of the children did not agree with more than two and nearly three-quarters did not agree with more than four negative statements. Just under 4 per cent of the children agreed with 11 or more negative statements and only ten children, about 1 per cent of the sample agreed with more than half. Table 7.3 Number of negative responses to attitude statements (N = 843) All negatives None 1-2 3-4

5-6 7-10 11 plus

166 262 192 111 78 34

19.7% 31.1% 22.7% 13.2% 9.2% 3.8%

Extreme negatives 473 230 72 42 18 8

56.1% 27.3% 8.6% 5.0% 2.1% 1.0%


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Table 7.3 also shows the numbers of children giving extreme negative responses; saying that they 'strongly agree' with a negative statement or 'strongly disagree' with a positive one. A clear majority of the children did not strongly support any critical statement and over 80 per cent did not strongly support more than two. Just 1 per cent of the sample strongly supported 11 or more and only five children strongly supported more than half of the critical statements. The general picture to emerge is that a mild degree of critical response to school was widespread. Few children had nothing critical to say but, for the most part, these criticisms were not strongly expressed and were limited to a few aspects of schooling. It was much less common for children to say that they strongly agreed with negative statements (or strongly disagreed with positive ones) and well over half the children had no extreme negative responses. Only 3 per cent of the children strongly supported more than one in four of the negative statements. These results show that, for children beginning their time in secondary school, there is very little sign of the development of anti-school or oppositional subcultures of the kind identified by some researchers mainly, although not exclusively, among rather older pupils (Ball 1981; Hargreaves 1967; Willis 1977). Nearly all children had critical perspectives on some aspects of school but this rarely extended into more than a few areas. None of the children were exclusively negative and virtually none were negative about a majority of aspects of schooling. As well as being generally dispersed among children individually, support for negative statements was also widely spread among children with different socio-economic characteristics and different experiences of schooling. As the figures in Table A7.1 in Appendix 2 show there were differences between groups of children in the average numbers of negatives they supported of a predictable kind. Girls were less negative than boys, children from nonmanual occupational backgrounds less negative than children from manual backgrounds and ethnic minority children less negative than white children. Also, top-set children and children planning to stay in education post-16 were less negative. However, these differences were small and children from all types of backgrounds and educational characteristics were represented among the more negative responses. For example, among children supporting six or more negatives, 41 per cent were girls, 41 per cent planned to stay on, 27 per cent were from professional and managerial backgrounds, 20 per cent were minorities and 17 per cent were in the top set. So although children from certain backgrounds are over-represented among the most negative, it is not the case that children expressing the most negative views are all boys or children from manual occupational backgrounds or all in lower sets. Having strongly negative views was a good predictor of planning to leave at 16 but there were many exceptions and the great majority of those planning to leave were not strongly negative.

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There were, however, a few children among those giving the most negative responses who used the questionnaire to indicate a fairly comprehensive dislike of school. These children, mainly boys, had put as reasons for leaving school: 'It's crap', 'It's rubbish' and 'I'm bored'. Asked about the best things about school they had put 'Nothing' or 'Going home', and asked about the worst things had written, 'Everything'. Nevertheless, these children did not all want to leave and some were hoping for jobs which would require post-16 participation. As we saw in Chapter 5, the extent of positive attitude to school varied considerably across different aspects of schooling and of course this means that negative views must also vary. In Table 7.4 the numbers of children giving negative response is shown for different aspects of schooling. These aspects are mainly taken from the analysis in Chapter 5 which showed different dimensions of responses to school. Very few children were negative about the importance of school. These six items are listed in Table 5.1 and relate to the value of school and thinking that success in school will pay off. Over 90 per cent of children did not disagree with any of these positive statements and a tiny proportion disagreed with more than one of them. At the other end of the scale there was a lot of support for the view that school was in some respects a difficult place to be. The three statements relating to this are listed in Table 5.4 and include bullying and 'hassle'. Most children agreed with at least one of these negative statements and a third agreed with two or three of them. This was the most common aspect of negative views of school and was widely felt throughout the sample. Despite the difficulties of school as a social environment, few children experienced problems with friendship in school. The friendship items listed in Table 5.5 elicited few negative responses. The great majority of children did not agree with any of the negative statements relating to have friends and getting on with other pupils, and only 4 per cent agreed with more than one of them. There was slightly more support for negative perceptions of teachers, Table 7.4 Negative responses in specific areas (N = 845) Number of negatives

Importance Teachers (max. 5) of school (max 6)

Difficult environment (max. 3)

Friends (max. 3)

Rejection of school (max. 4)

None

111 92.0% 634 75.0% 46 5.5% 125 14.8% 13 1.5% 44 5.2%

328 245 143 129

702 110 18 15

417 49.3% 249 29.5% 117 13.8% 50 5.9% 12 1.4%

One

Two Three Four Five Six

2 3 2 2

0.2% 0.4% 0.2% 0.2%

18 18 6

2.1% 2.1% 0.7%

38..8% 29..0% 16..9% 15..3%

83.1% 13.0% 2.1% 1.8%


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although this was still a minority of children and usually mildly expressed. The five teacher items are those listed in Table 5.3 about teacher commitment, plus the statement T like most of my teachers'. Three-quarters of the children did not agree with any of the negative statements about teachers and only 10 per cent agreed with more than one of them. There was virtually no uniformly negative view of teachers and only a small proportion of the children were negative on balance. The statements which have been described as 'Rejection of school' have a surprisingly high level of support from children, given the overall positive orientation to schooling to emerge from most of the analysis. However, these items, listed in Table 5.6 include statements about school having too many rules, which four out of ten of the children agreed with, and school having nothing to do with the outside world, which one in five agreed with. These are relatively mild forms of anti-school sentiment and 'rejection' is probably an over-strong word to describe them. The other two items are thinking that your parents did not value school and thinking that school does not have much to offer. The first does not necessarily reflect the view of the child about school but the second does suggest an element of rejection which is potentially at odds with the strong support for the value of schooling. However, an analysis of the responses of children who strongly agreed that school does not have much to offer shows that this reflects a dislike of the experience of school rather than a rejection of its purposes. In Table A7.2 in Appendix 2 it can be seen that children who said school has not much to offer were very much more likely than other children to say that they did not enjoy school and did not like teachers. They were more likely than other children to have said that school was not important but this was still a very small proportion of such children — just three out of the 40 who said school had not much to offer. They were also no less likely than other children to say that school would help them get the job they wanted. Two examples of children who had said that school did not have much to offer occurred in the interviews. Both had some very negative things to say about school but neither was definitely going to leave education post-16. Paul was planning to stay on, and talked about going away to university and about how pleased he had been to do well in his standard assessment tasks (SATs). But, at the same time, he hated some aspects of school and had agreed with the statement that it did not have much to offer. As part of a long complaint about the school he burst out: 'there are bars on the windows and it looks like a prison . . . school is a prison anyway'. And Jane talked about the stress she felt at school and also more generally: I get really stressed . . . I don't know what to do ... you spend most of your childhood at school — boring— and then being an adult at work — boring — and then by the time you do retire it seems to me you are too old to do

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anything fun. That's what I think. You have moments of fun but in the long run life is boring. Jane had strongly agreed that school did not have much to offer but was not sure about her post-16 plans. She was also one of the few children who did not believe that doing well at school would necessarily pay off in terms of later success. But she was in the top set and said that she always did her school work and wanted to do well to make her mother proud. The two children discussed above reflect the complexity of negative attitudes to school and the way that these cannot be characterized simply in terms of anti-school subcultures. The negative things that some children said relate to dislikes, sometimes quite powerfully held, of certain aspects of school. These were most frequently a dislike of what was seen as a disruptive and difficult environment, a dislike of teachers or of some teachers and a more generalized dislike of school as boring or even 'a prison'. But for the minority of children who held these views they were almost always balanced by positive aspects of school and were rarely associated with a rejection of the instrumental aspects of schooling.

Chapter 8


Children starting a secondary school career We have throughout this book balanced a concern with children's lives in the present and children's sense of and plans for their futures. The present for the children in our study is the last term of Year 7 and the first term of Year 8 of the secondary school. The children were 11 or 12 years old when they completed the questionnaire and were 12 or, in a few cases, 13 when they were interviewed. The future which we asked them to project into included their GCSE examinations and decisions about participation post-16, decisions about higher education and aspirations for adulthood in terms of jobs, marriage, children and homes. Clearly, some of these projections were just a few years into the future and would mostly involve the school they were currently attending. Others were very much further into the future and involved institutions like universities, which they may know little about, and occupations requiring a variety of forms of preparation and qualifications. These children might seem very young to be asked about things so far in the future and, in some cases, distant from their immediate experience. But these early years in secondary school are a crucial part of their educational experiences which, in turn, will have crucial influences on other aspects of their futures. The children in the study were in the process of orientating themselves to secondary school in terms of their response to both academic and nonacademic aspects of the school experience. They were encountering, for the first time, the academic challenges of the secondary curriculum and the social challenges of a very much larger and complex school situation than they had been used to in primary education. These children had made friendships and had become part of peer groups. They had come into contact with many more teachers than previously and had experienced unfamiliar curriculum areas. The ways in which they orientated themselves to their schools, in terms of the effort and commitment they put into their academic work, and their

