Ethnicity and career aspirations in contemporary Britain

This article examines the career aspirations of 376 fifth‐formers in three Rochdale comprehensive schools in December 1989. The analysis demonstrates that the relationships between various types of career aspiration and a series of explanatory variables (ethnicity, social class, gender and school attended) are complex. The article utilises Automatic Interaction Detector and HOMALS techniques to unpack these complex interactions. Overall the article concludes that there is little evidence of any important school effect and that aspirations for higher education are determined both by a marked ethnic effect and a strong social class effect amongst non‐Asians.