Aspirations -Good open questions for KS2

[JoyceDivision]

Hi

I'm assisting in school regarding monitoring progress of 'disadvantaged' pupils. I'm helping run sessions for pupils to talk about aspirations.

Can anyone recommend or suggest good open questions that I could use with KS2 pupils?

Thanks in advance

What would you like to have achieved in 40 years time?

Maybe even "what would you like to study at university?"- my children have been speaking about going to university since 3yo (we drive past one daily, they're not hothoused!!)

I assume the school has a robust and accurate monitoring process for the pp children and knows exactly what difference the money is making. It must evaluate what works and what doesn’t. You probably know that the best way for children to achieve and progress well is to have excellent teaching. The Sutton Trust has done a lot of work on PP and you can access a toolkit of helpful measures.

Regarding your question, raising aspiration is quite difficult to do with primary children. I have talked to children (as PP and Maths Governor) about how their maths links into jobs. They talked about what they might like to do. We had a taxi driver (his Dad owns the company) so we talked about taking the fares, working out your costs and your income and we had another child who wanted to be an Architect so we talked about how Maths is important for producing drawings and designs.

I don’t think you can force young children to think about university. Some pp pupils are not doing well at school and have some learning difficulties so talking of university for all isn’t realistic but aspiration is whatever their attainment. I suspect our taxi driver isn’t thinking about university so you cannot be judgemental about their life choices at this stage. However it is useful to look at some careers they come up with and look at how you go about doing them. Others will choose careers that require a degree. Others may change their minds about what they can do. Parents need to have high expectations too and this can be a barrier to success but I am sure you know that.

So ask them to identify skills needed for work. Choose different subjects and see if the pupils can think of what careers build on these and look at how you might achieve them. What do the children think they might need to do to get the job they want? What type of education beyond school do they know about? What are the good aspects of studying at college or university? What might stop them going and how can these be overcome? I am not sure all of this is suitable for primary but it gives you some ideas.

My LA raises aspiration by getting groups of pupils to receive outreach visits to the grammar schools. If you have a good 6th form close by, can a few of their students pop in to talk about their studies and their aspirations? Or visit the school?

Could you ask them what they want to do, and then raise it up a step?

I want to be a hairdresser. Ooh that's great. One day you might own a salon so you'll need good maths and English & business skills

I want to be a zoo keeper. Ooh that sounds fun. Zoo keepers need to understand science so you'll need to work hard at that. Or maybe you could be the next Steve Backshall, he studied biology at university you know.

I want to be a pop star. Wow that would be fun. You'd need to understand maths to make sure you weren't being ripped off. Also, maybe a fall back career too so you'd need to work hard at school just in case.

Thanks everyone, all posts appreciated!