Emergent Voices

Now, the overwhelming majority of people that I’ve spoken to, young and old, have all talked about different motivations for those decisions.

Some people already had some creative knowledge, they knew somebody, or their parents were in music, so they already knew about what they could do and chose subjects from a learned perspective. Other people who didn’t have any creative influences around them externally just chose formal, traditionally academic subjects because that’s what they were told would secure them a good job. That’s from teachers, their peers and parents too, so I think parental influence is key to understanding how much access is given to knowledge and the scope of life in general, or influences outside of school. All of these factors impact how effectively students can make their choices for GCSE, or align them for prospective futures.

[Resp D] I think it’s an element of how certain subjects are valued and ironically, well not ironically, but often kids who have arts in their family, those families will value it more. Then there’s other kids who don’t have that, so it’s a much harder struggle to make that kind of decision.

[LR] Well following on from when we spoke before about teaching, you were saying that some of your students came [to Croydon College] and that’s exactly what they wanted to do, but then the pathways were changed, or moved?

[Resp D] So, I taught a Level 3 Extended Diploma course and the students, because of the demographic of the area as well, most of them didn’t come from weren’t born in England and those that were, I think only 1 or 2 had parents that had gone to university.

So in that respect, you’ve got the kind of odds that we talk about. They’re all now studying art and design diplomas, but at the same time, a lot of them also had very few GCSEs and because you have to be in education until 18, you rock up to college to enrol on a subject and very often they’re just enrolled onto a course.

Not necessarily because they really want to do it, because they don’t really know that they want to do, but because they probably haven’t had those discussions before, or are not really aware of what it means to have done life drawing when they were little, or making stuff. A lot of them really struggled at school anyway, so they’re put into another kind of academic environment where a lot of them just continue to struggle, but it’s seen as, by some, as the easier option to do that course.

Does that make sense?

[LR] Yes. | 137