Failing young people? Education and aspirations in a deprived community (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of youth studies, 2007
This article examines whether young people in a deprived area are disaffected with education, training and employment, or disengaged from participation in their community. It draws upon evidence from the Drumchapel Aspirations Survey, a study of the attitudes, aspirations and skills of young people from one of the most deprived areas of Glasgow. The study involved a survey of young people in two secondary schools in the Drumchapel area, and focus groups with recent school-leavers. The research explored young people's outlooks at a critical life-stage transition: their levels of social participation, existing skills, future employment and training ambitions, and their understandings of the processes involved in the transition to employment. These data are analysed to examine whether there is evidence of any rejection of mainstream values or an oppositional culture among young people in this deprived community or among any sub-groups within it. The Drumchapel Aspirations Survey study demonstrates that there is no evidence that young people in Drumchapel are disaffected or disengaged; however, indications of skills and aspiration gaps between different types of young people merit further attention and action.
Shaped by Place? Young People's Aspirations in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods
This paper aims to better understand the relationship between young people's aspirations towards education and jobs, and the context in which they are formed, especially to understand better the role of disadvantaged places in shaping young people's aspirations. Policy makers maintain that disadvantaged areas are associated with low aspirations and there is support for this position from academic work on neighbourhood effects and local labour markets, but evidence is slim. Using a twostage survey of young people in disadvantaged settings in three British cities, the paper provides new data on the nature of young peoples' aspirations, how they change during the teenage years, and how they relate to the places where they are growing up. The findings are that aspirations are very high and, overall, they do not appear to be depressed in relation to the jobs available in the labour market either by the neighbourhood context or by young people's perceptions of local labour markets.
academicjournals.org
This paper compares two explanations of the persistent relationship in the UK between young people's social class backgrounds and their rates of participation in higher education: poverty of aspiration and rational action. It is argued that, rather than widening opportunities, successive reforms in education and training have created a series of blind alleys for the (mostly working class) young people who are not high achievers, and that these experiences are the most likely reason for the subsequent strengthening of the weak relationship that exists at age 11/12 between, on one hand, social class backgrounds, then, on the other, pupils' educational and vocational aims. The paper then proceeds to argue that at age 16 to 18 high achievers from working class homes are likely to face equally attractive opportunities to the kinds of higher education that they might otherwise enter.
Aspirations, Attainment and Social Mobility in Disadvantaged Areas
young people the biggest expansion in educational opportunity our country has ever seen. And we will be truly world class in education only if we raise the aspirations of young people themselves, so we will launch a national campaign for thousands more to stay on at sixteen, to sign up to an apprenticeship, to study at university and college' (Brown, 2007). These ideas have found their way into policy. The idea that aspirations are currently too low, are a key to higher achievement and can be raised by public policy has been a theme in recent policy papers about children and young people. Attention to aspirations has increased since 2007, as shown for example in The Children's Plan (DCSF, 2007) and in Aiming High for Young People (HM Treasury and DCSF, 2007). The interest in this topic for students of 'poverty neighbourhoods' is that low aspirations have also been explicitly linked in government policy papers to disadvantaged areas. An important part of the policy context here is that, at least before the recession started to impact, the government believed that that the gaps between deprived and non-deprived areas in England was starting to narrow overall, but there were persistent pockets of worklessness in some neighbourhoods in some regions. This led to a refocusing of approaches to neighbourhood renewal. The report signalling this shift