The dispositions and tactics of school sixth-formers who reject the institutional ‘push’ to university

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the experiences of a group of 16- to 18-year-old students in two publicly funded London schools who did not conform to expectations and rejected university as a post-school destination. The students’ experiences offer insights into how current Higher Education (HE) policy in England combined with a competitive school market encouraged differentiated levels of support according to the ‘status’ of students’ post-school aspirations. In both schools, progression to university was valorised with sixth-form (post-16) careers guidance focused on HE choosing. Students who did not conform to school expectations and sought alternatives to university were found to be most disadvantaged by a lack of independent and impartial careers guidance at sixth-form level. Characterised by creativity and resourcefulness, non-conforming students’ dispositions influenced the ways they negotiated the HE discourses integral to the institutional habitus of their schools. Drawing on social and cultural capital beyond the school, they accessed advice and guidance for post-school destinations which had more meaning for them than university. The paper draws on student interviews which formed part of a larger ethnographic study of the influence of institutional habitus on students’ HE and non-HE choosing. The discussion is informed by a Bourdieusian theoretical framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-16 transitions
• student dispositions
• moderate attainers
• institutional habitus

Introduction

This paper focuses on a group of ‘sixth form’ (post-16) students in two high-performing London schools who did not conform to school expectations as they progressed to Higher Education (HE) and sought alternative post-school destinations. I argue that these non-conformers possessed a student habitus which was generally at ease with their middle-band attainment and non-university aspirations but less aligned to the expectations and values integral to their school’s institutional habitus than students who aspired to HE. Understood as a complex interplay between the school’s ‘expressive order’, reputational status and organisational practices (Tarabini and Curran 2019, 61), a key element of the institutional habitus of the two schools was the expectation, referred to as the ‘push’ by students and staff, that sixth-formers aspire to university. As described in Donnelly’s (2015) study of schools’ strong and weakly framed ‘hidden messages’, strong messaging about the value of HE was found in both schools. Reinforced by a lack of independent careers guidance at sixth-form level, preparation for HE was prioritised and progression to Russell Group universities valorised. However, in line with national access rates, the majority of the schools’ HE applicants accessed a range of less prestigious institutions.

The non-conformers in this study responded to the institutional push to HE and lack of resources for their decision-making by employing different tactics to access support for their alternative aspirations. In this paper, a ‘tactic’ is understood to be any practical or creative method used by a student to negotiate the push to HE and access advice and guidance for non-HE aspirations. As de Certeau (1984, 37) explains, a tactic is ‘the space of the other’, a way of exercising agency within a ‘terrain organised by the law of a foreign power’. Shaped by their individual dispositions, non-conformers’ tactics were seen in both their responses to the institutional push to apply to HE and in the ways they accessed useful social and cultural capital to support their non-HE decision-making.

The data on which this paper is based was collected as part of a larger study which examined the influences on students’ HE and non-HE choice-making conducted between 2014 and 2016. The period saw some key post-16 policy changes including the rise in school leaving age to 18 and the introduction of sixth-form league tables in England. A heightened emphasis on sixth-form performance and progression to ‘elite’ universities in particular (Hodgson and Spours 2015), coupled with a lack of personalised post-16 career advice in many state (publicly funded) English schools (Coiffait 2013; Long and Hubble 2018), has meant students seeking alternatives to university are at risk of being marginalised in schools where local competition puts a premium on numbers progressing to HE.

I start with a review of the literature where I explain what I mean by non-conforming students in the context of two London school sixth forms (a term used to mean years 12 and 13, the final 2 years of school). I also give a brief overview of post-16 careers guidance in schools. The section which follows examines the usefulness of Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, disposition and cultural and social capital, for explaining the relationship between non-conforming sixth-formers and their schools, and processes of students’ decision-making. After outlining my methods, I examine the experiences of 10 non-conforming sixth-formers drawn from two schools where the push towards university formed an integral part of the institutional habitus. The discussion falls into two sections. First, I examine the reasons non-conformers gave for rejecting university. Second, I examine the range of tactics used by non-conformers to navigate HE discourses, specifically the institutional push to apply to university, as well as the tactics they employed to find support for their non-HE choices. Based on the experiences of a sample of school sixth-formers, my findings offer a new perspective on the influence of school competition on sixth-form practices. In particular, the low priority given to post-16 careers guidance and the impact of this on the decision-making of students who do not aspire to university in schools where progression to HE is encouraged.

Non-conforming sixth-formers

The sixth-formers on whom this paper is based comprise a group of post-16 school students who achieved mostly Bs and Cs in their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams taken at the end of lower secondary. All attained sufficiently good grades to progress to their school sixth forms and were expected to apply to university but sought alternative destinations. Current educational discourses of attainment and aspiration tend to treat students who are neither ‘high flyers’ nor ‘rebels’ (Brown 1987) as a homogenous group, and students who reject HE as having ‘low’ aspirations (Sammons, Toth, and Sylva 2016). The middle-attaining, non-conforming students in this study challenge such assumptions. They express a diverse range of interests and aspirations and are highly motivated by the alternative futures they imagine for themselves.

As Roberts (2012, 204) points out, ‘middle ground’ students who do not conform to categorical divides such as ‘working-class high performer’ or ‘underachiever’ are under-researched. He argues that in an attempt to make sense of educational inequalities and outcomes research tends to focus on ‘discrete dualisms’ (Roberts 2012, 204). It seems possible that this binary approach also explains why we lack the necessary language to capture the variety and range of aptitudes expressed by ‘middle attainer’ and ‘middle attainment’. Unfairly for the students for whom such terms are used, their level of attainment is wholly context-dependent: distinguished by levels of attainment which lie above and below. Middle attainers at Hallingford and St John’s included those whose GCSE attainment included one or two A grades as well as students whose pass grades were all Bs and Cs. At the time of the study, a minimum of five A/A*s at GCSE, including English and Maths, was deemed ‘high attaining’ because it was the minimum required to access by the Sutton Trust and highly selective Russell Group universities’ summer schools. Students who did not pass at least five GCSEs were classified as low attainers at both Hallingford and St John’s. These students tended to be either off-rolled at the end of year 11 or steered towards BTEC programmes in sixth form. They were not expected to progress to university and therefore not part of the larger study.

