Retaining high-quality teachers in the most disadvantaged communities is key to ensuring pupils’ aspirations remain high, a charity leader has said, in response to new research showing that students from poorer backgrounds are more pessimistic about their future.
Only around one-third of 16- to 18-year-olds feel confident that they will work in their dream job, compared with more than nine in 10 pupils aged 10 and 11, according to survey findings published today by Teach First.
The charity said the research also shows that students from poorer backgrounds are twice as likely to feel unoptimistic about their future career chances than their peers.
The results have been published ahead of GCSE results day tomorrow.
Teach First chief executive Russell Hobby said: “Getting your GCSE results and choosing your next steps should be an exciting time, but this polling shows that young people from low-income backgrounds are much less hopeful about their future career chances.”
In the poll of 4,000 young people, only around one-third of 16- to 18-year-olds said they believed they could get to their “dream job”, citing barriers such as “not being clever enough” or not knowing the route there.
In contrast, 93 per cent of children aged 10 and 11 believed they would be able to achieve their dream career.
”The younger children have high hopes and expectations about the future. And as they get older, those that come from less privileged backgrounds gradually become more pessimistic about things and I think that says something really important,” Mr Hobby said.
“I don’t think we need to raise aspirations; I think they start high. What you can see in our data is that [pupils] become increasingly unsure as to what the route is to get there.”
High-quality teachers and pupil aspirations
Mr Hobby said one of the most important factors in keeping children’s aspirations high is retaining high-quality teachers in the most disadvantaged communities.
“We know that there are serious challenges to that effect. And again, it’s those schools with the biggest challenges who tend to lose out the most when we experience those [teacher] shortages,” he said.
Mr Hobby said he is also worried about disadvantaged students being hit harder by grade deflation.
“It always seems to be that those who have less within the system are the ones who pay the price,” he told Tes. “And we know that young people from less privileged backgrounds were hardest hit by the pandemic.
“We’ve also, post-pandemic, had the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, and the continued turmoil in our country making an impact on them, and we haven’t, as a country, invested sufficiently in catch-up and recovery from those disruptions, which means we do worry that that results won’t be a true reflection of their potential performance.”
Mr Hobby said investment in careers education was needed. In the poll, conducted by OpinionMatters, less than half of the young people from low-income backgrounds surveyed said their school could help them to arrange work placements.
Teach First is offering people who join its teacher training programme financial support if they move or commute to schools in more deprived areas.