148


stance with regard to the social and behavioural order of the school, are likely to be an important influence on their educational careers both in their immediate future and beyond. Some of the children were in an early stage of a long-term engagement with the education system, which will probably extend into early adulthood. For others, it will only be a few more years before they move out of the education system entirely and, for some of these, effective disengagement may only be a couple of years away. Some of the children are already embarking on routes which, although certainly not irrevocable at this stage, seemed likely to be leading in one or other direction. As we have seen in the previous chapters, children's reflections on their educational present suggest that they are generally content with their experience of school. Mostly they enjoy coming to school and enjoy a variety of aspects of the school experience. They typically have plenty of friends and most of them like most of the teachers. These positive responses to school are generally expressed moderately rather than strongly and the children also had plenty of criticisms of school. Mainly these complaints were about other children and the atmosphere of the school in terms of rowdiness and bullying, but also involved criticisms of teachers. Some teachers were seen as being unfair and inconsistent, while others were felt to fail to keep order or offer appropriate instruction. Generally, though, children found their educational environment supportive. They experienced strong parental support and reported their parents as very positive about their educational achievements and future participation. They also generally reported that teachers were supportive and saw teachers as committed to their educational success. A very important aspect of children's sense of school in the present was focused on the relevance of school for their futures. Children showed a strongly developmental perspective on their lives and saw school principally as in terms of preparation for the future. Nearly all the children could reflect on their personal futures. They talked about education, qualifications, houses, families but, most of all, about jobs. The job they would be doing was a key to their future personal identity and this was as true of the girls as it was for the boys. Children had also largely internalized a meritocratic view of education. They thought that achievement at school was the key to getting what they wanted in the future and that educational effort and success would be rewarded occupationally. This was by no means always a clearly understood view of the relationship between educational outcomes and occupational consequences. Many children were confused about educational routes and there were many mismatches between educational and occupational intentions. But the general idea that qualifications were important and that effort would pay off was widespread. Occupations were by far the most important element of the future for the children and their occupational aspirations were generally ambitious. Some children had 'fantasy' ambitions involving professional sport and entertain-


149

ment but most could give occupational aims which were, in principle, realizable. These included the well-established professions such as medicine, teaching, law and accountancy, and traditional and gender-stereotyped jobs in skilled manual trades, childcare and hair and beauty. A very notable feature of these occupational aims was that overall they were ambitious, both in the sense of most children aiming for more desirable and well-rewarded occupations and in comparison with the current occupational structure and the likely future availability of particular kinds of jobs. Like Schneider and Stevenson's (1999) American adolescents, these children are an 'ambitious generation' and, quite apart from their probable failure to become sports and singing stars, there will not be enough of the types of jobs a majority were aiming for to go round. Obviously this raises the question of which of the children will succeed in achieving their ambitions and which will have to settle for much less desirable and less well rewarded careers than those they aspire to. We can start to look at the likelihood of children realizing their aspiration through considering the coherence and appropriateness of different aspects of their plans for the future. As was shown earlier, the children differed considerably in terms of their knowledge of the educational and occupational system. Some had a clear understanding of progression through GCSEs, A levels, university and a degree, followed by a professional career. Others were hazy about the GCSE and A level system or did not realize that post-16 participation was necessary in order to go to university, or confused these two routes. The extent of accurate knowledge of the requirements of different sorts of employment and an appropriate alignment of educational choices and career ambitions is likely to be an important influence on future educational and occupational outcomes. Similarly, a preparedness to put effort into their school work and a belief in the connection between effort and outcomes, as well as a sense of personal efficacy with regard to academic achievements, will influence the commitment to school and to achievement for these children. But, in addition to these individual-level attributes, children also experience a variety of external influences on their educational and occupational prospects. The 15 different schools attended by the children were characterized by very varied levels of educational attainment. Taking the proportion of pupils achieving five GCSE subjects with grades of C and above as an indicator, the highest-achieving school was four times as successful as the lowest-achieving school. The other schools were on a continuum between these extremes. Clearly, children attending the higherattaining schools have, on average, very much better prospects of good examination results than those attending the lower-attaining schools. In addition, all but two of the schools organize their teaching of Year 7 pupils by setting for levels of attainment for at least some subjects, so within most schools children had already been identified as higher or lower attainers.

150


Relatively few of the children had explicitly said that poor attainment levels would be a reason for not staying on post-16 or not going to university and most were at least fairly optimistic about their future examination prospects. But this optimism is much more realistic for some children than for others and children in higher sets and higher-achieving schools are much better placed than other children with regard to examination success, educational participation and desirable jobs. Children's prospects are also influenced by their location within socioeconomic structures, and a concern among policy-makers over unequal levels of educational participation of children from different backgrounds was one of the starting points of the present study. There are major structurally related differences in educational participation and achievement associated with socioeconomic background, gender and ethnicity (e.g., Connolly 2006). There is a very long-standing pattern of association between children's performance in education and the socio-economic position of their families, with children of parents in professional and managerial occupations having, on average, very much better outcomes than children whose parents are in manual occupations (Machin 1997). There is also the much more recent phenomenon of girls outperforming boys by a considerable margin, reversing the situation where, at post-primary levels, boys had previously been advantaged educationally. The situation with regard to ethnicity is more complex, with some ethnic minority groups in the UK having better educational outcomes than the white majority while others have poorer outcomes. But there is a consistent pattern of difference between ethnic groups with regard to both achievement and participation (Gillborn and Gipps 1996). The following analysis looks at patterns of association between educational characteristics and aspirations and these three kinds of influences: the school, social structure and individual attributes. The variables we look at are children's intentions with regard to staying on post-16, their intentions with regard to going to university and their ambitions with regard to getting a job in a professional or managerial occupation. As we have already seen, about 60 per cent said they would stay on post-16, 56 per cent wanted to go to university and 40 per cent wanted professional or managerial jobs. But what we are concerned with here is the consistency of intentions between different stages of education and between education and careers. The analysis will look first at the 511 children (60.5 per cent of the sample) who said they would stay on, then at the 351 children (41.5 per cent of the sample) who planned both to stay on and to go to university, and then at the 202 children (23.9 per cent of the total sample) who also identified a professional or managerial job as their occupational ambition. This final group consists of the children with the most consistently high and well-aligned ambitions: they wanted professional and managerial jobs and they planned to stay in education post-16 and to go to university.

151


Children's location within the school system The first aspect of children's location within the school system is the examination performance of the schools they attend. In Table 8.1 schools have been grouped into attainment bands in the same way as was explained in Chapter 6. The high band consists of the three schools with the highest overall performance in GCSE examinations, the medium band consists of the eight schools in the middle range of performance and the low band the four schools with the poorest examination results. The table shows that with regard to the three aspects of future intentions discussed above, there is a clear and consistent relationship between the academic level of the school and the future intentions of the pupils. Almost three-quarters of children attending the highest-performing schools definitely plan to stay on post-16, while just a half of the children attending the lowest-performing schools do so. The same pattern is apparent for children who both plan to stay on post-16 and to go to university. Half of those in the highest performing schools have these consistently ambitious educational aims, while 30 per cent of children in the bottom-banded schools do so. With regard to staying on post-16, going to university and getting a professional or managerial job, the figures are 30 per cent of those in the highest-banded schools and just half this for children in the lowest-banded schools. In all cases the children in the medium-band schools were between these extreme groups. Another way of expressing the relationship is to look at the association at school level between overall school GCSE results and the percentage of children in the sample having consistently ambitious intentions. The school level correlation (Pearson Product-moment) across the 15 schools between these two variables is 0.75, showing a very high degree of association between Table 8.1 Educational and occupational plans and school attainment level School attainment band Medium

High

Low

Plan to stay on post- 16

108

74.5%

313

60.2%

90

50.0%

Plan to stay on post- 16 and to go to university

73

50.3%

224

43.1%

54

30.0%

Plan to stay on post- 16, to go to university and want professional or managerial job

44

30.3%

131

25.2%

27

15.0%

N =

145

520

180

152


how well the school performs at GCSE and how many children have a consistent ambition for post-16 participation, university and a professional or managerial career. These results show that attending a higher-performing school is associated with wanting to stay on post-16 , wanting to attend university and wanting a professional and managerial job. In particular, the results show the association between having consistent intentions with regard to ambitious educational and occupational outcomes and the overall performance of the school. It is not surprising that school attainment levels are associated with ambitions in this way but the differences may not be associated with the children's perceptions of the general attainment levels in the school and, by implication, their own likely future attainments. In Chapter 6 (Table 6.4) we saw that children did not generally have a strong sense of the academic level of their schools. In particular, the achievement band of the school was not associated with how they expected to perform in examinations and was only weakly associated with their satisfaction with their educational performance more generally. There was also no difference between the children in highand low-performing schools in the instrumental value they placed on education. Where there was a substantial difference between the children in high- and low-attaining schools was with regard to how much they enjoyed coming to school and in their perceptions of the extent of bullying in school. It was clear that higher-attaining schools were nicer places to be than lowattaining schools and this is probably linked to the lower intentions for participation post-16, although not necessarily to intentions for university and jobs. The second aspect of children's location in the school system is their place in the setting system operated by the schools. Thirteen of the 15 schools put children in sets for at least some of the subjects they were taught. Most children were therefore identified within the academic hierarchy of the school and, as we saw in Chapter 6, children in the top sets sometimes referred to this in discussing their experience of school. In Table 8.2 we can see the educational and occupational intentions of children in different sets. The figures show that set placement is strongly associated with intentions and, in particular, with the consistency of intentions. The gap between the top and bottom sets for staying on post-16 is nearly 20 percentage points, the gap for both staying on and going to university is over 30 percentage points and the gap for consistent post-16, university and professional and managerial intentions is over 20 percentage points. A better way of expressing the scale of difference as intentions go further into the future is the ratio of children expressing these intentions. This is 1:1.3 for post-16, 1:2.1 for post-16 and university and 1:2.4 for post-16, university and professional or managerial jobs. The equivalent figures for children from schools in the highest and lowest achievement bands are 1:1.5, 1:1.7 and 1:2.0. The analysis shows that

153

Present and future: schools, structure, agency Table 8.2 Educational and occupational plans and set Set

Middle

Top

Bottom

Plan to stay on post-16

167

73.2%

154

58..3%

63

54.3 °/

Plan to stay on post-16 and to go to university

135

59.2%

100

37..9%

33

28.40/

Plan to stay on post-16, to go to university and want professional or managerial job