As Brown (1987) notes, middle attainers form an ‘invisible majority’. In school sixth forms where progression to HE is encouraged, non-conforming middle-attaining students are a minority group within this invisible majority. Often studying a mix of academic and vocational qualifications, these students’ transitions have been profoundly affected by the accumulative effect of funding cuts, policy and curriculum changes, and institutional competition (Hodgson and Spours 2015, 2), and an education market where post-16 students taking an academic route to HE are prioritised over those who opt for mixed academic/vocational or vocational qualifications (Hodgson and Spours 2015, 4). Studies of students who do not progress to university have tended to be conducted through the lens of social class, race and ethnicity, and/or gender (Archer, Hollingworth, and Halsall 2007; Roberts 2012; Stahl 2012). By examining the experiences of a group of middle band non-conforming students, this paper focuses on how institutional priorities in the support offered for sixth-formers’ decision-making is shaped by constructions of student attainment and the status of their post-school choices, irrespective of students’ social class, gender and/or ethnicity. Not only is support for non-conforming school sixth-formers an under-researched area, but a focus on the experiences of school sixth formers who reject HE offers new insights into how students navigate institutional value hierarchies. Such a focus also offers insights into how school competition may result in practices which marginalise students whose post-school destinations do not serve the performance interests of their schools.

Careers guidance in school sixth forms

As argued, the needs of non-conformers are likely to be overlooked in school sixth forms where careers guidance focuses on university choosing. In a survey of 1,000 English sixth-formers, 87% of the respondents experienced pressure or ‘significant’ pressure from their school to go to university (AAT 2017). Conducted shortly after fieldwork for this study was carried out, a Careers and Enterprise Company (2018, 10) survey of over 3,000 secondary schools and colleges found that on average they were meeting only two of the eight Gatsby Benchmarks, a series of international benchmarks to quality assure careers advice. A lack of teacher competence to advise on vocational options (Fuller, McCrum, and Macfadyen 2014; Holt-White, Monatcute, and Tibbs 2022) suggests that non-conformers have been especially disadvantaged by the 2011 Education Act which shifted responsibility for careers advice onto schools without the necessary ‘funding, experience, expertise, or networks’ to fulfil requirements (Chadderton 2015, 84; Fuller, McCrum, and Macfadyen 2014). At the same time, sixth-form performance data continue to place a heavy emphasis on individual school’s rates of progression to HE with an emphasis on the UK’s 24 selective, Russell Group universities (Department of Education DfE 2019).

Students who do not aspire to HE are further disadvantaged by discourses of ‘aspiration’ which assume HE is desirable for all young people. Not uncommonly, progression to HE is considered the expression of ‘high’ aspirations (e.g. Atkins and Ebdon 2014) and that to seek an alternative such as an apprenticeship or job, is indicative of ‘low’ aspirations. However, as Watts and Bridges (2006, 267) argue, non-participation in HE ‘is not simply a matter of low aspirations [and] may arise from different aspirations … linked to the lives and lifestyles of young people’ (authors’ emphasis). Much like Watts and Bridges’ students, the personally valued ambitions and aspirations of the non-conformers in this study reflected those of their families and communities.

The Bourdieusian framework

This paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural and social capital to examine the ways in which students seeking alternatives to university in two London schools responded to the institutional push to apply to HE. As Bourdieu (1990, 60) explains, the habitus is a ‘system of internalised structures, schemes of perception, conception, and actions’. It contains durable and transposable dispositions which function as ‘a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes it possible to accomplish infinitely differentiated tasks’ (Bourdieu 1995, 261). Bourdieu (1995, 87) also argues that a student’s habitus will influence the reception and assimilation of the school’s ‘pedagogic message’. Students who do not aspire to university in schools which push progression to HE may therefore be understood as having a student habitus which does not align to the values and ethos of their school’s institutional habitus. The students on whom this paper is based possessed a variety of student dispositions, characterised by such qualities as discernment, resourcefulness and proactivity, which enabled them to navigate their school’s HE discourses and find support for their preferred destinations. Key to their success was access to relevant cultural capital in the form of ‘informational knowledge’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) and, most usefully, social capital understood as

… the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of … relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.

(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 119)

Just as middle-class HE applicants draw on ‘hot’ knowledge through their parents’ cultural and social capital for their HE choosing (Reay, David, and Ball 2005), the predominantly working-class non-conformers in this study accessed ‘hot’ knowledge for their non-HE choosing through family and friends’ social and cultural capital, and that of one teacher. Useful social contacts in possession of cultural capital in the form of first-hand knowledge of college courses and apprenticeships mitigated the lack of formal careers in schools where progression to HE was prioritised.

In their study of university choosing, Reay et al (2005) found that the influence of a school’s institutional habitus, described as ‘a complex amalgam of agency and structure’ which impacts on an individual’s behaviour, was a stronger influence on HE choice than family habitus (Reay, David, and Ball 2005, 36). In this study, students seeking alternatives to university accessed support for their post-school choosing outside the school, with family members and friends the greatest influence on their decision-making. Non-conformers’ values and aspirations, as Watts and Bridges (2006) argue, reflect those of their community, not the school. This tension is explained by Bourdieu as the consequence of the habitus entering an alien field or ‘terrain’ (de Certeau 1984):

In all cases where dispositions encounter conditions (including fields) different from those in which they are constructed and assembled, there is a dialectical confrontation between habitus as structured structure, and objective structures.

