University: aspirations and expectations

In this chapter, I turn to exploring participants’ aspirations and expectations for university alongside perceptions of the value and purpose of higher education (HE). This chapter also highlights inequalities in proximity and familiarity with the university field. Contrary to political rhetoric around the ‘poverty of aspiration’, most of the young people I interviewed in all schools wanted to go to university. Nevertheless, as will be explored in this chapter, there remained notable differences in respect to how university was understood and discussed. These differences presented themselves most prominently through the survey data. Those at Eagles Academy were less likely than the rest to express a positive expectation for university, something which might be explained by those pupils having less confidence in this as a probable outcome for them. In the initial questionnaire I asked pupils: ‘How likely do you think it is that you will go to university?’1 Unsurprisingly the Grand Hill Grammar and Einstein High pupils were the most confident that they would attend university, 90 per cent of Grand Hill pupils and 75 per cent of Einstein High pupils responded ‘likely’ or ‘definitely will’ compared to only 43 per cent of those at Eagles Academy (see Table 4.1).

It is notable that 43 per cent is still a relatively large proportion considering the proportion of pupils in Eagles Academy who gain the necessary GCSEs to continue to HE. Another point to note here is that the Grand Hill pupils’ figures are perhaps surprisingly low given the high academic achievement level within the school. Only 42 per cent said that they ‘definitely will’ attend university. During my fieldwork I showed these figures to Paul (the teacher overseeing my project) and he was surprised. He told me that far more than 42 per cent of their pupils will end up going to university. While a lot of these pupils still anticipated HE as part of their future, many expressed more modest expectations (for example, by ticking ‘likely’ on the questionnaire). This question is essentially tapping into expectations rather than aspirations. This is an important distinction (St Clair et al, 2013; Khattab, 2015; Harrison and Waller, 2018). While I do not wish to claim that one can be inferred from the other, I felt it more helpful to gauge pupils’ expectations at this stage.