82

36.0%

52

19.7%

17

14.7%

N =

228

264

116

both the overall achievement level of the school attended and the individual achievement level of the child within that school, reflected in the set the child was allocated to, are associated with how ambitious the children are educationally and occupationally and, in particular, with the consistency between or degree of alignment of their educational and occupational ambitions. A more detailed analysis of the association of setting and school-level achievement with consistency of intentions is given in Table 8.3. Here we look at the combination of the attainment level of the school children attend and the set they are placed in, in terms of children's future ambitions. The cells of the table show the numbers of children in each combination of set and school band. For example, there were 42 children in the top sets of high-performing schools and 154 children in the middle sets of medium-performing schools. The percentages show what proportion of these children has a consistent ambition for post-16 participation, university and a professional or managerial career. These figures should be treated with a degree of caution as, unlike most of the analyses presented here, breaking down the sample by band and set has resulted in some fairly small numbers in some of the cells. Nevertheless, a striking and mainly consistent pattern emerges. At the extremes we can see a very dramatic difference. Of children in the top sets of higher-performing schools, 45 per cent have consistently ambitious intentions. Of children in the bottom sets of low-performing schools, none have such intentions. More generally, a mainly consistent pattern emerges across both attainment band and set. In high-attaining schools the figure for the middle sets is much below that of the top set and this is even more so for the bottom sets. This pattern also holds for medium-performing schools and for the most part for lowperforming schools. Similarly, at each level of set the proportion decreases as school attainment gets lower. Children in the bottom sets of high-performing

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Table 8.3 Consistency of educational and occupational plans, school attainment level and set: children planning to stay on post-16, go to university and have a professional or managerial job School attainment band High

Medium

Low

Top sets

19 45.2% N = 42

55 37.9% N = 145

8 19.5% N = 41

Middle sets

18 28.6% N = 63

26 16.9% N = 154

8 17.0% N = 47

Bottom sets

6 18.2% N = 33

11 N= 61

0 N = 22

18.0%

schools have about the same level of consistently ambitious intentions as children in the top sets of low-performing schools. The analysis in Chapter 6 suggested that the level of overall school performance was not generally associated with children's academic selfimage, although setting was. These figures show that with regard to ambitious and well-aligned educational and occupational plans there is a strong association between both school performance and set.

Children's gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity As well as the influence on children's ambitions of the school they attended and the sets they were allocated to, children are also located within a wider social structure. The structural features of society considered here are gender, the socio-economic situation of the children's families, as indicated by their parents' occupations, and how they describe their ethnic background. These factors all have well-established relationships with both educational and occupational outcomes, which are reflected in the current sample. In Table 8.4 the variables considered in the previous section are presented separately for boys and girls, children from families of different occupational backgrounds and ethnicity. The ethnicity variable has been dichotomized into children who describe themselves as 'white' and all other groups collectively categorized as 'minority'. This is not entirely satisfactory as the minority category contains children who described themselves as being part of many diverse groups which have known differences in their levels of educational participation and performance (Connolly 2006; Gillborn and Gipps 1996). However, even with a substantial sample like the one for the present study, the numbers in any particular minority group are too low to

155


conduct separate analyses of each ethnic group, so only an indication of possible differences between minority children taken together and the white majority can be given. The first part of Table 8.4 presents the variables discussed in the previous section; the percentage of children saying they will stay on post-16, the percentage saying they would stay on and also go to university and the percentage saying they would stay on and go to university and who also wanted a professional or managerial job. In the second part of the table, figures are also given for children saying that their parents wanted them to stay on and for children saying that their parents wanted them to go to university. (As Tables A3.1 and A3.3 in Appendix 2 showed, very few children said that their parents did not want them to stay on or to go to university and nearly all the children who did not say yes to these questions said that they did not know what their parents thought.) The results in Table 8.4 show the pattern of association between demographic characteristics of the children and educational and occupational intentions, which have been apparent in the previous chapters. Girls were more likely to plan to participate in education and had more consistently ambitious educational and occupational intentions than boys. Table 8.4 Gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity and educational and occupational intentions and parental views Gender

Ethnicity

SES

Boys (%)

Girls P&M* (%) (%)

SNM* Man* (%) (%)

White Minority (%) (%)

Stay on post-16

55 .9

64.,4

71.,7

67.,8

55.3

59.6

67..5

Stay on post-16 and go to university

36 .3

46.,3

55. 2

45. 1

32.8

42.0

46..4

Stay on post-16 and go to university and professional or managerial job

20 .6

26.,9

35.,6

24.,6

17.0

24.1

27..1

Parents want you to stay on

53 .6

59.,3

65. 1

61.,5

52.4

55.8

63..2

Parents want you to go to university

52 .8

58.,9

64.,7

55.,6

52.3

52.4

70..9

Notes:

P&M*: professional and managerial SNM*: skilled non-manual Man*: manual

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And children from ethnic minorities were more likely to plan to participate in education and had more consistently ambitious educational and occupational intentions than white children. Both girls and ethnic minority children were also more likely to say that their parents wanted them to stay on and to go to university. Ethnic minority children were especially likely to say that their parents wanted them to go to university. There was also a relationship between the children's intentions and reports of their parents views and their socio-economic background as indicated by their parents' occupations. As we saw in Chapter 3, children of parents in professional and managerial occupations were more likely than other children to plan to stay on post-16. Additionally we see in Table 8.4 that they were more likely to have consistent intentions for post-16 and university, and were very much more likely to have a consistently ambitious aim of staying on at 16, going to university and getting a professional and managerial job. They were more than twice as likely as children from manual occupational backgrounds to have this sort of aim. Children from more advantaged occupational backgrounds were also more likely than other children to report that their parents wanted them to stay in education post-16 and to go to university. These results reflect the relationship between educational and occupational outcomes and structural features of society. They also reflect the recent trend for girls to have higher levels of educational and occupational ambitions than boys and for the complex situation with regard to the educational aims and attainments of children from various minority ethnic groups to average into higher levels of ambitions than those of white children. Of course, at least so far, these aims have not been reflected in better occupational outcomes for females or for people from ethnic minorities. It should also be noted that these relationships are probabilistic and the differences are not always large. In particular, most boys, most children from manual occupational backgrounds and most white children planned to stay on post-16 and reported that their parents wanted them to do so. Also, only a minority of any of the groups had a consistently ambitious plan for post-16, university and a desirable job. The situation with regard to occupational background contrasts with gender and ethnicity in that the more ambitious intentions and parental views of children from more advantaged backgrounds does reflect the current situation with regard to differential patterns of educational participation and occupational outcomes of people from different backgrounds. In our sample, the children of parents in non-manual occupations and, especially, those whose parents are in professional and managerial occupations are more likely to plan to participate in education and have more consistently ambitious educational and occupational intentions than children from manual backgrounds. Existing patterns of social advantage and disadvantage tend to be reproduced, at least in part, through differential patterns of educational


157

participation and attainment (Machin 1997; Patterson and lannelli 2006) and the data indicate that this may occur for children in our sample. But, as was the case for gender and ethnicity, these relationships are probabilistic and there are plenty of exceptions to a pattern of children from advantaged homes aiming higher and more consistently than other children. In particular, a majority of children from manual backgrounds planned to stay on post-16 and a third also want to go to university. Half of these were also aiming for professional or managerial jobs and over half said that their parents wanted them to stay on and to go to university. While children from the more advantaged backgrounds were the most likely to have higher educational and occupational ambitions, many children from less advantaged backgrounds also did so. These results reflect the two aspects of social and educational reproduction we discussed in Chapter 1. The first is the considerable upward shift in educational participation and attainment and occupational outcomes for young people from all backgrounds, with many more children staying in education and going to university, and a higher proportion of people getting non-manual jobs. This trend is apparent in the numbers of children from less advantaged backgrounds who plan to stay in education which we saw in Chapter 3 and the high proportion of such children wanting professional and managerial jobs, which we saw in Chapter 4. The second aspect is the way that, alongside a pattern of upward aggregate educational and occupational mobility, the relative situation of people from different backgrounds is largely unchanged. This aspect is apparent in the higher level of ambition expressed by children in the sample from more advantaged backgrounds and, especially, in the much higher level of consistent ambitions they express. There is a difficulty with regard to characterizing children in terms of socio-economic status, arising, in part, from the greater participation of women in employment and changed patterns of domestic and family relationships. Most systems of social classification are based on occupation, and children clearly cannot have an occupationally based social status of their own. Traditionally the social classification of family members has been based on the occupation of a, usually, male head of household. More recently the occupation of both parents has been taken into account in order to reflect the increasing importance of female employment and the unsatisfactory implications of the notion of a male 'head of household'. The 'dominance' approach, which we have used, involves using the occupation of the parent in the most advantaged occupational category to determine the socio-economic status of the family (Rose and Pevalin 2003). There are two important consequences of this procedure. First, it means that there is a considerable upward shift in the socio-economic status of the sample compared with the situation if only one parent's occupation was used. In our sample, 42.9 per cent of children who could be classified were in the manual category. If the occupation of the father alone had been used this figure would have been 59.5

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per cent. The second consequence is that most children are in families where, if both parents are working, they are in different socio-economic categories. Where we have data on both parents' occupations, in well under half of cases were they in the same broad socio-economic categories we have used here. This means that it is not appropriate to think that we can locate children in straightforward socio-economic categories, as is the case with gender and, for the most part, ethnicity. We have been careful not to use the terms 'middle class' or 'working class' to describe the children, as this implies a very simplistic idea of a social structure within which children can be unambiguously located. For many, perhaps most, children in our sample, labels like this are not appropriate. The complexity of social classifications are apparent in the family circumstances and educational and occupational intentions of the children we interviewed. Some children's family situation could be classified and matched to their ambitions. Oliver's parents were both managers. He was planning to stay at school, go to university and have a professional career, and had discussed this extensively with his family. Nazreen, Zainub and Zara all had fathers in professional occupations and mothers either not working or in professional jobs. They were going to stay at school and go to university and had the support of their families. Only Zainub had the sort of specific ambition that Oliver did (to become a teacher) but the others had more general aims for a 'good' occupation and knew that university was the way to good jobs. But other children, who were equally determined to go to university and get an appropriate job, did not come from these sorts of backgrounds. Thomas's mother was in a managerial job but his father was in a manual occupation. Michael's father was a skilled manual worker while his mother did not work, and both Sophie's parents were in manual occupations. These children were also planning to stay in education and go to university, although they did not always have clear career ambitions. As the statistical data showed, many children from manual occupational backgrounds like these had ambitions like Michael and Sophie, and some of them had consistent plans for post-16, university and a profession. The children in the interview sample who planned to leave at 16 or were unsure were less varied in their backgrounds than those who said they would stay on. Liam's father was in skilled manual work and his mother also had a manual occupation. He was planning to leave to take up a skilled trade relating to the construction industry in which most of his male relatives were employed. In the same way as Liam, Jake was going to follow his father into skilled manual work. He was not sure whether he was going to stay in education post-16, partly because he was not sure of the types of qualifications he would need and whether he might need to re-sit GCSEs. But while Liam had been entirely satisfied with his career ambitions, Jake felt that there were also better jobs available and that if he did well enough at school he might be