(Bourdieu 2005, 46. Bourdieu’s emphasis)

In a competitive sixth-form market, the values integral to a school’s institutional habitus are likely to comply with the demands of the market and may not necessarily reflect those of the community the school serves. As Tarabini and Curran (2019, 61) found in their study of students’ aspirations and transition choices, a school’s institutional habitus may be ‘inclusive’, with a high collective commitment to the educational success of all students, or ‘exclusive’, characterised by a meritocratic and individualistic conception of students’ educational trajectories. The two schools examined for this paper suggest a particular type of exclusive institutional habitus. Both employed practices where levels of support for HE and non-HE choosing were sharply differentiated according to the status of students’ post-school destinations. Formal structures and teachers’ own practices ensured high-attaining HE applicants were prioritised over middle-attaining HE applicants. High attainers applying to prestigious universities received targeted one-to-one support for their UCAS applications from senior members of staff. Few middle-attaining HE applicants, especially if applying to ‘new’ (post-1992) universities, received one-to-one support. Instead, general support was delivered during sixth-form tutor periods and an annual ‘UCAS Day’, a day at the end of year 12 devoted to making a UCAS application. With little or no careers guidance in both schools, middle-attaining students seeking alternatives to HE were forced to be self-reliant.

Atkinson (2011, 337) criticises the concept of institutional habitus as ‘homogenising’, believing that it characterises a school by it expectations and assumptions. Defending the concept, Burke, Emmerich and Ingram (2013, 178) explain that employing habitus at both the collective and individual levels allows us to theorise the ‘dispositional qualities’ of the individual’s habitus as well as a range of social influences on its formation. Their arguments point to the usefulness of the concept of habitus for unpicking the relationship between structure (school) and agency (student), and why some students, because they do not conform to the expectations of the institutional habitus, may be subjected to marginalising practices. In this paper, such marginalisation is seen to activate certain dispositional qualities essential for non-conformers’ successful decision-making.

In the next section, I explain my methods for examining the experiences of my sample of non-conforming students as they negotiated the institutional push to HE and the tactics they employed to reach their preferred destinations.

Methods

This paper draws its data from an ethnographic study of two London sixth forms and was inspired by Reay et al’.s (2005) study of the influence of institutional habitus on students’ HE choosing. The larger study focused on the influences on middle-attaining sixth-formers’ HE and non-HE choice-making in schools which expected high- and middle-attaining sixth formers to apply to university. The 10 middle-attaining non-conforming students discussed in this paper attended ‘Hallingford’, a multi-cultural comprehensive, and ‘St John’s’, a Church of England academy.¹ Where helpful, the experiences of five middle-attaining conforming students who applied to university, but who expressed interest in apprenticeships and/or a desire for careers guidance for non-HE choices, are included.

The larger study drew on interviews conducted with high- and middle-attaining students, teachers and senior management and wider data gleaned from school websites and policy documents. Observations of the everyday life of the school included form periods, sixth-form assemblies, events held to prepare students for HE choosing as well as A-level Sociology, Psychology and English lessons, subjects popular with middle attainers in this study. This paper is narrower in focus and draws exclusively on data from middle attainers’ interviews describing the types of support they accessed for their decision-making and their perceptions of that support. The research was carried out in accordance with the British Educational Research Association’s (BERA) (2011) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research and had clearance from King’s College, London’s Ethics Committee (REF/13/14–77).

Students were interviewed three times: once in the first term of their sixth form (year 12), again at the end of year 12 and once in year 13, the final year of school. Interviews engaged with students’ developing views of their post-school aspirations and their experiences of accessing support for their decision-making, both within the school and from support accessed beyond the school. With participants’ permission, the interviews were recorded and transcribed by me. Pseudonyms are used to attribute any quotations.

Interviews with middle-attaining students from my larger study were revisited for this paper. I started my analysis by open coding students’ interviews, focusing on their self and reflected concept (how they saw themselves and how they felt the school perceived them), their reasons for choosing or rejecting university, and their post-school aspirations. I also coded for different types of support and how these were accessed. I was especially interested in any references which suggested students’ access to ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ knowledge for their decision-making. It was first described by Ball and Vincent (1998) to distinguish between ‘grapevine’ knowledge which is socially embedded in networks (Ball and Vincent 1998, 392) and official knowledge constructed specifically for public dissemination (380). In this study, ‘hot’ knowledge took the form of any type of knowledge possessed by a friend or family member with first-hand experience of an area of work, an apprenticeship scheme or college course. ‘cold’ knowledge was factual information found on government and industry websites but was found to play a minor role in students’ choice-making.

I then employed thematic coding to identify i) the different tactics employed by non-conformers to negotiate the institutional push towards HE; ii) how non-conformers accessed support for their decision-making and iii) all middle attaining students’ (HE applicants and non-HE applicants) perceptions about who cared and did not care about their aspirations. Further analysis indicated that references to care could be unpicked to explore perceptions about the influence of family and institutional habitus (Reay, David, and Ball 2005), as well as evidence of types of cultural capital (knowledge) and social capital (contacts and social networks), on students’ decision-making. Transcripts were then re-coded for these concepts. Analysis of interviews revealed the significance of social capital, in the form of extended family and friends with contacts in local businesses and/or with relevant ‘know how’ to advise on college courses and apprenticeship schemes.

The student sample

The 10 students on whom this paper is based studied a mixture of A levels (Advanced Levels) and Business and Technology Education Council qualifications (BTECs). All but one non-conformer self-identified as working class or came from families where the occupation of the key earner was in skilled (e.g. hairdresser) or unskilled (e.g. retail) work. One non-conformer experienced a school exclusion in lower secondary. Others described uneventful, conformist school careers with no history of rebellion (Roberts 2012).

