How young people make career/occupational choices and why they enter particular careers/occupations are questions to which the answers are complex. One hundred and ninety seven-students drawn from two non-selective comprehensive schools and two further education (FE) colleges in the North of England took part in a questionnaire survey relating to…

This paper is based on a small-scale mixed-method research project, which was located in south-east England and was funded by the British Academy. The project, investigated the factors that affected young people's decisions not to progress to higher education (HE) after following a Level 3 vocational pathway in upper secondary education. Set…

The aim of the article is to identify those factors that drive the high participation in immediate post-16 and higher education of some minority ethnic groups in the UK. What could we learn from these examples to encourage higher aspirations more generally? The article reports a summary of a formal and systematic review of 1678 studies dated 1997…

This book presents an overview of working-class life in England, showing how women from working-class backgrounds still seldom achieve higher level academic qualifications and the lifestyle to which they lead. Analyzing her own experience and that of others of similar background, the author shows how their mothers and fathers held low expectations…