159

able to move into something different from his father. The family tradition of skilled manual work that Liam and Jake fitted into was essentially a male phenomenon. Girls who had clear career intentions and planned to leave at 16 were usually thinking about childcare or the beauty industry. Sarah, whose parents were in manual occupations, wanted to work with children because 'Babies are cute'. She planned to leave school at 16 despite knowing that her mother wanted her to stay on. The only example of children planning to leave at 16 who had parents in professional or managerial occupations is Lindsey, whose father has a job in management. Lindsey did not know what she wanted to do but was determined not to end up working in McDonald's or as a hairdresser which she regarded as 'common'. The relationship of parental occupation and ambitions is also complicated by children's ethnicity, especially for children who had recently arrived in the UK. Sabia and Fatoumata were both determined to go to university. Sabia wanted to be a lawyer or an economist and Fatoumata wanted to be a teacher. They both knew the sorts of educational qualifications they would need for these ambitions and understood the routes through education into professional employment. However, both girls were from families currently in difficult social and economic circumstances. Fatoumata's family had recently arrived from Africa and her parents' poor health kept them both unemployed, although her father had attended university in his own country. Sabia's family had come from Eastern Europe. Her father was in and out of manual work and her mother was learning English, which she hoped would lead to a job. Both families were focused on their daughters' educational success and both girls were confident about getting to university, although they were currently struggling at school and with their English. Fatoumata's and Sabia's disadvantaged socio-economic situation derived largely from their migrant status and was not reflected in their ambitions.

Children's choices: risk, mobility, expectations and family contexts The centrality of employment to children's perceptions of their futures and the importance to them of getting a 'good' job has been one of our major themes in the earlier chapters. Children saw a job as a determining feature of their futures and as providing security, independence and a family life. As we saw in Chapter 2, many children were already thinking about a domestic future and the need for a job to support their families. Many also saw employment as the route to moving out of their parents' home and establishing an independent life, although others were reluctant to think about leaving the family home. There were many references to having a job that people would 'respect' and 'look up to' but also to having jobs which

160


were worthwhile: 'Something that helps people. I don't want a pointless job' (Oliver). Other children said they wanted their jobs to be interesting such as Gemma, 'I just don't want a boring one. I want an interesting job' and Steven, 'boring desk jobs and I don't really want that'. As well as needing a job to support themselves and their families, children were also aware of the lifestyles they aspired to. Nearly all the children had said that having plenty of money was something they wanted for their futures (Table 2.1) and in the interviews there were references to holidays and travel. But although a few children were dreaming of extravagance and riches, mainly associated with fantasy occupations and a celebrity lifestyle, most were looking forward to funding a more modest future lifestyle and being able to buy things for their children and homes. An awareness of the importance of jobs and money also derived from a strong sense of the risks involved in not having these things. In the interviews children frequently talked about ending up 'Living on the streets' if they could not get a job, or of 'Working in McDonald's' or spending 'Fifty years working outside in the rain' if they did not get good qualifications. The idea that the future contained risks and that poverty and deprivation had to be avoided was linked to the way that some of the children were very aware of the poverty of their own families and the money problems experienced by their parents. As we saw in Chapter 4, a number of children explicitly said that they did not want the sort of lives their parents had experienced and that they were aiming for jobs which would take them out of poverty and their parents' 'hard life'. Excluding the fantasy ambitions, the threat and reality of poverty was the main reference made by the children to future occupations as involving social mobility. These children were hoping to move out of the social and economic circumstances they saw their parents as being in. One other aspect of mobility which occurred for some of the children was an awareness of the attractive lifestyles of other people they knew, friends and neighbours of their parents or the parents of school friends. In talking about future occupations, something that would provide such lifestyles was an attractive option for these children. In the opening chapter we considered the relevance of the work on social mobility of the distinguished sociologist, John Goldthorpe, to our study and to the choices children make. Goldthorpe (2007a) has argued that the main aim of children and families in choosing educational routes which are likely to have occupational consequences is to avoid downward social mobility: to at least maintain the situation of the parents in the outcomes for children. Goldthorpe also argues that the calculation of the risks and likely benefits of different educational decisions are different for people in different socio-economic circumstances, in such a way that it makes more sense for families in advantaged situations to encourage educational participation than it does for families in disadvantaged situations. It is clear from the analysis so far, that it


161

is certainly the case that avoiding downward mobility was something many children were aware of and something that mattered to them. They were clear about the importance of not finding themselves homeless or of having stigmatized and undesirable jobs. But avoiding such outcomes was only one part of the reference children made to changes in their economic situation. The children whose families experienced serious shortages of money and other resources were anxious not to reproduce this situation themselves, and explicitly wanted a better life than their parents had. This sometimes, but by no means always, meant staying on at school. Michael saw getting a better life than his parents in terms of staying in education and going to university, and Elizabeth wanted to become a teacher. But Carl and Justin both thought they would need to leave school in order to contribute to the family finances and Jane was one of the few children with little confidence in the power of education to improve lives. Nevertheless, these children were certainly not resigned to finding themselves in the same disadvantaged position as their parents and some of them saw educational participation as a way out of it. The children had a strong awareness of risk and of the importance of securing satisfactory future employment even at the age of 11 and 12. Almost universally, they saw educational qualifications as the way to manage risk. Qualifications were seen as the route to a good job and a good life by most of the children. Nearly all wanted good qualifications (Table 2. 1) and nearly all thought that doing well at school would make a difference to their futures (Table 2.3). Qualifications were seen as a way forward and also as a fallback or guarantee against future risks. Degrees and other qualifications were seen as leading to desirable outcomes: 'University means you can get the jobs that are good ones' (Bahia); 'The best jobs that earn well need a degree' (Mark). Qualifications were also seen as a safeguard and something you could fall back on. Liam said, 'If you get sacked you might regret not getting your education or qualifiers (sic)' and Jake saw skills and qualifications as; 'something you can always fall back on whatever happens to you'. Tahlia saw qualifications as her way out of an undesirable occupational future: T need to do GCSEs and A levels and get high levels. If I get low levels all I will get to do is cleaning.' Both the questionnaire and interview data showed how virtually universal was this sort of credentialism. Whatever their personal educational intentions, children saw jobs as the key to their futures, and doing well at school and getting qualifications as the key to jobs. Furlong has argued for the importance of young people developing appropriate orientations to education. If they are to fulfil their educational potential, 'it is important that they develop positive, or at least instrumental, orientations towards the school during the compulsory years' (Furlong 2004: 4). The evidence here is that, as they began their five years of compulsory secondary schooling, the children in our sample did have both a positive and, in particular, an instrumental orientation to school. They thought that school

162


was important for their futures and that the qualifications it offered were crucial for employment. They also, for the most part, trusted the educational system. They thought that their teachers did their best and believed in their abilities and that success would be rewarded. But while they believed in principle in a meritocratic educational and employment system, they did not always feel this would work out for them personally. As was apparent in the earlier discussion of Bandura's work on self-efficacy (Bandura et al. 2001), children have to believe that particular outcomes are attainable for them if they are to aspire to such outcomes. Two indicators of children's personal expectations are the extent to which they feel they will do well in future examinations and that they will be able to get a good job. In Chapter 6 it was established that children were generally optimistic about future examination performance and that only a small minority were not expecting good examination results (Table 6.2). Nevertheless, although most children were positive they were more likely to say that they would 'probably' do well than that they would 'definitely' do well, so most had some reservations about future performance. It is also likely that some of these expectations were not realistic as they were not related at all to the overall examination performance of the school the children were attending (Table 6.4). And children were even more hesitant about their occupational futures. Very few thought they would not get a good job but a third were not sure and under two-thirds said that they did expect a good job. A further influence on the educational choices and ambitions of children must be their families. Children need knowledge of the options and possibilities available to them and a sense of their own capacities, but at the age of 11 and 12 much of this information is likely to come from their parents and other family members. Only a minority of children mentioned their parents' influence when they were asked about the reasons for their intentions with regard to post-16 and university; other reasons, especially those connected with employment, were much more likely to be given (Tables 3.2 and 3.4). However, the association between the children's reports of what their parents wanted and their own stated intentions was very strong (Tables A3.1 and A3.3). Hardly any children planned either to leave school or not to go to university against their parents' wishes. It was also clear in these tables that the main distinction was between children who knew what their parents thought and those who did not, rather than between children whose parents favoured educational participation and those whose parents did not. Very few parents were reported as being opposed to their children staying at school or going to university, although for these small number of cases parental views were almost always reflected in the child's intentions. It seems that, with a very few exceptions, when parents and children discuss educational futures it is in the context of the desirability of continuing participation. The children did not generally say that their decisions were the