Table 1 lists the 10 non-conformers on whom this study is based, the type of social capital (in the form of a key adviser) who supported their decision-making and their post-school destinations.

Table 1. Hallingford and St John’s middle-attaining non-conformers.

Hallingford	Key adviser (types of social capital accessed)	Year 12/13 leaver	Destination
Dale	Uncle (airport admin)	13	NEET
Hari	Aunt (solicitor)	13	Engineering apprenticeship
Kyle	Friends	12	Apprenticeship graphic design
Rishi	Brother (university student)	12	College (BTEC, Business)
Stacey	Mother (hairdresser)	13	Retail
St John’s	Key adviser	Year 12/13 leaver	Post school destination
Erica	Friends	12	College (Diploma Music Production)
Memphis	Mother (homemaker)	12	Architectural technician apprenticeship
Michael	Mother (cashier)	12	College (BTEC, IT)
Simon	Father (musician)	13	Car sales apprenticeship
Vicky	Grandfather (builder-manager)	13	Accountancy apprenticeship

Table 2 lists the five middle-attaining conformers (HE applicants) whose experiences seeking information about alternatives to HE as well as for their HE choosing, helped to inform this paper.

Table 2. Hallingford and St John’s middle-attaining conformers.

Hallingford and St John’s middle-attaining students who applied to HE
Hallingford	Degree course accessed^2
Adela	Psychology BA
Zane	Music Technology BA
St John’s	Degree course accessed
Ella	Geography BA
Patrick	Computer Science BSc
Zoe	Sport Science BSc

The schools – their socio-economic contexts

The students attended Hallingford and St John’s, two schools typical of a significant proportion in England where progression to university is encouraged. Both schools were located within especially competitive local sixth-form markets where progression to ‘elite’ universities conferred important symbolic capital essential for attracting students.

Hallingford

The first and largest of the two schools was Hallingford, an ethnically diverse, mixed comprehensive situated in an area of high social deprivation in Greater London. The predominantly working-class pupil population comprised mainly of first- and second-generation South Asian students. At the time of my study, the sixth form had 600 pupils with 271 year 13 s, of which 48% progressed to HE. On entry to year 12, students were grouped according to GCSE attainment into a hierarchy of sixth-form tutor groups. High-attaining students were grouped in top tutor groups. These students studied A levels and applied to highly selective Russell Group universities. Middle-attaining students whose GCSE attainment included some As, populated second-rung tutor groups. These students studied A-levels and applied to a less selective Russell Group universities and longer-established non-Russell Group universities. Middle-attaining students whose GCSE pass graded included only Bs and Cs, were allocated to third-rung tutor groups. They studied for a mixture of A-levels and BTECs and were also expected to apply to university. Most applied to ‘new’ (post-1992) universities. Support for HE applications was delivered through 20-min tutor periods three times a week to tutor groups of around 25 students. High-attaining students in the top tutor groups were encouraged to apply to Oxbridge and received extra support through informally arranged one-to-one sessions with senior members of staff. Students on vocational programmes occupied the last rung of the tutor group hierarchy and were not part of the study. Hallingford was graded ‘Outstanding’ in its last full Ofsted inspection.

St John’s

The second school, St John’s, is a mixed Church of England academy in a commuter suburb of Greater London. At the time of my research, the sixth form had 236 students with 145 year 13 s, of which around 70% progressed to HE. Predominantly white and middle class, the school had seen an increase in working-class and BME (Black and minoritised ethnic) sixth-formers in recent years. Parents’ occupations ranged from solicitors to teaching assistants and retail and manual workers, suggesting a mix of middle-, lower-middle and working-class students. Tutor groups were generally ‘mixed ability’ with all students expected to aspire to university. A once-weekly tutor group meeting of 45 min for around 24 students focused on support for HE choosing and applications. Selected high attainers also attended weekly Oxbridge Group meetings where they received targeted support for their university applications from a senior member of staff. The school employed a part-time, qualified careers officer. St John’s was graded ‘Outstanding’ in its last full Ofsted inspection.

Hallingford and St John’s non-conforming sixth-formers

Each of the non-conformers in my sample described choosing their school sixth form believing it was the ‘better’ choice. ‘Going to college’, the post-16 alternative, appeared intimately bound with the shame of being off-rolled at the end of year 11 and year 12 owing to poor grades.³ In her first interview, Stacey of Hallingford admitted she would have liked to have studied make-up at college but was put off: ‘There’s a stereotype of girls who do hair and beauty here. They’re seen as not very academic … so make-up is something they do’. St John’s non-conformer Memphis believed ‘the kind of kids’ who went to college were ‘trouble’ and this put him off going, even though the local FE college offered the kind of applied courses in technical drawing and design which he enjoyed. Also at St John’s, Erica admitted she stayed on for sixth form because it was ‘easier’ but she wished ‘they’d given us more ideas about apprenticeships and college and where else we could go’.

Reasons for not wanting to go to university

Both Hallingford and St John’s strongly encouraged progression to university. Non-conformers needed to be reassured that I was equally interested in students who did not aspire to HE before they were willing to give their reasons for rejecting HE. Some believed they had ‘inside’ knowledge about the riskiness of graduate employment based on examples of under/unemployed graduate siblings and friends (Britton et al. 2016). In his first interview, Memphis, of St John’s, explained his brother was still looking for work a year after graduating with a BA in Audio and Music Production. Erica had a sister with a degree in Fashion Marketing and was working in a travel agency. At Hallingford, Stacey’s brother studied Criminology at Leeds University and worked as a letting agent. She also had a friend who graduated from a ‘new’ (post-1992) university with a degree in law who worked as an optician’s assistant.

