Lack of aspiration in school leavers : regional impact

[Talkinpeace]

I've just been to visit friends south of the Humber.
Wandering around the small market town near their house DH, DD, DS and I were watching the scooter kids.
So i looked up the secondary school and surprise, surprise its not great on getting kids to Russell Group Universities.
Why?
Because there is NOBODY round there to give them a role model to do so.

The rich people are hereditary farmers, hereditary fishing captains, hereditary owners of amusement parks and a few incoming executives in the energy industry.
Nothing that the child of a shop worker or farm labourerer or fishing crew can even relate to.

I cannot think of how to see if those kids actually have the academic potential to escape their circumstances without moving to the South East and adding to the brain drain.

But hopefully somebody on here will be more optimistic for the area than I?

Talkinpeace. I think you are right,some Dc"s from affluent families are not in the least bit intrested in university. They may have in the past have gone to university, to please their parents and to stay away from work. Now with the cost of university they may decide it is too expensive just to go, for the heck of it. Some Dc"s from non affluent families may think whats the point, because even if they came back from university with a degree they are unlikely to get a career,and still end up in jobs below their skill level. These are the only jobs available in many regional towns, so how can they be motivated for educational enhancement.

ok, hopefully I get it now!
Have to agree with other posters then about the Russell Group bit.
There are surely oppurtunities if you live in one of those places, and want to go to a uni, which isnt or doesnt need to be Russell Group.
There are only a tiny few who can be head honcho, wherever they were originally from.

Agree that the cost of uni, to me anyway, is prohibitive for frankly just about anyone imo.
Thankfully I dont have that problem as all mine just got through that particular problem.

There are much better ways to detect and discuss Lack of Aspiration than University destination. Or scooter riding, for that matter.

lljkk
cool : enlighten us

Talkinpeace whilst I agree that social mobility via education needs to be looked at. It has alsmot stopped in many parts of the country. It does need to be accepted or at least considered, that it was always going to affect the relative few even when working well.

To benefit, recipients would need to be bright, ambitious, and desirous of being socially mobile...

The far bigger problem facing the working classes is lack of employment that does not require tertiary education, in the areas where their communities are based. This affects far more people.

People used to move. Look at Victorian England. Mass migration from the countryside to the towns.

I suppose mobility is more difficult now. If you have secure accommodation, why would you leave it? Why would you leave friends and family? But if your home is not secure, and no job = no income then you have to follow the work.

I agree with wordfactory that Russell Group/Schmussel Group for most of the population. What people need is jobs. Full-time jobs paying a wage that makes benefits look crap. But I don't know whether these will exist again in the form that people want.

I teach in a secondary school in East Yorkshire - it's true there agree currently no outstanding schools in the area but we have recently (the region) been targeted by Ofsted who clearly came here with an agenda. My school is good and I can honestly say we do try and raise aspirations - it is common for students to go to university and we do encourage top careers and unis for our best students. However I have noticed many of them want to stay within an hour or so of home and come back and party with friends every weekend. I encourage students to go as far away as they can but so many people end up back here - you would be astonished at the number of ex-students who apply to work at the school.

Getting young people out of their comfort zone is hard. Institutionally I'm just not sure what else we can do.

I know 'the back end of Cleethorpes'. And it is not so much 'lack of role models' as lack of jobs. And what you have failed to realise is that many of your 'scooter kids' will probably come from close and extended families and probably don't want to move. As another poster said, the idea of uni for many is not an attractive option - £27,000 in tuition fees, more in loans to live on. Get a degree, and...then what? There are few degree level jobs/opportunities for career back in their home area. And this is where many people want to stay. Yorkshire is the same - people stayed in towns like Scunthorpe or Sheffield when the steelworks went down the pan, or the pit villages when they closed, because it is home - and all of their family and friends are close by. People don't want to move to London, thanks.

But you dont have to move to London necessarily.
Even an hours drive away would give more options.