163


results of parental influence but the occupationally relevant reasons they gave and their emphasis on qualifications are likely to have arisen in discussions at home. These three factors; parental views, expectations for examination success and expectations for a good job are presented in Table 8.5 where their association with those aspects of children's ambitions considered in Table 8.4 are shown. As before, three aspects of children's ambitions are given: staying on post-16, staying on post-16 and going to university, and having both these educational intentions and wanting a professional or managerial job. In the first column of Table 8.5 the ambitions of children whose parents wanted them both to stay on and to go to university are compared with the ambitions of other children. ('Other' here includes children who did not know their parents views for either post-16 or university and the few children whose parents did not want them to take one or either route.) We can see the very strong relationship between parental views and children's ambitions, which was apparent in the earlier analysis. Children of parents who want them to stay on and go to university are nearly twice as likely as other children to plan to stay on post-16. They were more than three times as likely as others to plan both to stay on and go to university and also more than three times as likely as others to also want a professional or managerial job. About 40 per cent of these children had consistently high and aligned educational and occupational intentions compared with about 12 per cent of other children. Table 8.5 also shows an association of children's ambitions with their expectations for examination outcomes. Children who 'definitely' expected to Table 8.5 Educational and occupational plans and parental views and expectations for examinations and employment Parents want child to stay on post- 16 and go to university

Expect to do well in examinations

Expect a good job

Yes

DK/No

Definitely Probably No

Yes

Plan to stay on post- 16

82.6%

44.3%

64.7%

62.6%

22.9%

60.5% 62.0%

Plan to stay on post- 16 and to go to university

70.0%

20.7%

51.5%

39.4%

10.5%

42.6% 42.3%

Plan to stay on post- 16, 39.8% to go to university and want professional or managerial job

12.3%

30.1%

23.0%

2.1%

25.6% 22.6%

N =

488

309

457

357

48

512

DK/No

305

164


do well in examinations were slightly more likely to plan to stay on than those who only 'probably' expected to do well. But the gap increases with regard to also planning to go to university and to also wanting a professional or managerial job. The small number of children who did not expect examination success had very low levels of intending participation and hardly any had consistently ambitious and aligned educational and occupational plans. In contrast to examination intentions, there were no differences between the majority of children who expected to get a good job and the substantial minority who were unsure or did not expect a good job. (Very few children definitely did not expect to get a good job and nearly all children in this category were unsure.) There is a mixed picture with regard to the association of ambitions with children's expectations and sense that desirable outcomes are within their grasp. Being confident of your examination prospects was associated with rather more ambitious and consistent plans than having a lower level of confidence, and having poor expectations was associated with very low levels of educational and educational ambition. The small number of children, about one in twenty of the sample, who felt they would fail educationally were, perhaps unsurprisingly, not planning futures that required any form of educational success. However, this association did not hold for employment and being confident about occupational futures was not associated with more ambitious intentions than being uncertain about them. Where a very strong association was apparent in the analysis was with regard to ambitions and what parents were seen as wanting for their children. Where children knew that their parents wanted them to stay in education through to university, they were much more likely to plan both this and an appropriate occupational outcome. The analysis presented in Table 8.4 showed a moderately strong association between parental occupation and ambitious educational and occupational plans. So both parental socioeconomic status and parental views on educational participation are related to children's ambitions, and the analysis presented in Table 8.6 shows the interrelationship between these two aspects of children's family situation. In Table 8.6 the association between parental views and the percentage of children wanting to stay on post-16, go to university and get a professional or managerial job, are presented separately for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. The table shows that both factors continue to have a strong association with ambitions. Both for children whose parents want their child to stay on and go to university and for those who do not, the figures for consistently high ambitions are highest for those from professional and managerial backgrounds and lowest for children from manual backgrounds. Within each occupational category, the figures for consistently high ambitions are much higher for parents who want post-16 and university for their children than they are for those who do not. The results reinforce the

165


Table 8.6 Socio-economic status, parental views and ambitious educational and occupational plans (percentage of children planning post-16, university and professional or managerial occupation) Parental occupation Professional and managerial Parents want child to stay on post-16 and go to university 64 Yes 50..4% N = 127 No 18..8% 21 N = 112

Skilled non-manual

Manual

39..7% 34 29.3% N = 116 9.7% 12 12..4% 19 N = 97 N = 195 31

N = 78

association with parental support for educational participation, as the ratios between the different categories of parental support are much higher than the differences between the occupational categories. Children from manual occupational backgrounds whose parents want them to continue post-16 and through to university are more likely to plan this, together with a professional or managerial occupation, than children from professional and managerial backgrounds whose parents have not conveyed to them support for continuing participation. The data presented here on the importance of parental commitment to education matches the results of Payne's (2003) review of evidence on how children make decisions about continuing in education and that of studies such as those of Keys and Fernandes (1993) and Furlong (1993). For some children educational participation was virtually automatic and unproblematic. Children who were in the upper sets of high-achieving schools and had parents in professional and managerial occupations usually wanted to stay on post-16 and typically understood the progression through GCSEs, A levels and a degree, to a good job. Their parents certainly did not take this for granted and education was clearly a frequent topic of conversation in many such homes. Most of these children took it for granted that their parents were committed to their long-term involvement in education. However, this was also often the case for children who did not come from such advantaged backgrounds or did not attend high-achieving schools and a match between the commitment of parents and children to educational participation and desirable careers could be found throughout the sample. Other children's discussions with their parents had led to different, and less ambitious, educational plans and possible jobs. These were typically boys who were planning to go into the types of skilled manual occupations as their fathers and other relatives. They did not typically say that their parents were

166


opposed to them staying at school, but that their parents would agree with their decision to leave. However, this was usually conditional on obtaining a satisfactory job and the possibility of staying on for additional qualifications was also mentioned. But, in a small number of these cases family discussions had centred on the need for the child to start contributing financially as soon as possible. A substantial minority of the children did not know what their parents thought about continued educational participation at 16 or about higher education. The questionnaire data showed that children in this situation were very much less likely to plan to participate and the interview data showed them as often confused about educational routes and the requirements of occupations. These were children whose generally positive orientation to the purposes of education was not matched by the information they would need to make their educational choices.

Children's futures In the previous chapters we have demonstrated how important a focus on the future is to children and how central it is to their perception of school and education. The day-to-day aspects of liking and disliking school are experienced in the present but the purpose of school relates to the future. In considering how children in the sample see their futures it was clear that there were areas of similarity where children tended to share perceptions and areas of considerable difference across the sample. Nearly all children saw the future in terms of jobs which would allow them to provide for families and enjoy a 'good life'. Education and qualifications were almost universally seen as key to obtaining these desirable futures. But the children differed considerably, both in their personal knowledge of the specifics of requirements for the future and in the extent to which their thoughts about the future were informed by discussions with their parents and knowledge of what their parents wanted for them. While some children had an accurate knowledge of appropriate educational progression and the education they would need to fulfil occupational ambitions, others knew little about the qualifications available to them or the routes through the educational system and into jobs. And while some children knew that their parents wanted, and sometimes expected, that they should stay in education post-16 and go to university, others had no idea about what their parents wanted for them. Children were generally ambitious, both in terms of future occupations and in the way very few of them ruled out going to university at some time. At the same time they were very conscious of the risks the future held and the way that educational qualifications offered a protection against risk. While children were aware of the risks of unemployment and of poor quality jobs, there was no sense that they thought educational participation would itself be risky. Goldthorpe


167

(2007a) has suggested that children and families from disadvantaged backgrounds may make rational decisions not to participate in education because of the danger of failure and the risk that the investment will not pay off. The children in the present study seemed much more conscious of the risk of not participating. More tentatively, their accounts of their parents' views suggested that parents who did discuss educational participation with their children were almost always positive. There is, of course, a historical dimension to this issue and family perceptions of risks and benefits are likely to change over time. At the time this study was conducted the expectation (although not necessarily the reality) of educational participation may have become so widespread that very few families are likely to see it in negative terms. A further issue with regard to the generally ambitious hopes children have for their futures is the optimistic view they tend to have of future examination success. Most children were at least cautiously positive about how they expected to perform in future examinations. But many of the schools they attended did not have good examination results and some of these hopes are almost certain to be disappointed. This suggests that a problem will arise in the future both for schools and the children themselves. Most children think it is important to do well at school and at this age most children are expecting to do well. As it becomes clear that some children are not performing well academically and do not seem to be heading for good examination results, the consequence may be a disengagement from education and an unwillingness to continue with a commitment to a process in which they are failing. We started out with the policy issue of participation levels and showed in this study that, despite the widespread recognition of the importance of education, about 40 per cent of Year 7 pupils were not firmly committed to continuing in education. There are a number of factors associated with higher levels of intended participation. At the school level, higher-attaining schools had higher proportions of pupils who said they would stay on and children in the higher sets of schools were more likely to plan to stay on. Average level of school performance was largely invisible to the children and was not associated with academic self-perceptions but, nevertheless was associated with future intentions, possibly because of its association with the enjoyment of school. Setting was, of course, highly visible and was associated with both academic self-image and future intentions. A majority of the children said that they enjoyed school but enjoyment did not emerge as a reason for staying on. However, not enjoying school was strongly associated with planning to leave. Structural factors such as gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status were associated with future intentions, with girls, children from ethnic minorities and children with parents in non-manual and, especially, professional and managerial jobs more likely to be planning participation. Nevertheless, most boys, white pupils and pupils from manual occupational backgrounds planned to stay on in education.