As well as the uncertainty that university would guarantee graduate-level employment (Watts and Bridges 2006), seven non-conformers expressed anxieties over the cost of university and fear of debt (Callender and Mason 2017). Stacey had been unconvinced by a talk given to Hallingford sixth form by a representative from the Student Loans Company who explained student debt as ‘an investment’. Stacey was also unimpressed by reassurances that there were no repayments if graduate earnings fell below the then threshold of £21,000: ‘What’s the point of university if you end up earning less than £21,000 a year for the rest of your life?’. Vicky of St John’s rejected HE because she believed an apprenticeship offered better ‘job prospects’ than a university degree, a view shared by Hallingford non-conformer Dale:

Not only do [apprenticeships] teach you, but you earn money and have no debt. A lot of times they hire their apprentice, which is probably one of the main reasons for me doing one, because you can go to university but you won’t necessarily get a job.

The instincts of the nine working-class non-conformers in my sample are supported by an Institute of Fiscal Studies report which confirms that lower income households typically earned 60% less than their peers from higher income households ‘long after graduation irrespective of the university attended’ (Britton et al. 2016, 55). Although anxious that university was an ‘expensive party’, only middle-class Simon expressed feelings which indicated he felt academically unsuited to university.

Student value and school care

Only three out of the 25 middle-attaining Hallingford and St John’s students who participated in the wider study said they received one-to-one support from a teacher for their decision-making. All three conformed and applied to university. Interviews with students and staff suggested that both schools shared elements of Tarabini and Curran’s (2019, 61) ‘exclusive’ institutional habitus. In addition to a meritocratic and individualistic conception of students trajectories and a habitus ‘based on expulsion and reaction’, the two schools shared a type of exclusive institutional habitus based on marginalisation and selection. At sixth-form level, this was evident in practices which saw selected high-attaining students applying to prestigious universities prioritised in the distribution of resources and teacher time. In addition to the support for university applications delivered by form tutors during sixth-from tutor group meetings, extra support was given to Oxbridge applicants in both schools (see above). With large tutor groups and time needed for registration, school announcements and pastoral care, the majority of middle-attaining students in the wider study spoke of form tutors being ‘too busy’ to given meaningful support and advice for their HE applications. Whether they conformed and applied to university or sought an alternative destination, middle attainers perceived the level of school support they received for their post-school choosing as a lack of care. St John’s non-conformers Erica had high-attaining friends from whom she learnt about the type of support they received during their weekly Oxbridge Group meetings. She explained,

The school doesn’t really care about us in-the-middle kids. It’s always the bright kids, they obviously want to get them into Oxford and Cambridge. It’s like, The rest of you can go wherever you want, we don’t really care.

Erica’s friend Zoe conformed to school expectations and applied to university. She shared Erica’s feelings: ‘They don’t take care of any of us who are just standard … average, and going to ordinary places’. Middle-attaining Patrick described a teacher ‘skim-reading’ his personal statement. He appeared resigned to the fact that his teacher ‘couldn’t be “bothered” with his UCAS application: “Obviously, they care about the Oxbridge lot”. Zane, at Hallingford, was more cynical. Explaining why he believed his school did not provide information about alternatives to university, he stated, “They care a great deal about numbers getting to university here”. Zane and Patrick appeared to think their school’s lack of interest in their post-school aspirations was inevitable, but others came across as hurt and confused when describing the preferential treatment given to high attainers. Irrespective of how each responded, middle-attaining students’ accounts of the level of support they received for their post-school choosing confirmed fieldwork observations and teacher interviews describing the privileging of higher attainers, and some middle attainers were openly critical. Of the 10 non-conformers and five middle-attaining HE applicants whose experiences inform this paper, 10 used languages which suggested they believed their school saw high-attaining HE applicants as both academically and socially ‘elite’ and found this distasteful. Ella, a middle-attaining university applicant stated that high attainers were treated with ‘reverence’ by St John’s teachers. At Hallingford, the head of sixth form commonly referred to high-attaining students as ‘the elites’. Kyle (Hallingford) and Memphis (St John’s) stated as fact that their schools preferred helping the ‘A* kids’ who applied to ‘top unis’.

In her discussion about who is valued and who ‘de-valued’, Mckenzie (2016, 35) explains the symbolic violence perpetrated on the working-classes whose cultural practices, tastes and likes are judged as deficient. Certainly, working-class middle attainers suggested that they believed the ‘use-value’ of their aspirations was not recognised because they could not be capitalised upon by their schools (McKenzie 2016, 30). As Stacey explained, ‘Hallingford wants us all to go [to university], but it’s not for us, it’s for them. It makes the school look good’ (Oliver and Kettley 2010, 745).

Non-conformers’ sense of injustice over the lack of care invested in them appeared to be heightened by the knowledge that they and their non-HE aspirations represented less value to their schools than students’ university destinations. The focus on progression to university appeared to be the reason why Hallingford did little to fulfil its statutory post-16 duty to: ‘secure independent guidance [including] information on the full range of education and training options, including apprenticeships and vocational pathways’ (DfE 2015, 10). Only two out of 19 Hallingford students who participated in the larger study had heard of the school’s career adviser and both assumed he was reserved for GCSE students. Neither had met him in their GCSE year and did not know how appointments with him were made. Stacey complained about the lack of impartial careers advice at Hallingford,

They say stuff like, We understand that university is not for everyone and there are apprenticeships available, but they don’t explain how you can find out about them … it’s university, university, university, all the time.

Stacey’s middle-attaining friend Adela applied to university but complained that the only information she was able to find on apprenticeships was ‘a scrappy piece of A4 paper on a noticeboard’. At St John’s, non-conformer Simon felt similarly frustrated when researching alternatives to HE, ‘the school is so heavily university-focused you don’t hear about other things you can do’. Although St John’s employed a part-time careers adviser, Simon found his meeting with her to find out about apprenticeships in finance, disappointing: ‘She told me nothing I didn’t know already by Googling’.

