摘要：This paper reports
findings from a study among 610 Year 7
(typically age 12) pupils at 27 nonselective
secondary schools in three English
regions: Cornwall and Devon, London, and
Greater Manchester. Data was gathered in
workshops, each with 15–25 pupils, who
completed questionnaires and performed
individual tasks, all related to their
vocational and educational aims, their ideas on
what counted as success, and the main influences
on their forward thinking, then discussed their
answers and results. The discussions were
tape recorded. Most pupils expressed robust
occupational aims, and most said that they
wanted to go to university. Family class did not
predict levels of educational or occupational
aims, but was related to the importance attached
to “the job that I want to do” in
the pupils' forward thinking. SAT scores did
predict levels of occupational aspiration, ideas
on what counted as success, and by whom and what
the pupils were most influenced. These findings
are interpreted to challenge the view, on which
a raft of current policies are based, that
social class disparities in educational and
labour market outcomes are due to the
intergenerational transmission of low
aspirations in lower-class families and
neighbourhoods. The paper concludes with an
alternative model of status transmission
processes in which attainments during secondary
education are posited as the key intervening
variable.
