‘Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’: educationally disengaged and disadvantaged young people’s talk about university education

Abstract

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people's imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, specifically how they imagined universities and university participation. For these young people, universities were imagined as 'big', 'massive' alienating schools. The paper explores how the elements of schooling from which these young people disengaged became tangible barriers to imagining and pursuing participation in university education. The primary barrier they described was their relationships with school teachers. Our analysis shows how relationships with teachers can impact the imagined improbability/probability of university participation. We offer suggestions for how barriers to university created by poor relationships with teachers may be overcome.

Will the Use of Contextual Indicators Make UK Higher Education Admissions Fairer?

“…The problem is that many of the lowest attaining pupils at schools, including a high proportion in relative poverty, will leave education early and not attain even the minimum requirements for HE, or otherwise simply not apply. Many may not be interested [51]. Adjusting the scores of those FSM-eligible students who do apply will not address any of these issues, and the PP gap in attainment used to justify such contextualised admissions would be misleading (since it would need to be re-calculated only on the basis of those who applied).…”

Students’ university aspirations and attainment grouping in secondary schools

“…Whilst an increasing number of young people now pursue higher education studies (Whitty, Hayton and Tang, 2015), it is clear that many students do not fulfil their earlier university aspirations. International evidence shows that students from advantaged backgrounds are more likely to attend university (Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley, 2009;McMahon, Harwood and Hickey-Moody, 2016;Tomaszewski, Perales and Xiang, 2015), suggesting that students from more disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to turn their aspiration into participation (Bowden and Doughney, 2010), although recent studies drawing on longitudinal UK data suggest that the apparent socio-economic patterns in higher education participation can be largely explained by prior attainment as early as at 11 (Anders, 2012). As students' educational outcomes, including measures of student attainment are, however inextricably linked to the social and educational context in which students are schooled (Ball, 2010), it is important to examine students' school trajectories and consider how their experiences of schooling might impact on their aspirations for university (Mangan et al, 2010;Santelices, Horn and Catalan, 2017;Venezia and Kirst, 2005;Whitty, Hayton and Tang, 2015;).…”

The experience of qualitative research with young fathers: considerations of gender, class and reflexive practice

“…Offering alternatives to verbal accounts, such as through the use of creative or visual methods has been successful in work with young people including with young fathers (Bagnoli, 2009;Hanna and Lau-Clayton, 2012) and can provide an antidote to the reliance on in-depth verbal narratives that are often seen as the 'gold standard' of qualitative interviewing, but which can be at odds with the communication levels and desires of those who are participating. So too, we should not assume that young men will want to come into the university environs to participate within research, the intimidation of the perceived 'ivory tower' (May et al, 2016;McMahon et al, 2016) can be very real for some young people.…”