The distribution of resources for decision-making at both Hallingford and St John’s appeared unrelated to the needs of students and determined by the value that their post-school choices represented for the school. The strength of Hallingford and St John’s HE discourse meant academic routes held far greater value than applied or vocational routes (Hodgson and Spours 2015). At the time of my fieldwork, both schools displayed progression rates to Russell Group universities prominently on their school websites. Hallingford’s website also stated its expectation that year 7 students aspired to university. Neither school website made any mention of student numbers progressing to non-Russell Group universities or non-HE destinations.

Non-conformers’ responses – the role of student dispositions

Non-conformers’ views on the institutional push towards university confirmed they understood their aspirations were marginal to the performance-driven aspirations of Hallingford and St John’s. Although their rejection of HE suggested student habitus at odds with the values of their schools’ institutional habituses, they did not experience the same kind of ‘dialectical confrontation’ as Ingram’s (2009, 429) working-class boys who complain about the ‘irrelevance of learning’. Non-conformers did not reject education. They objected to school practices which maginalised their needs and aspirations. When it became clear to the students that they were unlikely to find support for their decision-making, they responded by becoming proactive, employing different tactics (de Certeau, 2004) to negotiate the push to apply to HE and reach their preferred destinations. In the sections that follow, I suggest non-conformers’ different student dispositions influenced their choice of tactics and that these, coupled with the types of non-school social and cultural capital they accessed, were instrumental to their successful decision-making. My sample of non-conformers comprises five early-leavers who actively rejected the institutional push to apply to HE and chose to leave school after 1 year of sixth form. Of the five who stayed on to complete sixth form, four actively rejected the push to HE. Three by ‘passing’ as HE applicants while researching and applying for apprenticeships, and one by overtly challenging it and asserting her right to choose an alternative. One non-conformer’s response suggested a relatively untroubled rejection of the institutional push.

Early leavers

For Erica, Memphis and Michael of St John’s, and Rishi and Kyle of Hallingford, the uncomfortable fit between their student habitus and the values of their school’s institutional habitus, in particular the expectation that they progress to university, became untenable, and all left sixth form at the end of year 12. Early leavers therefore actively rejected the push to HE. Although these early-leavers shared with Tarabini and Curran’s (2019, 57) Catalan school-leavers feelings that their school had let them down, they viewed leaving school positively. Rather than ‘dropping out’ these early-leavers felt they were moving on to something better. Erica, Michael and Rishi were excited to be going to college to study subjects their schools did not offer: music production for Erica, Information Technology (IT) for Michael and Business for Rishi. When Memphis secured an apprenticeship at an architect’s office, he described the opportunity of earning while training as a ‘no brainer’. Tarabini and Curran’s (2019 three types of school-leaver dispositions are characterised by a sense of ‘incapacity and futility’, a ‘lack of control over the rules of the game’ and a ‘resistant disposition’ (Tarabini and Curran 2019, 56); all come across as angry and/or disillusioned. This research indicates that for some sixth formers leaving school early can be a positive choice. The early leavers in this study were delighted to leave school and optimistic about their futures.

Much like Reay’s (1998) working-class HE applicants, the lack of school support for students seeking alternatives to HE meant they were forced to act autonomously when making their post-school choices. Key to the success of Hallingford and St John’s early-leavers in securing their post-school destinations was an ability to draw on non-school social capital. When applying to music college, Erica described combining online research with advice from her musician friends who possessed the relevant musical and college-application ‘know how’ to advise her. Erica’s pride when accepted to study for a music diploma stemmed from the recognition it gave her musical ability. In a comment which suggested St John’s misrecognition of non-academic cultural capital she said, ‘Here, they ignore kids who are talented at things like music and sports’. Memphis secured his apprenticeship through useful social capital after a ‘tip off’ from a friend about an apprenticeship scheme, and his mother helped with his written application. Michael was also supported by his mother. He explained that she was ‘the first to spot that [he was] better at doing things than book learning’ and encouraged him to start researching college courses when it became clear that A levels were not for him. When Rishi decided to leave school for college, he sought advice from his brother, a university student, who Rishi described as the ‘smart one in the family … who knows me best’. Both Michael and Rishi implied that unlike their school, family members had their interests at heart and for this reason the advice could be trusted.

Even Hallingford’s Kyle, whose decision to leave Hallingford came after a fight defending his girlfriend resulted in an exclusion from school, came to see leaving school as an opportunity. A working-class Polish boy whose parents spoke little English, Kyle entered sixth form as a conformer with aspirations to study Media at university. Talking about his experiences, he sounded disillusioned with Hallingford believing the school preferred helping ‘top students’ and that he did not ‘matter’: ‘They don’t care about people like me, my education’. Kyle did not discuss his decision to leave school with anyone explaining that he no longer ‘liked’ or ‘trusted’ his teachers. Initially, Kyle’s angry sense of injustice over his exclusion suggested Tarabini and Curran’s, 2019, 55) school-leaver disposition of a student with ‘no control over the rules of the game’. However, instead of the futility and defeat which immobilise Tarabini and Curran’s students, Kyle appeared able to turn his anger into a source of agency and purpose. On leaving school, he undertook extensive online research into apprenticeship schemes as well as seeking advice from teammates in his local football club, two of whom had successfully applied for apprenticeships. Within 6 months, Kyle had produced a portfolio of drawings, and after a rigorous application process involving five interviews, he was accepted for a competitive apprenticeship in graphic design. In our final interview, he stated proudly, ‘I’m back on my path’. As Bourdieu argues (Bourdieu 2005, 45), the habitus is not ‘a fate, not a destiny’; it can ‘be changed by history, that is by new experiences, education or training’ (Bourdieu’s emphasis).

