FURTHER EDUCATION

Social Class And Participation In Further Education: Evidence From The Youth Cohort Study Of England And Wales

Social Class And Participation In Further Education: Evidence From The Youth Cohort Study Of England And Wales

Summary

This paper views the group dissemination of younger separate population, mature 16-17 years, in educational institutions of further education (FE) employing sightings and diagrams from the Youth Cohort Study. General further education colleges have a higher proportion of their entrants from lower socio-economic groups (34%) compared with 25% in Sixth Form Colleges, and 21% in maintained schools.114 As the Foster Review says: 'FE colleges have a strong commitment to social inclusion and inclusive learning … They have been particularly successful in helping to achieve government targets for basic skills and have an increasing role in learning for offenders both in custody and in the community. As a result they attract a higher proportion of disadvantaged learners than the local population average.'115 FE colleges deliver higher education programmes to well over 100,000 adults, usually on a part-time basis. They are also taking a leading part in developing foundation degrees and widening participation to higher education current initiatives in the sector. The government's target for 50% of all those under the age of 30 having a higher education experience by 2010 will only be met if FE colleges continue to play a significant and growing part in delivering HE programmes. There is a strongly two-fold focus to the further education sector in Scotland, with its 'fundamental importance to driving forward both our skills and social justice agendas'.116 Nicol Stephen, Deputy First Minister and Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, said in 2005: 'We ask colleges to be at the forefront of preparing people for complex jobs in an increasingly competitive labour market. At the same time we ask colleges to reach deep into our most disadvantaged communities, bringing opportunities, encouragement and self esteem to people who might never before have aspired to further education and training. It pinpoints that, divergent to admired awareness of FE educational institutions as being for 'other people's children', middle-class learners as well as working-class learners are well represented. However, this does not recommend that FE educational institutions are schools of choice; middle-class representation is regularly connected to worse attainment and, for low-achieving working-class learners, moving out education only is more in all prospects than submission to FE. These aftermaths are investigated employing fundamental models of habitus and field. Their overpass with requests of the education of middle-class young youngsters is in supplement examined, and the paper plans that examine on group in FE educational institutions ought draw seal to time spans with middle-class presence.

Validity Of The Article's Main Claims and Discussion

Recent discourse on the education of younger separate population and develop people, in actual from the UK Government, has tended to downplay the run of class. According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 'questions in relative to inequality are no longer supposed and politically treated as group questions' and the individualization of public inequality ...