Socio-economic gaps in educational aspirations: do experiences and attitudes matter?

We use detailed survey data linked to administrative records from secondary schools in England to investigate potential channels contributing to the socio-economic gap in post-compulsory educational aspirations. We investigate the role of experiences and attitudes including the provision of information, advice and guidance (IAG), bullying victimisation, locus of control and self-perception of academic potential. Our findings indicate a significant socio-economic gap in aspirations to stay in education, to follow the academic rather than the vocational route, and to attend university. We use decomposition analysis to show that the experiences we consider are not statistically correlated with the observed socio-economic gap while differences in attitudes explain up to 22% of the effect. The findings suggest that investing in self-esteem building and attribution training programmes within schools could contribute to equalising educational outcomes.