Kyle’s swiftness to adapt from a conforming sixth-former with HE aspirations to one a non-conformer was made possible because he possessed both a habitus with a proactive disposition and access to useful social capital in the form of friends with specific ‘know how’, characteristics shared by Erica at St John’s. Erica and Kyle came across as particularly resourceful early leavers. Both secured their transitions by accessing types of social and cultural capital which the family could not provide and which the school failed to provide. Although proud of securing good quality advice for their decision-making from contacts beyond the school, Erica and Kyle’s proactivity, and that of Michael, Memphis and Rishi, was prompted by a belief that their school did not care about them or their non-HE aspirations, and a lack of trust in their school’s practical ability to help. Had their schools provided support for the early leavers’ decision-making and transitions, it seems possible that their resourceful and proactive dispositions would not have been activated. A lack of alignment between the institutional and student habitus was necessary.

Staying on

In the absence of school support, family members and friends with relevant ‘hot’ knowledge based on first-hand experience (Ball and Vincent 1998) of fields beyond the school, were trusted by all non-conforming students, whether they left at the end of year 12 or completed sixth form. Nonetheless, the five non-conformers who stayed on for year 13 faced more complex journeys to their post-school destination. Staying on to complete sixth form without aspiring to HE entailed negotiating an intensified institutional push to apply to university. Although Dale and Hari at Hallingford, and Vicky of St John’s, discussed HE as ‘a possibility’ in their first interviews, all focused their research on finding an apprenticeship and drew on familial social and cultural capital for advice and guidance. Vicky was advised by her grandfather, a manager of a kitchen-fitting business, when making her applications. Hari, the son of single-parent father who worked as a Transport for London (TFL) driver, was caught between his father, who supported his ambition to secure an apprenticeship, and an aunt who wanted Hari to study law. Hari and Vicky found a way to complete school untroubled by the institutional push to HE by adopting a tactic of presenting or ‘passing’ as an HE applicant (Goffman 1963) and used similar tactics. Both undertook university visits, drafted personal statements and submitted UCAS applications, all the while covertly researching apprenticeship schemes. Their actions suggested a type of ‘proactive everyday passing’ (Renfrow 2004, 489) requiring them to engage in ‘strategic and wholly intentional performances’ designed to mask their stigmatised identities as non-conforming students. By playing along with school expectations, they were also taking part in Renfrow’s 2004, 498) ‘reactive passing’ where actions suggest a plausible identity and therefore go unquestioned. Hari and Vicky’s ability to pass as students with conformist dispositions meant they completed their sixth form without the kind of challenges faced by Simon and Stacey, discussed later.

Dale, at Hallingford, appeared uncomfortable when discussing university as ‘a possibility’. Coupled with the pride he took in his working-class family’s connections with local industries, and his enthusiasm when talking about his hopes of finding an apprenticeship, university appeared alien to Dale’s sense of self (Aynsley and Crossouard 2010, 138). Unlike Hari and Vicky, Dale made little attempt to ‘pass’ as an HE applicant and sought advice for his decision-making from extended family with valuable first-hand ‘hot’ and ‘grapevine’ knowledge (Ball and Vincent 1998) of apprenticeship schemes run by TfL and the aviation industry. He was also in a tutor group under the care of a form tutor who was untypical in supporting students seeking alternatives to HE. With support for his non-HE aspirations both within and beyond the school, Dale’s rejection of the institutional push towards university appeared the most untroubled. Although he enjoyed his Applied Science A level and BTEC Sport, he was uninterested in further academic study and keen to enter the world of work (Aynsley and Crossouard 2010, 141). Dale was uniquely placed in this study as the only non-conformer with the type of social capital which gave him access both to working-class cultural capital, in the form of knowledge about local apprenticeship schemes, as well as his form tutor’s middle-class cultural capital in the form of advice on his written applications.

The relatively unproblematic journeys through sixth form of Dale and Hari at Hallingford and Vicky at St John’s contrasted strongly with the experiences of Vicky’s friend, Simon. Simon’s sense of himself was clearly mediated by the perceptions and reactions of ‘significant others’ in his family (Tarabini and Curran 2019, 55), with his position as a non-conformer complicated by parental pressure to apply to university. Simon’s evident unhappiness stemmed from his struggles with A-level study combined with a lack of support, both at school and at home, for his non-HE aspirations. Initially, he suggested a student disposition characterised by an ‘internalised sense of incapacity and futility’ (Tarabini and Curran 2019, 55), the result of an individual habitus which fitted poorly with the aspirational character of both St John’s institutional habitus and his middle-class family habitus. Like Hari and Vicky, Simon found he could ‘pass’ as an HE applicant. During tutor periods when students worked on their UCAS applications, Simon described pretending to ‘look busy’ on his laptop. As Leary (1999, 85) explains, ‘passing’ can take place when one side ‘fails to ask’ and the other ‘does not tell’. Since Simon’s form tutor focused on helping students applying to Russell Group universities, Simon’s non-HE aspirations went unnoticed. Under advice from his sister, Simon ‘used the gap year option’, a tactic to imply to his parents that he meant to defer his university application. The rewards of being considered ‘normal’ mean that anyone in a position to ‘pass’ will do so if they can (Goffman 1963, 95). Through small acts of deception, Hari, Vicky and Simon spent most of their final year at school appearing to conform to school and/or family expectations. They were able to successfully disguise their discreditable ‘non-conformer’ identities and ‘pass’ as the more socially acceptable HE applicant (Goffman 1963). Hari and Vicky appeared to find it relatively easy to invest effort in a UCAS application and carry out the expected behaviour of an HE applicant. Simon’s situation meant he was forced to engage in a type of ‘in-deeper-ism’ passing (Goffman 1963, 83), employing different tactics in order to ‘pass’ both at school and at home. Hari, Vicky and Simon presented as students with conformist dispositions in order to fit in and, as in the case of Simon, to avoid conflict at home. Their conformity was superficial. It did not spring from the internalised value system or set of beliefs and was a tactic employed to disguise their rejection of university.