noted that ' ...living in an area of concentrated worklessness can also reduce an individual's chances as areas with high worklessness lack social networks that connect to work and some areas suffer low connectivity to the labour market. Expectations and aspirations can be low amongst residents. Places can play different roles within wider functioning areas. Some deprived neighbourhoods may play significant social and economic roles in their communities and effective regeneration policy should take account of this' (CLG, 2007, p.13) The interest in place has now spread beyond the government department responsible for housing, planning and regeneration into the education ministry: 'Children living in deprived communities face a cultural barrier which is in many ways a bigger barrier (to success) than material poverty. It is a cultural barrier of low aspirations and scepticism about education, the feeling that education is by and for other people, and likely to let one down' (DCSF, 2008, p.2). The theme that low aspirations in disadvantaged areas form barriers to social mobility gained further impetus in a Social Exclusion Taskforce (SET) 'discussion paper' (Cabinet Office, 2008). Initial work by SET led to a set of key hypotheses: that aspirations and attainment levels are lower in deprived communities; that there is a relationship between young people's aspirations and their educational attainment; that 'community level' attitudes, aspirations and expectations can have a significant influence on young people's aspirations and therefore attainment; that there are
The influence of parents, places and poverty on educational attitudes and aspirations
2011
Parents are important Parents and families play a key role; there is clear alignment between what the parents say they want for the young people and what the young people aspire to themselves. For policy, supporting aspirations then means working with parents as well as young people, particularly where parents face disadvantages themselves. Context This study comes at a time at a time when there is a very high degree of interest among politicians and policy-makers on aspirations. We consider the implications of this study in Chapter 8, but for now it is important to note that there is a strong assumption that raising aspirations will increase educational achievement, thereby contributing both to greater equity and to the economic competitiveness of the UK, and that public policy has a key role in promoting this. Aspirations were a key theme of many of the Labour Government's policy papers about children and young people up to 2010. They were a key component of The Children's Plan (DCSF, 2007) and in Aiming High for Young People (HM Treasury and DCSF, 2007). The Social Exclusion Taskforce worked in partnership with the Departments of Children, Schools and Families and Communities and Local Government to commission a review of evidence on aspirations in disadvantaged communities in 2008. The findings (Cabinet Office, 2008) provided background for the Labour Government's social mobility White Paper New Opportunities: Fair chances for the future (Cabinet Office, 2009). This document announced measures to increase young people's aspirations via the new programme Inspiring Communities (CLG et al., 2009). The Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government elected in May 2010 has continued the interest in raising aspirations (although Inspiring Communities has been stopped). Launching the Schools White Paper (DfE, 2010a), the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister's joint foreword notes the differences in attainment between groups of young people, and attributes a lack of aspiration as a key reason for this, specifically: In far too many communities there is a deeply embedded culture of low aspiration that is strongly tied to long term unemployment. The Coalitions' Work Programme and welfare reforms will help tackle these issues. But schools do have a crucial role to play. DfE, 2010a, p. 4
British Educational Research Journal, 2010
The aim of this study was to find out more about the lives of young people in the category ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET). We worked intensively with 26 young people in four smaller groups, spending three days with each group. During our time with them we engaged in a variety of creative and artistic activities designed to help them to construct accounts of their lives for us with the purpose of gaining an understanding of what it was like to be NEET. Three significant issues that emerged from these life stories are discussed in this paper. These are the problematic nature of the discourse of NEET sub-groups; the challenges of school-exclusion policies and practices; and the myth of low aspirations.
