Improving Career Aspirations?

Start Small; Dream Big pilot

At NUSTEM we have been waiting for news from the Start Small; Dream Big pilot with eager anticipation.

Start Small; Dream Big is the Department for Education’s primary school careers programme led by the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC).  Between 2022 and 2025 schools in Education Investment areas, including our local North East Combined Authority, can take part in the pilot.

The pilot has been designed to increase primary-aged children’s awareness of the world of work, to raise aspirations and reduce stereotypes. Schools get training from Teach First to support their teachers to develop knowledge and skills about career-related learning, and increase their confidence to have careers conversations with pupils and parents. The pilot is also supporting schools to make connections with employers, to give pupils the opportunity to meet people in different jobs and see what the world of work is all about.

Initial findings

The report about the pilot’s first wave of schools were released this July.  Although the evaluation is still at an early stage, the report highlights three positive insights so far:

1. Schools’ careers provision and leadership commitment improved
2. Pupil career knowledge and confidence rose, the influence of stereotypes fell and parents noticed a difference
3. Employers valued working with primary pupils and want to do more

NUSTEM’s research on career aspirations

NUSTEM are currently researching how children’s career aspirations change between the ages of 8 and 12. We’ve asked over 1000 children in schools in areas of deprivation across the North East what they want to do when they grow up. This data means we can add some helpful background information to the findings from the pilot.

In the report there is evidence that in schools taking part in the pilot, girls’ career interests conformed less to gender-norms, and revealed interest in new avenues during the first wave of the pilot, “For girls, there was less interest in career areas, such as ‘Caring for animals’ (down 17%), and increased interest in ‘Law’ (up 34%), ‘Admin, business and finance’ (up 36%) and ‘Construction and building’ (up 25%).” (pg 4.)

In our research we’ve found that ‘helping’, including caring for animals is a common motivator for career aspirations among girls.  We’ve also found that, as children get older, there is a decline in interest in careers motivated by caring for animals. This could mean that the reduced interest in caring for animals careers seen in the Start Small; Dream Big is part of a natural age-related decline in interest in this type of career.

The report also considers the impact of the pilot on children’s aspirations.  Qualitative research interviews with children showed they had high aspirations for themselves and “spoke enthusiastically about becoming scientists, marine biologists, entrepreneurs and Olympic athletes. Interest in the arts led some pupils to be considering career choices as actors and dancers, and others mentioned more contemporary careers such as content creators and influencers.” (pg. 4)

In our own research we classify children’s aspirations into Standard Occupational Classification (SOC), a common classification of occupational information in the UK. Jobs are classified in terms of their skill level and skill content across nine categories. The examples given in the report are examples of career aspirations from SOC1-3: the highest categories within the SOC. Scientist and marine biologist are Professional Occupations (SOC2), while athletes, actors, dancers, content creators and social media influencers are classified as Associate Professional or Technical Occupations (SOC3).

In NUSTEM’s 2020 research on the aspirations of children in areas of disadvantage, we found that the majority of children were highly aspirational in their career ambitions (81% in SOC 1-3), with many reporting aspirations for jobs which were classified as higher status than the jobs their parents did.

Similarly, our research identifies a popular emergence of career aspirations for content creators and social media influencers, accounting for 5% of aspirations among children Y3-Y7, with a peak of 10% of aspirations among Y4. This emergence of aspirations for content creators and influencers in the Start Small; Dream Pilot may therefore reflect usual trends among primary school children, rather than a direct impact of the pilot.

What could impact on aspirations look like?

Aspirations are regularly used as a popular measure for understanding the impact of careers interventions. It feels like a logical assumption then that we might want children to aspire to different careers after an intervention. However, impact on aspirations might be assessed differently depending on your approach. Raising aspirations interventions might expect children to aspire to higher status careers – although as we’ve seen, children already have fairly high career aspirations.  Interventions aimed at broadening aspirations might hope to see a broader range of possible careers in a cohort of children, showing an opening up of different career possibilities.  Or perhaps the desired outcome of an interventions might be a reduction in certain types of jobs.  For example, we often find that the popular aspiration of footballer decreases somewhat amongst children after we have worked with the teachers or children in the school.

We’re looking forward to reading the final report for the Start Small; Dream Big pilot, but it will be important to think about what would count as a positive impact on the children’s aspirations in the pilot schools.