Job Done?

According to a recent Sutton Trust survey, 77% of young people now aspire to go to university, full report at http://www.suttontrust.com/reports/Mori080609.pdf Only 10% said they were unlikely or very unlikely to go. As the research points out, this far exceeds the numbers actually entering higher education and I would add, this far exceeds the numbers who will gain 5 GCSE's A to C grade.

This is an amazingly high percentage and might suggest that widening participation into higher education initiatives in schools have nearly achieved their purpose. However, I think I can see how this research might have overstated the true level of commitment to higher education. First, in my experience, even when a teacher is absent from the classroom most students of these age groups will try to give the 'correct' answer when interrogated by an important adult.

Second, I wondered if this work was reflecting the confused aspirations of low achieving students, which often have little relationship to real life. I first came across this phenomenon when, as an education social worker, I ran a group for 14 year old, non-exam entry, boys who had all been excluded for bad behaviour on more than one occasion from their failing north London secondary school. Like at least 1 in 10 of their contemporaries, these were students who would not obtain any worthwhile qualifications during their entire educational career. One day, I asked them about their plans for the future and was surprised when they all spontaneously asserted that they were going to live the wealthiest of affluent life styles: a celebrity life style. The most pedestrian of these boys was going to achieve this by being an airline pilot. For the rest, they were extremely vague; their aspirations seemed to be about faith, emotion and hope rather than rational plan, 'I just know I'm going to…'. As an aside, these high aspirations were combined with a refusal to consider anything less glittering, such as an apprenticeship, which was rejected out of hand, albeit that such an aspiration would have been quite a stretch for them to achieve.

That said, I think this is a fascinating research report and congratulations to the Sutton Trust for producing it. For me, it suggests that there is a widespread positive sentiment among school students towards higher education that can be tapped to both widen participation into higher education and I would hope to encourage some students to pursue other educational goals. This is especially important as it comes at a time when there is an apparent lack of take up of apprenticeships http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8119483.stm I'd like to know what it is about the university narrative that has apparently captured student's imagination and can this be mobilised in other ways.