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?

Has anyone heard the story of Hiut jeans?

From memory it goes like this. 400 people in a particular welsh town (sorry forgot name) used to make jeans until recently. Then factory closed, 400 people lose jobs. Entrepreneur comes along buys old factory and sets himself task of getting those 400 people their jobs back and starts a cool new denim brand called Hiut. Their jeans are totally amazing. But they cost £140. But people Do pay £140 for jeans (they went to RG uni, do you see?), and we just have to get them to pay £140 on jeans that are made in uk.

Ah yes, complacency.
If there is no fire, no hunger for something, a person or organisation may as well not bother.
Doesnt matter whether the complacency exists in the North South east or West, no point , or rather far too much effort needed to change it.

To me, if I was a business leader amd reading this, I would be very careful where I site a new business.
[but take on board the point that MN is not representative].

Sorry, I dont understand LadyRockingham.
Are you saying that if you educate people a lot more, they automatically pay more for things?

There is a link between higher education and spending power, yes.
Acknowledging that is one way to increase the attraction of investing 27k in going to university.

But of course it's not the only route to spending power. I just got a bit stung by the RG comments earlier and mixed them up with my point which is local jobs are part of raising aspirations too.

Oh heck. Still dont understand the points.
Dont worry if you dont want to explain them further to me.

I had a friend who rented a shop that had been empty for a year. How was he going to make money out of the deal? He was going to sub-rent it out at a higher price. The difference between what he was paying in rent and what he received in sub-rent was going to be his profit. The flaw in his reasoning was that if the landlord couldn't rent it out for a year, what made my friend think he could rent it out at a higher rent? And he went to a RG uni.

I might be wrong but my reading of LadyR's post is that some RG educated entrepreneur took over a failed jean making business and his 'brilliant' idea was to make expensive jeans.

Cross posted. Apparently that wasn't LadyR's point.

Ilike - I don't think anyone has said there isn't a problem in these areas. We just dispute what the problem is and how to solve it. Given that many of us are from these areas we do know whereof we speak.

LadyR - But there isn't a link to higher education and spending power. I just paid £5k for some home improvement work. I suspect that the guy earns more money than some Egyptology graduate working as a marketing assistant.

I know, clarity is not my strong point!

One point made earlier on in the thread I was really interested in was that would be good if all the shops etc weren't just the big national /international chains and if local people could start up their own shops and services. That reminded me of the jeans man in Cardigan bay who is on a mission to get 400 people their jobs back by starting up the jeans factory again.

wordfactory, I will have a reread of this thread later.

LadyR. tbh i now equate going to uni with debt.
Some students will never ever pay it all back.

I googled Iiut jeans. They employ 8 people which is roughly the same number of staff were I to open a coffee shop. Hardly a shining example of a thriving business breathing life into the community.

Well, if they can get Victoria Beckham to endorse their jeans then great. Otherwise, good luck persuading people to pay £140 on a pair of jeans that isn't Armani or similar.

Yes, I know.
The aim is to get 400 people their jobs back - they haven't got there yet.
They need to sell a few more jeans.

I agree, many students will never pay back their loan. But in general HE is a way to a better earning job. But not in all cases, and definitely not with non-vocational arts degrees.

I'm still paying back my loan! (graduated 12 years ago and it was 'only' £9000)

TalkinPeace as an academic we would look at things like IMD2010 to identify low aspiration groups, where interventions might be best, as well as things like school attainment. Not scooter usage.

I work in a non RG university.
So the students who come here must be low aspiration.
That must be why the Uni gets extremely high satisfaction ratings from students. (We beat satisfaction ratings for Oxbridge).

Just got an email thru, For research & impact we outperformed the RG average.
My other previous UK uni employer is even higher up this list.
But hey ho, must still be big piles of poo. Because they're not RG.
Can't possibly have many ambitious and high-achieving people here, oh no...

High satisfaction ratings. But if the students were indeed low aspiration, then they would say they were satisfied.

research and impact.
Dont know what impact is.
Research. Yes that is very good.
But it is only one marker.

lljk I'm not convinced those figures have owt to say about aspiration etc in working class communities....

Just you with a chip on your shoulder re RG universities. Sigh.

OK, I apologise, I used RG as a shorthand for "academic" University, as against ones like Southampton Solent which are just building up debt for future checkout operators.

I'd even be pleased to see the kids aim at well paid skilled trades : dryliners can name their price in parts of London and my illiterate commercial window fitters used to have to take holidays to stay below the VAT limit

Yorkshire and the Humber as a region has a higher proportion going to Russell group universities than the south east though.

www.gov.uk/government/news/government-publishes-destination-data-for-the-first-time

I think that's what provoked me about the OP, it was a kind of double whammy of negative stereotypes about northerners and universities stereotypes

Some of the courses, in some of the non RG universities, are the top in the country for their subjects.
So even if a student goes to a non RG uni, all is not necessarily lost op!
I dont know how far down the Uni League table this goes to, but I am pretty sure it is at least half way.

The north west tops the league. Obviously there are big differences within regions as Knowsley has the lowest proportion of pupils in sixth forms, and there may be a brain drain after university. Then again, there are more Russell Group universities up north than in the south (outside London).

The north west/Yorkshire and Humber still send a bigger proportion of students to university, RG or not, than the south east/south west.

ladyRockingham
The Isle of Wight is bad, as is Cornwall, as is South Wales : anywhere with poor communication links and industrial decline.
The fact that I was in Lincolnshire did not affect the way I looked at the kids. It was the nature of the town that I noticed - geography degree and all that.