In Scotland, there is a great emphasis on pupil destination. I spent my first 10 years in teaching as a classroom teacher. The next 24 years were spent in middle and upper-middle management, meaning that I was very involved in pupil outcomes and destinations. I am now semi-retired and working on a supply basis. Every school that I have worked in over the last forty years has been in an area with 'multiple indicators of deprivation'.
Differences in destination are often because of economic factors. This is common for working class families, where worry about money results in more pressure to go into work straight away. There are, of course, children from all classes who simply do not have an academic bent or who do not receive the appropriate encouragement from the adults in their life. Some of those do return to education later.
My own husband returned to education as a mature student. His parents wanted him to stay on at school, but his HT informed his parents "I don't see [DH] sitting behind a desk. Do you?"
The result was that he left school at 15 and - like his father - went into manual work. (This, in spite of the fact that his grades were reasonably good.) He later took qualifications at night school and sat the entrance exam for Aberdeen University.
I'm fortunate. My teachers encouraged all their pupils to use their talents.
My father was a coalminer, but I was an only child and my parents felt able to encourage and support me when I wanted to attend university. I have seen many working class children who gave up the chance for further education because they were worried about being able to support themselves: this has been exacerbated by the removal of grants.
Where working-class children do move onto further education, they now tend to head for the local college so that they can stay at home and work a part-time job close to home.
Some will take foundation courses at the college and then complete their degree at a university within travelling distance.
For some children, the fact that no one in their family has ever been in further education is a factor: they lack the confidence to try. Sadly, I have seen cases where children have been offered a place at university and have turned it down because of family circumstances.
The Inspectorate in Scotland uses destinations as one of the measures against which schools are judged, which is why (as a member of the school Extended Management Team) I was ultra-aware of destinations for pupils.
Where a pupil left school with no progression to further education, training or employment this counted as a black mark against the school.
In 40 years, I can recall a handful of cases of children from what you might term "an underclass" who blatantly stated that they didn't "need any qualifications to become a drug dealer". It's also a sad truth that children whose parents were drug addicts were more likely to fall by the wayside themselves.
By contrast, I've seen children from such families who have broken away and who have managed to become what we might term "a useful member of society".
More striking to me - and increasingly numerous - are the children from middle-class households who are so entitled that they expect to be able to behave as they wish and still receive good grades.
I'd say that the problem became more marked with the advent of the internet. Latterly, in my Faculty Head post, I had to spend a great deal of time checking coursework in order to avoid receiving a plagiarism notice from the exam board.
Universities use Turnitin. Unfortunately, I had to rely on Google. I've been caught out twice: once was an essay that was handed straight to the Exam Coordinator just before the official envelope was sealed; the other got past the class teacher and I didn't notice the plagiarism when I checked it. The exam board's copy of Turnitin did.
Not once can I recall a parent admitting that their child had actually cheated. In most cases, I caught the plagiarism before the coursework was sent off. I'd then have to deal with angry parents who wouldn't admit to the problem, even when given the evidence.
I recall one senior being verbally abusive towards me and overturning furniture when I had the nerve to suggest that she might have copied her essay from the internet.
The mother became verbally aggressive when contacted by the school and threatened legal action. When she was given incontrovertible proof - the child's printed essay and a printout of the essay from the website which provided ready-made essays - the mother then claimed that it didn't count as plagiarism. Her child had thought that it was "all right because they didn't copy and paste - they copied it by hand'. (Setting aside the ridiculous excuse, the pupil had actually done a copy and paste.)
The parent also denied that her child had turned up drunk for a mock, again threatening legal action against the school. (Paradoxically, the mother offered no reason or apology for the fact that the child had disrupted the exam by giggling and banging on tables.)
The mother was a solicitor.
After the results came out, she phoned the school to complain that the certificate said "Incomplete" for some subjects. Yes, those were subjects where the child had failed to submit coursework to the appropriate standard.
That's only one example of the entitlement that I've seen over the years.
In the case of the plagiarised essay that I missed, the school was compelled to carry out a formal interview with the pupil and the parent.
When the results came out, the parent had the audacity to phone the HT and complain that there was no grade for the subject. Apparently, the HT told the parent "Madam, would you rather it said 'cheated'?"
Things have become much worse since Covid, but the decline has been obvious for some time. There are problems right across society now and more and more of them seem to stem from internet usage - I'm thinking of cyberbullying, for instance.
I could give you umpteen examples, but I'd be here all day.