Young lives, diverse choices and imagined futures in an education and training market

Abstract

In the UK, policy developments in vocational and further education have created a market in post-16 education and training. This paper reports on an Economic and Social Research Council study and one small cohort of young people entering and moving through one such urban market. They enter with very different learning identities, aspirations and motivations, and their ‘educational inheritances’ prepare them differently for participation. Some young people simply want ajob and awage and ‘nomore learning’, others come with alongterm commitment to gaining higher qualifications. The authors both describe and explore a number of ways of conceptualizing these differences. Both despite and because of the changes in the local labour market ‘deep sub-structures of inequality’ re-emerge. The differentiation of routes and ‘spaces’ of opportunity confronting these young people are reproductive of social class divisions.