Thesis, 2019
This study critically explores education to work transitions among young working class individuals in the city of Glasgow during the period of relative economic decline that followed the 2008 financial crisis. It seeks to understand how those ending their education and entering the labour market at 16/17 years old experience work and how far those experiences may have implications for formal education and the way we shape youth transitions. By focusing on the group most likely to experience sustained unemployment it is hoped a broad understanding of how education constructs expectations of work can be identified. The following sociological study analyses whether the contemporary definition of work passed on to young people via education serves to reinforce their social position, thereby contributing to their relative failure to combat austerity and unwillingness to consider alternative work forms. By situating the research in the city of Glasgow a proposal for identifying broader trends across the UK and beyond within similar post-industrial working class environments is presented. The thesis specifically considers perceptions of work among final year secondary school pupils in an attempt to highlight not only how the reality of austerity is affecting school leavers’ aspirations but how it alters the way in which they perceive what work is. The ongoing economic difficulties encountered in Scotland as a result of austerity has seen the country suffer a marked decline in youth employment during and after the financial crisis of 2008 with 26.4% of 16-19 year olds experiencing unemployment in 2010/11, an increase from 17.9% in 2007/8 (Anderson & Dowling, 2012). The reality that arises from the significant fiscal cuts associated with austerity is not only an economic consideration but a fundamental question of identity. The important role employment plays in shaping our identity within a community cannot be understated, or as Hughes (1975:209) puts it ‘there is something irrevocable about a choice of occupation’. Included within the social and economic capital we derive from our occupations are a number of other forms of capital which stem from culture to education (Stevenson, 2003). It is the hypothetical contention of the study that young people in Glasgow since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis are considerably deprived of many essential forms of capital and as such will be further disadvantaged going into an adulthood which is equally insecure. In seeking to understand what constitutes work for those rapidly approaching the reality of having to find their first full time job arguments will be made to reconsider the theoretical foundations upon which we view youth transitions and reform careers advice post adolescence to further reflect the needs of those least likely to benefit from continued education. On a theoretical level, the research attempts to reconceptualise the ideas of André Gorz (1999) in relation to the new economic climate born out of the global financial crisis and seeks to understand them in terms of youth and young adulthood within Scotland and the wider UK. More generally, the research endeavours to inform policy debates on class, education and social mobility, specifically as a critique of the social consequences of fiscal austerity in communities already suffering from a sustained lack of investment. The analysis of young people’s transitional narratives after one year in the labour market presented herein will in turn inform a comprehensive understanding of how education prepares such individuals for the world of work. Drawing on 230 detailed survey questionnaires and 30 in depth interviews with working class participants the following sociological study constitutes a unique research project based on a mixed-method design complemented by secondary sources leading to the following conclusions. There was little to suggest in either of the data collection stages that the young people who took part in this study have been exposed to or are cognisant of alternative work forms beyond the classic liberal model of employment and social security. Further, it would seem that young people opting for transitions directly from school to work actively embrace the precarious nature of this process, finding some element of pride in having opted for an ostensibly more difficult path. Many participants were largely hostile to narratives of welfare or social security and when radical alternatives such as Universal Basic Income were discussed there was a common tendency expressed to be dismissive of it. Further, there was a generally high prevalence of socially conservative attitudes regarding place, community, and identity evidenced throughout. Participants who had left education to pursue work immediately after school had by and large struggled in their year in the labour market with most reporting transitions fraught with difficulty and precarity framed by individualisation and alienation. Allied to this was a strong perception that this was a generation that had received a difficult hand in the economy, with accounts of resentment clear presenting evidence that the period of economic austerity from 2008 onwards has had a marked effect on how young people think about work.
Life at the margin: education of young people, social policy and the meanings of social exclusion
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2002
This paper explores the term`social exclusion' in the context of new social and education policies being constructed in the UK. It examines the links with terms such as`poverty', deprivation' and`equality' and the implications of policy developments for those identi®ed as socially excluded. Tensions and contradictions appear to be emerging between the UK government's stated policy intentions to address social exclusion, and local knowledge and experience. Issues of power, market power, participation and inclusiveness are explored speci®cally in the context of education. The paper draws on research being undertaken in a deprived inner-city area with voluntary sector organizations that provide education for marginalized young people.
Rethinking the conditions for young people 'getting a job': Kids have something to say
This report documents evidence from an Australian Research Council Linkage Project entitled "'Getting a job': identity formation and schooling in communities at disadvantage" - a project which traced the experience of 32 high school students over an 18 month period in the years 2011-2013. The purpose of the research was to listen to young people's stories with a view to better understanding the barriers and obstacles to 'getting a job' and from their vantage point, identity the educational, policy and practice context that needs to be created and more widely sustained to assist their career aspirations and life chances. The intent of the report is to provide schools, community organisations and educational institutions with a a set of resources organised around 16 conditions that are conducive to supporting young people in 'getting a job'. The report provides a toolkit of ideas, stories, reflective questions, provocations, and policy/practice im...