El cuestionario

without considerable assistance from school staff.

The very large urban schools situated in poorer parts of big cities were those that reported particularly high drop out rates previous studies found107

School enrolment forms required information about the occupations of parents, although in many cases this data was incomplete or out of date because both family circumstances (for example, student #2126’s parents had split up since she started high school) and parents’ employment changed over the time at school (student #1540’s father was a computer consultant when she enrolled but later he was referred to as a company manager and then as a property developer). There was the opportunity to check details at interview but often this provided contradictory information (for

. In New Zealand the socioeconomic status of families has commonly been established using the updated Elley/Irving scale (Elley & Irving, 2003), which allocates occupations to six categories according to the average income and educational levels of full-time male workers established by the New Zealand Census, on the assumption that “degrees of occupational skill and responsibility are primary determinants of socio-economic status [SES]” Nash and Harker (1998, p. 42). However, a number of problems were encountered in its application to this study. Many students came from homes where the male adult in the household was not a biological parent, where mother was the sole caregiver, where parents/caregivers were unemployed, or where changes in caregiving arrangements and caregivers’ occupations were noted between enrolment and senior school.

105

The computerised pupil files were run in parallel with separate paper-based filing systems which varied in design between schools. Sometimes there was a central filing system but in other schools each functional area down tothe level of individual staff, such as deans, subject teachers and truancy officers (home liaison staff), kept their own student records using individually devised systems.

106

Some files were missing from the central systems and there was no way of knowing, in some schools, whether the files were on a dean’s desk because there was no “document control” system apparent. At the end of the year one school instructed its staff to destroy all records of student behaviour problems, in line with its interpretations of the Ministry of Education stand-down and suspension regulations. At another school, when the dean left she destroyed all her records prior to moving on.

107

Schools that served the concentrations of urban poor were faced with problems, such as high dropout rates, that correlated highly with both socioeconomic status and ethnicity (Fiske & Ladd, 2000, p. 30).

example, student #3138’s mother was variously reported as a psychiatric nurse and as a nurse aid). I was reluctant to push for further clarification because many students had left home by the time follow-up interviews were held108

Similar problems have been encountered by Hughes et al. (2000, pp. 10-11). They also found that “occupations are not completely stable and people move from one occupation to another over time, have periods of redundancy, are promoted within a firm, leave a paid position to buy a business, and the like.” This led them to acknowledge that “the question of how to best measure SES will always be open to debate given the complexity of modern family structures and the changing nature of the workplace and individual movement within it.” As a result they averaged SES data in two parent families, although they acknowledged the critique that this method “obscures differences in material resources between one and two parent families given the same SES rating” (ibid., p. 11). Following their guide, where a change in occupation was identified the two ratings have been averaged out

. Dwelling on the sometimes sensitive issue of parents may have jeopardised open and frank discussions with students about their experiences of leaving school.

109

. If the male parent was not present in the family home then the occupation of the female parent110 has been substituted for the purpose of ascribing SES ratings in lone parent111 situations. Several of the parents were adult students who would have been entitled to some financial support through student allowances or loans. These folk were added to a “beneficiaries” category, established following the practice of Nash and Harker to cover those receiving benefits and the unemployed (1998, p. 43)112

108

Indeed, many had left home sometime previously: Several students were living with other family members whilst still at school (for example, Student #2227 was living with grandparents and #1395 lived with her brother) and some were on independent youth allowance (Student #220, for example, lived in a flat with other young people).

109

Where two caregivers are present in the family home, this process has been followed, even if one is not a biological parent.

110

Based on advice from W. B. Elley and J. C. Irving (email correspondence, 15 June, 2007) that “women’s occupations have changed so much in the past 30 years, and their profile is much closer to that of the male workforce” I applied the male index in these circumstances.

111 _{Although it is acknowledged that this process did not take into account any financial support from an estranged}

partner.

112

Because details were not available to clarify whether those stating “unemployed” as their occupation were in receipt of a benefit, only one category to cover all those not earning a wage was established.

. These strategies enabled the majority of leaving students to be allocated to a category that represented the occupational class position of their family, as shown in Appendix G and discussed in Chapter 4.