Whose aspirations are they anyway?

The Select Committee Report Access to Higher Education (2001) states that ‘prospects for widened participation will be transformed when schools succeed in persuading students from poor backgrounds to stay on in school beyond the age of 16’. Many schools located in areas with low staying‐on rates are already involved in projects designed to raise students' aspirations towards post‐compulsory education. This paper looks at one such initiative targeting 13 and 14 year olds, encouraging them to ‘aim high’. Drawing on data from a series of semistructured interviews with pupils and staff, it examines the ways in which the process perpetuated inequalities rather than encouraging disadvantaged students. The paper concludes that this project was initiated and imposed from an adult's perspective rather than that of the young people taking part, reflecting the class and habitus of the former. Strategies designed to ‘persuade students’ to stay on post‐16 need, therefore, to recognize how inequality structures both practice and student response and take into account both the student ‘voice’ and their cultural and social background.