168


At an individual level, planning future educational participation was associated with having ambitious aspirations for future jobs. This was especially the case where children had a good knowledge of the educational routes necessary for different jobs and the types of qualifications they would require. There was considerable variation between the children in their knowledge of the education system and the precise nature of its relationship to employment. Consistent educational and occupational plans occurred where children had the knowledge to align their occupational and educational aims. In addition, the importance of the family and, especially, parental context for educational ambitions emerged strongly. Where children had been made aware of their parents hopes for their educational futures, this almost always meant the parents wanted them to stay in education post-16 and, often, to go to university. Children who knew this were very much more likely than others to plan future educational participation. Three broad issues arise from this study for schools concerned to raise levels of educational participation and commitment. First, children have very unequal levels of knowledge of the nature of progression through the educational system, the different routes available and the qualifications they will need both to enter higher education and to enter different occupations. Some children are highly knowledgeable on these matters, while others are confused and uncertain. Virtually all children want 'good' jobs but they have very varied information about what they will need to do to obtain them. Although we have studied children who are only just starting their secondary school careers, they are at a point where they are orienting themselves to school and making choices about commitment which may have long-term implications. Many children in the study were set on a highly committed and directed educational track which they saw as leading to desirable employment outcomes. Others had very little sense of their educational futures. Schools need to think about the information children need at the very beginning of their secondary school careers, the options available to them and the choices they will need to make. There was no awareness among the children interviewed that there were alternatives to school at 16, although a few children talked about changing schools. In particular, children need to know the educational requirements of different occupations and the very limited employment possibilities for those who exit education at 16. Second, schools need to consider ways to make themselves more agreeable places for children. Most children said that they enjoyed coming to school but almost all also had negative things to say about it, and a few were strongly critical. Not enjoying coming to school was a predictor for planning to leave at 16, although there were children who said that their instrumental commitment would be stronger than their dislike. The things children disliked about school were mainly associated with people; both teachers and other children. Bullying by children and 'unfairness' of teachers were


169

commonly cited as problems, but children also disliked a more general sense of a disorderly atmosphere and teachers shouting. Third, schools have to face the very tricky problem of managing educational expectations and outcomes appropriately. Possibly as a result of the educational atmosphere of the primary school, the children in our sample had come into secondary school generally satisfied with their educational performance and moderately confident of future success. But, at least in conventional academic terms, some of these expectations are bound to end in disappointment. The children in our study thought that succeeding at school was important and generally expected this for themselves. Those who later begin to see that they are not succeeding academically may well become disillusioned with school and lose commitment to educational attainment. This is clearly a difficult area as schools will not want to discourage high expectations, even if this means they have to manage the consequences of different sorts of outcomes. The current attempts to reform the 14—19 curriculum in England and to introduce alternative accreditation through diplomas are highly relevant here, although our data suggest that it may be appropriate to introduce such changes before children reach the age of 14. Schools will need to guide their pupils into qualifications which are appropriate to their personal strengths and to make them aware of the educational possibilities of different sorts of work-based training which may offer more appropriate educational routes to some young people. The experiences and hopes of the children studied here provide an insight into broader social changes taking place around them. The generally ambitious nature of their plans for the future reflect the considerable upward shift in patterns of educational participation and in the structure of the labour market. And the similarities between boys and girls in their views of the future and perceptions of their own future roles with regard to employment and families reflect shifting gender roles and much increased gender equality. These children also reflect a more fluid society with a perception of an increasing range of possibilities and a strong sense that their futures will depend upon their own abilities, efforts and choices. In Beck's (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002) terms, these children are looking for a 'life of one's own' and see themselves as having a 'do it yourself biography'. However, at the same time, they are looking at very conventional futures in terms of a good job in a profession or skilled trade, a home and a family. In turn, they are strongly embedded within their own families and, especially for those planning ambitious educational futures, these have become a family rather than an individual project. Their lives and futures are also influenced by the socio-economic situation of their families and by the schools they attend. So while children are constructing their individual lives they are not doing it on their own terms, and some are located much more favourably than others to realize their rather conventionally ambitious futures.


Appendix 1

The research project

The data presented in this book are based on a survey of children in secondary schools involving a questionnaire survey completed by 845 Year 7 pupils followed by interviews with 30 of these children at the beginning of Year 8. Six local authorities (LAs) in England were sampled using a stratification system based on locality, post-16 participation rates and GCSE examination results. Two LAs were in the south-west of England, two in the south-east and two in the north/north Midlands. With regard to both post-16 participation and GCSE results, two were in the bottom quartile of authorities in England, one in the upper quartile and three were within the inter-quartile range. The over-representation of lower participation LAs was deliberate and the over-representation of lower-achieving LAs was a consequence of this. Within LAs three schools were sampled to represent the range of achievement at GCSE in the authority. Of the 18 schools approached, 15 agreed to take part, a response rate at school level of 83 per cent. Questionnaires were administered to tutor groups determined by timetabling arrangements. In only two cases did parents refuse permission for their child to complete the questionnaire and no child refused to take part (but see the discussion below). Questionnaires were completed by 845 children in May and June 2007 and interviews were conducted with 30 of the children in September and October 2007. One of the schools selected was a girls only school and girls are somewhat over-represented in the sample; females, 53.1 per cent, males, 46.6 per cent. Children describing their ethnicity as 'white' made up 78.9 per cent of the sample while ethnic minority children made up 21.1 per cent. The most common minority categories were 'mixed' ethnicity (5.3 per cent) and 'Asian Pakistani' (4.8 per cent). The socio-economic classification of the children in the sample is based on their reports of their parent's occupations. These have been divided in the present analysis into professional and managerial, skilled non-manual and manual occupations. Traditionally the socio-economic status of children in families has been determined by the occupation of the father. More recently the

172


occupation of both parents has been taken into account and the 'dominance' approach, which has been employed here, involves using the occupation of the parent in the most advantaged occupational category to determine the socio-economic status of the family (Rose and Pevalin 2003). Of course this means that there is a considerable upward shift in the socio-economic status of the sample compared with the situation if only one parent's occupation was used. Where information was only available for one parent this has been used as the basis of classification. Children from professional and managerial backgrounds accounted for 33.0 per cent of the sample, children from skilled non-manual backgrounds 24.1 per cent and children from manual backgrounds 42.9 per cent. The 30 children interviewed were selected from the high proportion of children who volunteered for interview and were intended to include ten children who planned to leave at 16, ten who planned to stay in education and ten who were not sure of their future intentions. In fact, the final sample was of 12 children planning to stay on and nine each of the leavers and the unsure. Some additional interview material from group discussions and pilot interviews conducted at the developmental stage has also been used and these qualitative data draw on material from a total of 40 children. It was clear from the administration of the survey and interviews that children typically enjoyed the process, took it seriously and were pleased to be asked about many of the questions raised. This was apparent in the ambience of the classrooms, from comments on the questionnaires, from conversations with children arising from administering the survey and during the interviews. Nearly all the questionnaires were completed very carefully: errors or changes of mind, were corrected so that their real intentions were evident, some questionnaires were characterized by multiple ticks in a 'strongly agree' or 'strongly disagree' box to emphasize views, and explanatory notes were sometimes written to make their views or situation clear. The positive response to the study was also apparent in relation to the issue of consent. All parents or carers were sent letters explaining that they could refuse permission for their children to take part in the study. In addition, it was explained, both in the letter and before the administration of the questionnaire, that children were free to decide whether or not to take part and that they could read or get on with other work while the questionnaires were being completed. Only two sets of parents refused permission for their child to take part and the children themselves were clearly disappointed. One boy asked to take a blank questionnaire home in the hope that his mother would change her mind so that he could complete it. In another case a boy who had forgotten to take a consent form home asked if he could complete the questionnaire but not hand it in until he had his parents' agreement. A few children said that they did not want to take part, sometimes conspicuously

The research project

173

throwing the questionnaire on the floor. However, all these children changed their minds and retrieved and completed questionnaires. Overwhelmingly, the comments of students were that they found the questionnaire interesting to complete and appreciated the interest being shown in them. Several children interviewed said that they remembered doing the questionnaire and had enjoyed it. Zainub had 'felt excited' about it and Steven had enjoyed doing it and was pleased to be interviewed. He was particularly pleased to be asked about certain questions, the ones he had 'particularly enjoyed answering'. Lucy said: 'I was really hyper on the day we did that, I remember it really well the day I filled it in. I felt energetic and happy that day so I enjoyed filling it in and really didn't mind filling it in at all.' More prosaically, Carl had also 'quite liked' filling in the questionnaire but also commented that he liked it even more that it meant he missed a tutorial. Other children said that they were pleased that people were taking an interest in them. Simon had enjoyed taking part and thought: 'it's good that people show an interest in what children think'. And Lucy said: 'I think doing this kind of thing is a very good thing but depending on the case you know, what you are asking about.' Liam said that he was 'glad I am being interviewed for my opinion'. Confidentiality was an issue for some children and Nazreen felt that this questionnaire had been better than others they had to fill in because ' a teacher wasn't going to see it, so I could be more honest'. Of course, we are pleased with these outcomes as demonstrating that the questionnaire had engaged the children's interest. More important, however, they indicate that children want to have their voices listened to; they were keen to tell us about their school experiences and were keen to reflect on their futures. These outcomes confirm the value of the work discussed in the book on children's voice and taking children's perspectives seriously (e.g., Levin 1999; Rudduck and Flutter 2004; Rudduck and Mclntyre 2007). Schools were sent a short report summarizing the overall results of the study together with a confidential report on the aggregate questionnaire results from their pupils.

A note on methods The evidence we have presented here comes from both a large-scale questionnaire survey and from more detailed personal interviews with a much smaller sample of children. The survey was intended to be representative and the questionnaire format ensured comparability across different children. We are therefore confident about statements about the prevalence of particular views and intentions and about the relationships

174


between variables. However, a questionnaire survey has limitations, especially when it is administered to children in a classroom context. It is not possible to follow up answers, to clarify meanings or to address issues the children themselves may want to raise. Although children were invited to make open-ended comments, we cannot be sure that all children of this age could realistically do so. The interviews with selected children allow some of these limitations to be addressed. The informal structure of the interview aimed for a conversational format in which children could explore their views and feelings and where children's own words rather than their responses to our words are the basis of the evidence presented. Of course there are considerable issues with regard to the representativeness, both of the fairly small number of children involved and the selection of material from the interviews. We entirely agree with Joan Payne's reservations about smallscale qualitative research and studies which assume that conclusions are firmly established when they are based on 'a few arbitrarily chosen young people, observed in very particular circumstances' (2003: 60). We have suggested in the text that the differences between the conclusions of our study and some purely qualitative studies, especially with regard to the perceptions of schooling of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, may relate to such problems of scale and selection. In the present study, the conclusions we draw from the qualitative material are at their strongest when the interview data elaborate and illuminate findings which have been established from the statistical analysis of the survey. We have tried to avoid any claims about prevalence or typicality which cannot be supported by survey evidence.

