Abstract
This paper is based on a small‐scale mixed‐method research project, which was located in south‐east England and was funded by the British Academy. The project, investigated the factors that affected young people’s decisions not to progress to higher education (HE) after following a Level 3 vocational pathway in upper secondary education. Set against the context of divergent and somewhat contradictory government policy initiatives, it draws on the concept of imagined futures as a way of considering students’ ‘decision‐making’ in their transition from further education to other locations. This paper explores how a group of young people completing their vocational courses in summer 2008 viewed – or imagined – their futures. Contrary to policy discourses, vocational pathways did not necessarily offer straightforward progression to HE. Respondents’ ‘imagined futures’ did not lack agency, but HE was not an immediate part of them.
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