Students’
attitudes to new Diplomas and to career choice – integrated report.
Demographics
The respondents comprised 379 Year 9 students, 195 males (51%) and 184 females (49%). The ethnic backgrounds of the students are represented in the following chart.
The respondents are ethnically very diverse. ‘White-British’ is the largest category (24.8%), with Indian and Pakistani students also forming substantial minorities (15% and 13.4% respectively). It should be noted, however, that the Indian, Pakistani nad Black African students were mainly based at A High, with far more White British respondents coming from B High. Given the different surveying conditions at the two schools, to be discussed next, differences between the questionnaire responses according to ethnicity must be viewed circumspectly.
Survey conditions
Of particular note were the different levels of preparation at the two sites. Distribution of the questionnaires at A High involved an adviser visiting the school, explaining the diplomas and allowing completion in groups. Students at B High completed the questionnaires with limited briefing. Some differences in the levels of interest in diplomas can be observed in the results, demonstrating the effects of priming, possibly by an outsider (the difference between tutor preparation and an outsider were not tested here). It is possible that allowing groups to confer may have affected the results. These factors need to be considered in future studies; arguments could be made in favour of different approaches to distribution.
It should be noted that numbers between different category breakdowns do not always ‘add up’; discrepancies, usually of one or two, may be noticed in some contexts. Some students inevitably made errors or failed to complete some sections.
Interest in the diplomas
If you had been able to study for a diploma in one of the areas listed over the page, instead of taking as many GCSE subjects, would you have been interested?
|
A |
Yes |
155 |
No |
56 |
|
B |
Yes |
81 |
No |
69 |
|
Both |
Yes |
236 |
No |
125 |
The majority of students responded positively to the idea of the diplomas. It should be noted, however, that the majority is less striking at B High. It seems likely that the manner of preparation for the survey is the likely reason for the difference, although factors such as academic culture should also be considered.
Differences between male and female students were examined.
Males Females
Yes 117 119 The difference between the genders was found to be
No 65 60 statistically insignificant (Chi-Square test). This was also the case when examined at the level of the two individual schools.
As will be noticed by a comparison of the figures for ethnic categories below, no clearly discernible differences can be observed. Generally speaking, a higher majority can be seen at A High than at B High. Again, differences between survey conditions at the two sites, or school cultural factors, are more likely to explain differences than differences in the ethnic make-up of the two schools.
To complicate matters, however, it will be noted that students from Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds at A High appear much more interested than their compatriots at A or people from a similar background at B High.
A students from these three backgrounds taken together are in favour to the proportion of 82 % (79 out of 96). This compares favourably with other conflated categories of A learners ranging between 61% and 71% Most similar categories at B High, including those from the Indian sub-continent, are in favour by between 50% and 57%.
As will become a little clearer when subjects are examined, it could be that priming by the adviser hit a chord with these learners in subjects of particular interest.
The subject of greatest interest
If you had been given the choice to study one of the diploma subjects below instead of some GCSE subjects, which one would you have been most interested in?
Of these subjects, the ones attracting the greatest interest were:
Finance and Business Administration: 22%. Sports & Leisure 12%.
Hair & Beauty: 12%. Creative and Media: 11%.
Manufacturing and Public Services were poorly supported.
The two schools differed somewhat in the respective levels of interest. Hair and Beauty was the biggest category at B High (20%) while only constituting 7% of the A High response. Health and Social Care was a major category at A High while only appearing as 6% of the B High preferences. Creative and Media was popular at B High, at 16%, but comprised only 6% of the A High responses.
Some trends towards gender and ethnic background differences will be discerned.
Female students seem overwhelmingly more likely than men to opt for Hair and Beauty and for Health and Social Care. Male students are much more likely to want to pursue courses in Sports and Leisure. Although these results were not evident within the individual school subsamples, Engineering and also Construction and the Buillt Environment now emerge as male preferences, as could be have been expected. There would appear to be a trend towards female students preferring Retail but the numbers are too small to be confident of this. Similarly, trends relating to ICT and to Public Services are not to be relied upon with such small subsamples.
Hair and Beauty has a broad range of support, although the White British contingent forms a large minority (41%). Taken together within the popular Finance and Business Administration category, students from Indian, Pakistan and Bangladeshi form a majority of those interested in the subject (54%). In Creative and Media, 42.5% are of white ethnicity. In the relatively small Land Based and Environmental Studies category, 69% of the interested students are of white ethnicity.
Of the 34 students interested in Health and Social Care, 30 (88%) were from non-white ethnic backgrounds. Although Pakistani students formed the largest group, the fact that this ethnic category contains only 8 respondents suggests that generalisation in this direction may be unwarranted. Of students interested in Retail, students of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds predominate (60%). Sports and Leisure is generally well-supported; although White British and Black African students are notable minorities, their numbers (at 10 and 9 respectively) suggest that generalisation may not be advisable.
Help with decision-making
Thinking back to when you decided on your choices for
Years 10 and 11, what helped you to decide which subjects to take?
373 students responded to this question, the most important receiving 1, 2 and 3.
Index Index Index Index Index Index
211 59 50 28 131 79
1st choice 1st choice 1st choice 1st choice 1st choice 1st choice
199 16 14 5 95 50
2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice
77 54 40 27 80 41
3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice
35 65 65 37 44 61
The index numbers were chosen as a measure of the popularity of the different factors. The indices were derived in the following way: First Choice answers (‘1’) were allocated 3 points; Second Choice answers (‘2’) were allocated 2 points; and Third Choice answers (‘3’) were allocated 1 point. The sum of the points for each response was divided by the number of respondents for this question (the whole question, not the specific response) and multiplied by 100. The cut-off for index numbers is necessarily subjective: the author has opted for a minimum score of 100 for a score to be viewed as significantly different from the other responses. Stronger scores will be over 160, with the strongest at 200 or more.
It will be noted here that enjoyment of the subjects and
an interest in learning more was an extremely popular response. Career move
calculation was also popular.
To create what seems to be a meaningful cut-off for the categories most likely to be chosen as a first choice, the author divided the sum of the three choices for each response (here, all shown as the original totals) by the number of first choice answers, then converting to percentages and looking for a minimum of 50%.
Choices for Enjoyment of the subjects and an interest in learning more included 64% as First Choice. Although failing to reach the cut-off , career calculation rated 43%.
When gender was examined, male students were found to respond more strongly to enjoyment of subjects (index number 218, first choice 117, 73% of their choices for that response; female students had index number 196, first choice 86, 55%). Women had a somewhat higher index number for career move calculation (140 as opposed to 118 for males). Although this tends to mirror the A results, similar tendencies were found in the B data.
Help with choosing new subjects
For new subjects, that you haven’t studied before, what would help you most when deciding if you would study them or not?
372 students responded to this question, the most important receiving 1, 2 and 3.
Index Index Index Index Index Index
120 144 77 58 95 70
1st choice 1st choice 1st choice 1st choice 1st choice 1st choice
92 120 38 27 59 34
2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice 2nd choice
56 70 61 43 56 44
3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice 3rd choice
57 36 50 47 64 71
The two popular factors are ‘Going to a lesson in the subject to find out more’ and ‘Teachers telling you more about them’. Of those respondents choosing ‘Going to a lesson to find out more’, 53% chose this as their first choice.
When gender was examined, female students were found to be considerably less inclined than men to choose ‘Teachers telling you more about them’ as a first choice (40, 37% of their choices for this response; males chose first choice here 60 times, 57%). This reflects findings at both constituent schools.