Appendix 2

Supplementary tables

Table A3.1 Parents' views and staying on post-16 Parents want you to stay on

All

Plan to stay

Plan to leave

Not sure

Yes

458 56.5%

376 81.2% 75.0%

27 5.8% 18.2%

55 11.9% 34.2%

No

46 5.7%

2 0.4%

40 87.0% 27.0%

4 8.7% 2.5%

Don't know

306 37.8%

123 40.1% 24.6%

81 26.4% 54.7%

102 33.2% 63.4%

N =

810

501

148

161

4.3%

Table A3.2 Friends staying on and staying on post-16 How many of your 3 best friends will stay on? All

One or two None Don't know N =

All

Plan to stay

169

145

20.7%

28.7%

383

248

46.2%

49.0%

57

12

6.9%

2.4%

85.8%

Plan to leave

13

7.7%

53 36

80 20.9% 49. 7 °/

63.2%

9

15.8%

5.6%

24.2%

213

101

25.9%

20.0%

31.5%

28.6% 37. 9°/

822

506

149

161

47.4%

47

6.5%

13.8%

35.6% 21.1%

11 6.8%

8.7% 64.8%

Not Sure

22.1%

61

176

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table A3.3 Parents' views and university

Parents want you to go to university

All

Go to university

Not go to university

Not Sure

Yes

451

55.8%

350 77.6% 76.6%

13 2.9% 14.8%

87 19.3% 33.2%

34

4

No

Don't know N =

25.0%

8 23 .5% 3.1%

103 31.9% 22.5%

53 16.4% 60.2%

167 51 .7% 63.7%

457

88

262

4.2%

0.9%

323 40.0%

808

22

11.8%

64.7%

Table A3.4 Friends going to university and plans for university How many of your 3 best friends will go to university?

All

Go to university

Not go to university

Not sure

All

112 13.8%

96 85.7% 20.9%

4 3.6% 4.5%

11 9.8% 4.2%

One or two

377 46.4%

238 63.1% 51.9%

32 8.5% 36.0%

107 28. 9°/ 40.5%

None

48 5.9%

11 22.9% 2.4%

19 39.6% 21.3%

18 37. 5°/ 6.8%

Don't know

276 33 9%

114 41.3% 24.8%

34 12.3% 38.2%

128 46.40/ 48.5%

N =

813

459

89

264

Table A3.5 Parental occupation and reasons for not going to university Parental occupation

Better to get a job Don't need a degree Will not do well enough Not for people like me Parents don't want me to Too expensive N =


Skilled non-manual

Manual

68.8% 6.3% 18.8% 6.3%

57.9% 10.5% 26.3% 26.3% 5.3% 21.1%

73.7% 15.8% 23.7% 39.5% 13.2% 44.7%

0

25.0% 16

19

38

Supplementary tables

111

Table A3.6 Consistency of school and university intentions for children planning to go to university Stay on post- 16

Go to university

%

143 208

189 271

75.7 76.8

132 79 102

157 104 141

84.1 76.0 72.3

279 1 67

315 10 128

88.6 10.0 52.3

277 2 68

346 4 103

80.1 50.0 66.0

114 163 8 64

128 212 16 99

89.1 76.9 50.0 64.6

69 183 9 88

95 235 11 114

72.6 77.9 81.8 77.2

Gender Boys Girls SES

Professional and managerial Skilled non-manual manual Parents want you to stay at school Yes

No Don't know

Parents want you to go to university Yes

No Don't know

How many of 3 best friends will stay on? All

One or two None Don't know

How many of 3 best friends will go to university? All

One or two None Don't know

178

Children's Lives, Children's Futures Table A3.7 Future intentions post-16 and for university Plan to stay in school or college post-16 Yes

Don't know

No

All

351 70.9% 118 23.8% 26 5.3% 495 61.4%

62 38.3% 82 50.6% 18 11.1% 162 20.1%

44 29.5% 61 40.9% 44 29.5% 149 18.5%

457 56.7% 261 32.4% 88 10.9% 806 100%

Think you will go to university Yes

Not sure No

Total

Table A6.1 Learner identities: self-perceptions of performance at primary and secondary school This school

Primary school

Pretty well OK

Not so well All

Pretty well

OK

Not so well

All

382 67.6% 168 29.7% 15 2.7% 565 71.2%

64 33.7%

8 20.5% 22 56.4% 9 23.1% 39 4.9%

454 57.2% 302 38.0% 38 4.8% 794 100%

112 58.9% 14 7.4% 190 23.9%

Table A6.2 Learner identities: performance and relative performance Performance in this school Performance relative to others

Pretty well

Better The same Not as well

262 20

Total

452

170

37.6% 58.0% 4.4%

OK 35 221 45 301

11.6% 73.4% 15.0%

Not so well

All

3 19 16

208 26.3% 502 63.5% 81 10.2%

38

7.9% 50.0% 42.1%

791

179

Supplementary tables Table A6.3 Setting and comparative performance In most subjects do you do

Top set

Middle set

Bottom set

Better than most people

44.0%

18.0%

10.6%

About the same as most people

54.2%

72.4%

62.8%

Not as well as most people

1.8%

9.6%

26.5%

N =

261

225

113

Table A7.1 Mean numbers of negative statements supported Gender Boys Girls

3.5 3.0

Top Middle Bottom

Ethnicity White Minority

3.4 3.2

Parental occupation Professional and managerial Skilled non-manual Manual

2.8 2.9 3.6

Post- 16 plans Stay in education Not sure Leave

Set

2.5 3.7 4.0

3.2 3.0 3.5

Table A7.2 Negative responses to school Do not enjoy school

Children who strongly agree that school does not have much to offer (N = 40) All children

(N = 806)

Do not like teachers

Do not think that school is important

Do not think school will help them j;et a job

20

50.0%

14

35.00/7o

3

7.5%

1

2.5%

130

16.1%

113

14.00/7o

13

1.6%

24

3.0%


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Index

academic performance 10, 111-12 comparative 116, 117-18, 119, 123-4, 178, 179 expectations and university intentions 52, 53-4 gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background 150 perceptions of achievement 115—21, 178

setting and school-level attainment 128-31 see also examination prospects academic self-efficacy 112 achievement see academic performance affective aspects of feelings about school 6—7 agency 13, 16, 26, 35-7 Alexander, R. 112 alignment of educational and occupational choices 11—12, 149, 151^, 168 anti-school subcultures 131, 143 Arnot, M. 7, 8 aspirations 10-12 assessment regime 9, 112, 123 attainment see academic performance attitudes to school 6-10, 18-19, 82 difficult environment 83, 89-90, 94, 95, 144 enjoyment see enjoyment of school friendships 83, 90-2, 94 group differences in 107—10

negative 7-8, 19, 135-6, 142-6, 179 school-level attainment and 128—31 setting and 128-32 Attwood, G. 12, 13, 88, 89 availability of jobs 63-4 Ball, S. 13, 72, 131 Bandura, A. 10, 112 Bauman, Z. 13 Beck, U. 13, 14, 15, 38 Beck-Gernsheim, E. 13 becoming, and being 3 Blatchford, P. 6 Blishen, E. 5 bullying 89-90, 94, 95, 99-102 career intentions see occupational choices Cartmel, F. 4, 17 childhood 3 children/family, hopes of in the future 22-5, 31, 32-5, 37, 67 Children's Commissioner 5 children's voices 3, 5-6, 173 choices 12-16 risk, mobility, expectations and family contexts 159—66 Christensen, P. 11, 21 cognitive ability testing 123 commitment children as learners 113-15 negative choices 12 teachers' 83, 87-8

186


comparative performance 116, 117-18 119, 123-4, 178, 17 consent 172—3 consistency of school and university intentions 56-7, 177 teachers' 103-4 Convention on the Rights of the Child 5, 6 cost, and university intentions 52, 53, 54 credentialism 29-30, 38, 161 credit for effort 105 Croll, P. 2, 6, 10-11, 16, 21, 40, 60-1, 64, 71, 82, 88, 89 Cullingford, C. 8 cultural capital 17 curriculum for 1419 39^0, 169 DeGraaf, P.M. 17-18 debt, student 53, 54 difficult environment 83, 89-90, 94, 95, 144 disruptive behaviour 89, 105-6, 127 'dominance' approach 157-8 downward mobility, avoiding 14, 66, 160-1 drop-out pupils 12 early leavers (leaving at 16) 19, 135 136-41 attitudes to school 108, 109-10 socio-economic background 158—9 and university intentions 56—7 economic security 31, 33, 67—9 see also money educational intentions 10-11, 18,39-58 alignment with occupational choices 11-12, 148, 151-4, 168 coherence of educational plans 56—7, 177 post-16 participation see post-16 participation university intentions see university intentions educational routes 149, 166 children's need for information 168 coherence of school plans 56-7

to occupational choices 73-9 effort 10, 16, 27, 35-7, 37, 113, 14 credit for 105 enjoyment of school 83, 85—7, 167 leaving at 16 and 137, 138, 139^ and post-16 partipation 42, 46-7 entertainment 60-1, 71ethnicity 2, 16-17, 150 educational and occupational plans 154-9 leaving at 16 136-7 negative attitudes to school 143, 17 Every Child Matters 5-6 examination prospects 116, 117, 149—5 162, 163-4, 167 and leaving at 16 137, 138, 1 excluded pupils 12 expectations 10-12 children's choices 159-66 managing by schools 169 parents' and teachers' 121—2 factor analysis 82 fairness 103-4 family 14-15 contexts and children's choices 159—66 hopes for family and children in the future 22-5, 31, 32-5, 37, 67 socio-economic background see parental occupations; socioeconomic status see also parents' views fantasy occupations 60—1, 62, 63, 68, 71—3 leaving school at 16 138, 139 luck and 36-7 friends consistency of post-16 and university intentions 57, 177 intentions and leaving school at 16 137, 138, 140 intentions and post-16 intentions 42, 44, 46, 175 intentions and university intentions 51, 52, 176 negative attitudes to school 144 views on school and friendships 83,