I find it ironic, that in this age of the best transport that has ever been on this planet, that people refuse to move!

sowornout
I (unlike Xenia) do not advocate moving from North to South
BUT
its depressing that the shops and phone companies and ISPs and the like that people in Cleethorpes use were not founded in Cleethorpes.

From a purely commercial point : the barriers to entry - renting a unit, hiring cheap staff etc etc - are MUCH lower in the north than the south
its about time Kensington got SERIOUSLY undercut
how do we persuade those kids to get angry enough to want to get even and undercut ?

I dont think they need to get angry.

But from what people are saying on here, they are happy with their lot, so it just aint going to happen is it?

Actually I feel quite dispirited, but if it is a non issue, according to MN anyway, then there isnt a problem to get worked up about in the first place.
End of.

ps, though if people on MN do complain in the future about lack of prospects in the North, I will link to this thread.

Ilike
hmmm, the people who are happy that the poor are poor do not tend to include those about whom we are talking : MN is demographically massively skewed towards the top 10%, not the bottom 50%

ooh, ouch but true.
It is possible that because this thread is in Education, that some posters may have hidden the topic all together.
Dont know really.

Swornout. none of the politcal parties have any ideas how to make the regions,aspriational and enterprising. Why wont any politcal party come up with some obivous ideas for improving the regions like making areas like Scunthorpe, old mining towns attractive to major business. One way they could do that would be to say to "BIG BUSINESS" take your headquarters away from london employ 30 to 40 % local people. On say uk average or above wages, the incintives for the business would be say no corporation tax for 5 years, the amount of business relocating would be a stampede. Most of the regional disparties would be removed. This is to simple for the politcal parties, or is it they like the country being "LONDON CENTRIC". If this and other enterprising ideas were done maybe kids in Scunthorpe would be educational motivated to go to university.

beatback
all well and good except that the physical location of an office need not be the same as its high earners : as Apple, Starbucks, Google etc have proven

Maybe it is a chicken and egg situation.
Maybe big business does not see certain areas as having a motivated work force, so dont come?

they like moving to cheap areas for low level staff
BUT
the people we were vising south of Cleethorpes were imported managers ...
employers have been allowed (by the CBI and the TUC and the government) to become lazy
they want "ready trained" staff rather than coughing up for the training to make what they need
THAT is what really has to change

Talkinpeace. Thats the carot you change the tax laws if the big companies want to play avoidence. You could say for business to qualify for this special tax arrangement they would have to commit to a minimum of 12 years headquarters located in special enterprise zones. The chairman and senior executives would have to be resident in the uk and pay full uk tax on their earnings and dividends. You also make it ilegal to trade as a uk company but have offices in ireland or other territories for the sole reason to avoid paying tax. You would think all E.U countries would be fed up of that happening and sign up.

Don't forget that for the generation reaching adulthood in the late 1930s and early 1940s the War had a huge impact. Being called up forced people to move from one end of the country to another, and opened up many people's eyes to the world outside their home area.

After the war, when the big shake up had happened, it was a time of prosperity, so people could risk a move - if it didn't work out in the new area they could move back and still get work. How many people could risk that now?

Don't forget also, the ridiculous cost of housing in the South-East generally and London in particular.

Dont unferstand what you are trying to say in the last paragraph.
As regards the rest, surely a person or person would get the job first in the different area, and then move to it?

beatback, why would headquarters also have to be where the factory or whatever was?

TalkinPeace, now you have mentioned training, I could see that would be a problem for a new factory or whatever moving there. And expensive.
You cant blame them for not doing it, or wanting to do it.
And they may as well stay down South, as the people in the North are happy enough it seems.

Just because they are happy doesn't mean that they can't be happier with better paid jobs or more prospects.

My earlier comments was in response to comments that suggests that people need rescuing from a life where they have no access to a GS or a RG uni eeducation.

That is not the same as saying that these people don't want to improve their lives.

I thought this proposed linkup between Suffolk and Hackney schools was interesting.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-22640649