A resistant disposition

Of the five non-conformers who completed sixth form, only Hallingford’s Stacey overtly challenged the institutional push towards university. Her negotiation of the push towards HE involved both confronting and rejecting it. Stacey presented elements of a student disposition which Tarabini and Curran (2019, 56) describe as ‘active resistance’. However, unlike Tarabini and Curran’s Catalan school-leavers, Stacey’s resistance did not spring from feelings that school was ‘boring’, ‘controlling’ or lacked usefulness (Tarabini and Curran 2019, 57). Stacey’s active resistance was framed by assertiveness and a positive imagined future without university (Aynsley and Crossouard 2010). In a similar way to Dale, Stacey had the support of her working-class family and was able to draw on highly relevant cultural and social capital to make her aspirations to work in the beauty industry realisable. She was indignant when Hallingford’s head of sixth form, Mr Nelson, told her, ‘You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t go to university’, pointing out that her hairdresser mother ‘had never been out of work’ and that her sister was a make-up artist with ‘high-end clients’, yet neither had gone to university. Stacey explained ‘He’s not getting where I’m coming from’. Stacey said she believed her aspirations to work in the beauty industry were ‘too working class’ for Mr Nelson, suggesting she felt a lack of alignment between Mr Nelson’s middle-class teacher habitus and her working-class student habitus. Her mother and sister’s successful careers in beauty meant Stacey’s rejection of university did not appear to her the ‘non-choice’ which forms part of the ‘normal biography’ of a young working-class woman (Ball et al. 2002, 54). Citing Bourdieu, Ingram (2009, 431) explains that it is an act of symbolic violence when pedagogic action validates middle-class norms while simultaneously invalidating the norms of the working class. In our final interview, Stacey’s outspoken criticism of Hallingford’s push towards university suggested she recognised an implicit criticism of her family’s working-class habitus in Mr Nelson’s attempts to steer her away from her aspiration to join the family trade, and rejected the symbolic violence it entailed. Symbolic violence only works, Bourdieu (2005, 51) argues, if the habitus is predisposed to feel its intimidation. Arguably, all the non-conformers who refused to ‘pass’ as HE applicants rejected this type of intimidation. Only the actions of non-conformers who chose to ‘pass’ suggested they felt the symbolic violence of middle-class expectations. Nonetheless, as with all the non-conformers in this study, it did not affect their determination to reach their non-HE destinations.

Conclusions

Based on the first-hand accounts of a group of students seeking alternatives to HE and informed by the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus and cultural and social capital, this paper examines the way current HE policy influenced the allocation of resources for students’ decision-making in two school sixth forms. The experiences of students who did not conform to school expectations and sought alternatives to HE helps to shed light on some of the challenges faced by sixth-formers in schools which push progression to HE and where careers guidance is inadequately built into formal sixth-form practice. The findings of this small study suggest that an ‘economy of student worth’ (Ball, Maguire, and Macrae 1998), whereby some students and their post-school destinations represent more value to their schools than others, may operate in areas with a competitive sixth-form market.

This study also gives insights into types of student dispositions. It has been argued that the tactics employed by middle-attaining, non-conforming students to negotiate school expectations and the push to apply to HE were shaped by their student dispositions. A key tactic, employed by all 10 non-conforming students, was to identify and draw on useful non-school social and cultural capital for advice and guidance, with knowledge possessed by family and friends instrumental to making non-conformers’ imagined futures realisable. Family and friends also provided the care, in the form of emotional and practical support, that the school failed to provide for non-conformers’ decision-making. All but one non-conformer, Dale, grew to distrust their school. There was a perception among non-conformers that the school’s lack of care for them and their aspirations was because non-HE destinations did not serve the interests of the school. Both schools were perceived to have a vested interest in high-attaining students, especially those applying to prestigious universities. Further examination of the types of social capital most useful for students’ who choose alternatives to university would seem an important area for further research and help to develop our understanding of young people’s university and non-HE choosing (Archer, Hollingworth, and Halsall 2007; Aynsley and Crossouard 2010; Watts and Bridges 2006).

This study also found an under-researched type of optimistic early-leaver whose excitement to be moving on confounds deficit models of dropping out. If, as Tarabini and Curran (2019, 61) argue, the school plays a role in generating different students’ learning identities, dispositions and decisions, it seems performance-driven practices integral to an ‘exclusive’ institutional habitus may activate in some non-conforming students dispositions characterised by adaptability, proactivity and positivity. Early leavers’ were ambitious and optimistic about their transition to college or training, and possessed strong social networks to support their transitions. To perceive these sixth formers as having ‘low’ aspirations just because they did not aspire to HE is to misunderstand what matters to them. Non-conformers’ imagined futures were to them as valuable and exciting as progression to university. As has been argued, a lack of engagement with HE does not necessarily mean ‘low’ aspirations, in spite of the implication of current policy discourses, but may simply point to different aspirations with more relevance to young people’s lives (Aynsley and Crossouard 2010; Watts and Bridges 2006).

Finally, although students who do not aspire to university comprise over half of all post-16 students (DfE 2019), the experiences of sixth-formers in schools where progression to university is valorised remain relatively under-researched. By focusing on the quality of advice and support for students marginal to the interests of the school, this study raises questions about the detrimental effects of school competition and an HE policy which encourages a focus on students applying to ‘elite’ universities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Nuala Burgess

Nuala Burgess is a research associate at King’s College, London, England.

Notes

1. The names of the schools are pseudonyms.

2. all progressed to non-Russell Group universities.

3. Off-rolling is the practice of removing a pupil from the school roll when the removal is primarily in the interests of the school rather than the pupil (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/off-rolling-exploring-the-issue).