90-2, 94, 96-

187

Index Furlong, A. 4, 17, 161 further education colleges 54-5 future 18, 21-38, 148-50, 166-9 determinants of 26—8 families and children 22-5, 31, 32-5, 37, 67 homes 22-5, 32, 37, 67 hopes for 22-5, 32, 37, 67 importance of school to 84—5 jobs 22-8, 29-31, 37, 168 luck and effort 27, 35-7, 37-8 planning for 28-9 views of 37-8 GCSE 125 school attainment level and GCSE results 125, 127-8 gender 16-17, 150 and attitudes to school 108 consistency of post-16 and university plans 57, 177 early leavers 136—7 hopes for the future 23, 24-5, 37 negative attitudes to school 143, 179 occupational choices 60, 61, 62, 64, 154-9 and participation in higher education 2 post-16 intentions 40, 41, 154-9 university intentions 50, 154-9 Giddens, A. 13 Goldthorpe, J. 14, 17, 66, 112, 160, 166-7 group differences 16—18 in attitudes to school 107-10 occupational and educational intentions 154-9 see also ethnicity; gender; parental occupations; socio-economic status Hallam, S. 126 Hargreaves, D. 131, 132 hassle 89-90, 99-102 hierarchy of attainment 9—10, 124 higher education see university intentions

homes, future hopes for 22-5, 32, 37, 67 hopes for the future 22-5, 32, 37, 67 identity creation 13, 26, 38, 169 importance of school 82, 83, 83-5 negative attitudes 144, 179 independence 31, 32, 38 individualization 13, 26, 38 influence, friends as source of 98—9 instrumental aspects of feelings about school 6—7 intentions 10-12 interviews 171, 173^ Iveson, J. 126 James, A. 11, 21 jobs 59-60, 159-60, 166 availability of 63^determinants of the future 26-8 expectations and educational and occupational plans 159—62, 163-4 getting a good job 29-31 hopes for the future 22-5, 37, 168 leaving school at 16 and 137, 138-9, 141 post-16 intentions 41—3 university intentions and 51, 52—3, 55-6 what a good job provides 31 see also occupational choices learners 9-10, 19, 111-33 learner identities 111-23 commitment 113-15 negative identities 122-3 parent and teacher expectations 121—2 perceptions of achievement 115—21 normative judgements 123—4 setting see setting leaving school at 16 see early leavers Levin, B. 5 lifestyle, future 31, 67-8, 160 luck 27, 35-7, 37-8 maintaining order 105-6

188


manual occupations children's occupational choices 61-2, 62-4 leaving school at 16 138, 139 parental occupations and children's educational plans 40, 41, 50-1, 155, 156-9, 164-6 parental occupations and children's occupational choices 63, 64—6, 155, 156-9 marginalization 16—18 marriage 22-5, 32-5 Merrett, F. 5 mobility 159-66 money 22-5, 31, 160 see also economic security Moses, D. 2, 6, 10-11, 21, 40 national curriculum assessment regime 9, 112, 123 National Foundation for Educational Research 6 NEET (not in employment education or training) young people 1, 18 negative attitudes to school 7-8, 19, 135-6, 142-6, 179 negative learner identities 122—3 normative judgements 123^1 occupational choices 11, 18, 59-79, 148-9 alignment with educational intentions 11-12, 148, 151^, 168 fantasy occupations see fantasy occupations information and meaningful choices 15-16 leaving school at 16 138—9 most frequent choices 60—2 routes to achieve 73—9 parental occupations and 63-6, 70-1, 164-6 socio-economic status of choices 62-4, 66-71 Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED) 6, 105 order, maintaining 105-6

orientations to school 9, 82, 83, 161-2 importance of school 82, 83, 83—5, 144, 179 rejection of school 83, 92-3, 144, 145-6, 179 school attainment level and 130 teacher commitment 83, 87-8 parental occupations and attitudes to school 108-9 and consistency of educational plans 57, 177 and determinants of the future 28 and hopes for the future 25, 38 and leaving school at 16 136—7 and negative attitudes to school 143, 179 and occupational choices 63-6, 70-1, 164-6 and post-16 participation 40, 41, 154-9, 164-6 and reasons for not going to university 53, 176 and university participation 50-1, 164-6 parents expectations 121—2 financial problems as influence 68—9, 160-1 parents' views 14-15, 162-3, 167, 168 and commitment to school 113 consistency of post-16 and university plans 57, 177 leaving school at 16 137, 138, 140-1 negative view of school 92, 93 and post-16 participation 42, 44-5, 155-9, 162-3, 164-6, 175 and university intentions 51, 52, 155-9, 162, 163, 164-6, 176 Payne, J. 174 personal fulfilment 13, 68 personal identity construction 13, 38, 169 physical environment 94, 95 planning for the future 28—9 post-16 participation 1-2, 40-9, 58, 150, 166-9, 178

189

Index post-16 participation, cont. and attitudes to school 108, 109-10 confusion with university education 54—5 ethnicity and 154-9 exam prospects and 163-4 gender and 40, 41, 154-9 parental occupations and 40, 41, 154-9, 164-6 parental views and 42, 44-5, 155-9, 162-3, 164-6, 175 plans for children who intend to go to university 56-7, 177 school attainment level and 151^ poverty 160 primary school 112 self-perceptions of attainment 115—17, 119, 178 transition to secondary school from 101-2 professional and managerial occupations 150 gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background 154—9 leaving school at 16 and 138, 139 occupational choices 61, 62, 62—4, 69-70 parental occupations and children's educational plans 40, 41, 50, 154-9, 164-6 parental occupations and children's occupational choices 63, 64—5, 154-9 parental views and children's expectations 163-4 routes into 73-5 school attainment level and 151^ professionalism, teachers' 103—7 pro-school subcultures 131, 143 public policy issues 1—2 pupil behaviour, disruptive 89, 105-6, 127 qualifications 38, 148, 161, 168, 169 and getting a good job 29—30 hopes for the future 22—5 reasons for post-16 participation 41-2

quality of teaching 104-5 questionnaire 171, 172-3, 173-4 rational action theory 14, 70, 112 Reay, D. 7, 8 reciprocity 106—7 rejection of school 83, 92-3, 144, 145-6, 179 relationships setting and 131-2 social and personal relationships in school 96-107 friendships 96-9 hassle and bullying 99-102 teachers 102-7 relative performance 116, 117—18, 119, 123-4, 178, 179 research project 171^method 173^ respect 106-7 risk 159-66, 166-7 occupational choices and 67—9 routes into occupations see educational routes rowdiness 89-90, 94, 95, 127 Rudduck, J. 5 Schneider, B. 11-12, 16, 64, 149 school 1, 18-19, 81-110, 147-8, 168-9 attitudes to see attitudes to school best and worst of 93-6 children's location within the school system 151—4 determinants of the future 26—7, 37, 38 social and personal relationships 96-107 friendships 96-9 hassle and bullying 99-102 teachers 102-7 structure of children's views 82—93 difficult environment 83, 89-90 enjoyment of school 83, 85-7 friendships 83, 90-2 importance of school 82, 83, 83—5, 144, 179 rejection of school 83, 92-3 teacher commitment 83, 87-8

190


school, cant. views on sixth form provision 48—9 school attainment level 149-50, 167 children's educational and occupational plans and 151—4 setting and 124-31 school improvement 5 school-leaving age 1-2 leaving at 16 see early leavers raising 39 school subjects 94-5, 120-1 enjoyment of 86, 87, 120-1 secondary school starting at 3, 147-50 transition to 101—2 self-efficacy 10, 13, 112 self-fulfilment 13, 68 self-ratings 115-24, 128, 129, 178 setting 118, 119, 124-32, 149-50, 167 educational and occupational plans, and school attainment level 152—4 leaving school at 16 136—7 and pupil attitudes and relationships 131-2 and school-level attainment 124-31 sixth form provision 48—9 skilled manual occupations occupational choices 61—2, 65—6, 69-70 routes into 75-7 skilled non-manual occupations occupational choices 62—4 parental occupations and children's educational intentions 40, 41, 50, 155, 156-9 parental occupations and children's occupational choices 63, 64, 155, 156-9 social change 169 social classification, complexity of 157—8 social exclusiveness 53 social mobility 4, 70-1, 159-66 avoiding downward mobility 14, 66, 160-1 social reproduction 4, 13, 17, 66 socio-economic status 7, 16—17, 150, 171-2

determinants of the future 28 and educational and occupational intentions 154—9 and hopes for the future 25, 38 of occupational choices 62-4, 66-71 and participation in university education 2 see also parental occupations sociology of education 3—4 sport 60-1, 71-3 standardized reading tests 123 Stevenson, B. 11-12, 16, 64, 149 streaming 125-6, 131 student debt 53, 54 subcultures, anti-school and proschool 131, 143 support, friends and 97, 98 teachers commitment 83, 87—8 expectations 121—2 negative attitudes to school and 144-5, 179 relationships with 102-7 views on school and 86, 94, 95 testing, national curriculum 9, 112, 123 transition to secondary school 101—2 trust 16, 85 uncertainty about educational intentions 47—8 unemployment 69 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 5, 6 university education government's 50 per cent target 2, 39 social background and participation rate 2 university intentions 49-56, 58, 150, 178 ethnicity and 154-9 gender and 50, 154-9 information and meaningful choices 15—16 parental occupations and 50—1, 53, 164-6, 176 parental views and 51, 52, 155-9, 162, 163, 164-6, 176

191

Index university intentions, cant. post-16 plans and 56—7, 177 school attainment level and 151^ upward mobility 70-1

Wheldall, K. 5 White, R. 5 Willis, P. 131 Woods, L. 64

voices, children's 3, 5—6, 173

Year 7 to Year 8 transition 102

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Children's Books - Childrens Rhymes

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Wind in the Willows (Childrens Classics)

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Key Ideas in Educational Research (Continuum Research Methods Series)

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Aristotle (Continuum Library Of Educational Thought)

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