As well as becoming a rich and useful dataset, the survey conducted in phase one contributed toward a second process of sampling for the next stage of fieldwork. At the end of the questionnaire pupils were asked if they wanted to volunteer to be part of the qualitative phase of the project23. Of the 871 pupils who completed a questionnaire 206
(24%) volunteered for this. Discounting those pupils in Einstein High whose year group was unknown I was left with 198 to sample from (33 from Grand Hill Grammar, 73 from
23 Information sheets about the project were also distributed along with the questionnaires. These can be
50
Einstein High and 92 from Eagles Academy). The tables below illustrate the distribution of pupils in each school and year that either opted in or out of the qualitative phase:
Table 2: Distribution of pupils volunteering to participate further by year group in Grand Hill Grammar (column%)
Grand Hill Grammar
Volunteered to Participate? Year 7 Year 9 Year 11 Total
Yes 15 (17%) 1 (2%) 17 (15%) 33 (12%)
No 71 (83%) 66 (99%) 96 (85%) 233 (88%)
Total 86 (100%) 67 (100%) 113 (100%) 266 (100%) Note: (%) have been rounded.
Table 3: Distribution of pupils volunteering to participate further by year group in Einstein High School (column%)
Einstein High School
Volunteered to Participate? Year 7 Year 9 Year 11 Total
Yes 15 (15%) 31 (28%) 27 (29%) 73 (24%)
No 84 (85%) 79 (72%) 67 (71%) 230 (76%)
Total 99 (100%) 110 (100%) 94 (100%) 303 (100%) Note: (%) have been rounded.
Table 4: Distribution of pupils volunteering to participate by year group in Eagles Academy (column%)
Eagles Academy
Volunteered to Participate? Year 7 Year 9 Year 11 Total
Yes 34 (43%) 34 (38%) 24 (28%) 92 (36%)
No 45 (57%) 55 (62%) 62 (72%) 162 (64%)
Total 79 (100%) 89 (100%) 86 (100%) 254 (100%) Note: (%) have been rounded.
It is interesting that despite Grand Hill being the easiest school to access and Eagles Academy being the hardest, the pattern of young people volunteering to be interviewed was reversed. The Eagles Academy pupils volunteered in the greatest numbers (36%) compared to only 12% of the pupils at Grand Hill (see Table 2 and Table 4). This could be partially explained by the way in which I was positioned by the school. As aforementioned, in Eagles Academy my research was promoted to the pupils which may have led them to see me as part of the curriculum. Another reason could be that my research appeared as an
51
unusual activity; they rarely have guests in from universities24. In a similar vein, being part
of a marginalised community, these young people’s voices are often silenced and as such my research offered a potential avenue for them to be heard.
In Grand Hill Grammar only one of the year 9 pupils volunteered to be interviewed. This was problematic as I had planned to interview at least 6 pupils per year per school. Since only a total of 67 pupils in year 9 at Grand Hill had even completed a questionnaire it was clear that a number of form tutors had not distributed them to the pupils. I spent a lot of time trying to increase this figure; however Paul was very slow at chasing the tutors and was reluctant to hassle them. I even managed to get into the year 9 assembly to try to encourage pupils to complete the questionnaires. Unfortunately no more were ever distributed. Paul offered to recruit six year 9 pupils to be interviewed himself. Whilst there were clearly limitations to this strategy- they were not a comparable group as they had been selected by a teacher rather than volunteering themselves- I agreed as this was the only option I had. Interviewing pupils selected by a teacher also clearly poses ethical issues around informed consent; this will be discussed below in section 3.9.1.
Excluding the year 9s at Grand Hill Grammar I was left with a workable number of pupils to sample from in each school in each year group. At this point it is important to explain the additional sampling parameters used to select the necessary six from each group. The first consideration was gender. Whilst the focus of this research is not directly on gender it is important not to overlook it and its intersection with other factors such as social class (Bradley, 2016). By including an equal number of boys and girls in the sample I left open the possibility of a gender-sensitive analysis. The resulting sample consists of three girls and three boys from each year in each school. The second parameter was social class, specific measures of which were attainable through the survey. As it turned out the schools appeared more segregated along such lines than I had anticipated. Almost all of the pupils in Grand Hill and Einstein High could be classified as middle or upper class, with almost all of those in Eagles Academy coming from working-class families25. A classed sample
thus became implicit through selecting an equal number of pupils in each school26.
24 They do have university students working in their classrooms as extra academic support; however this is
distinct from my proposed research which offered a more unusual form of interaction.
25 See Chapter 4 for further details.
26 Arguably my sample is skewed toward the middle/upper classes as the pupils in two out of three schools
come from such backgrounds. As will be discussed below, I conducted a disproportionate number of interviews in Eagles Academy in part to make up for this. However, it is also important not to conflate the pupils in Grand Hill with those in Einstein High. Whilst they all come from dominant positions in social
52
Nevertheless it remained a sampling parameter and I tried not to select the anomalies, i.e. where possible I did not sample the middle-class pupils in Eagles Academy27. I had hoped
that race/ethnicity would be a factor of this research project and as mentioned I had initially been seeking access to an ethnically diverse school. However as this was not possible I ended up conducting fieldwork in three predominantly white schools. Not all of my participants were white British, but this was not something I had built into the research design and had no formal way of capturing their ethnic group. At times these issues came up in interviews but not always. As these pupils were a minority in my sample I will not be making any claims about race/ethnicity in this thesis.
I also tried to get a balanced sample in terms of responses to the question: ‘How likely do you think it is that you will go to university?’ I wanted to access young people from across the spectrum of responses ranging from ‘definitely won’t’ to ‘definitely will’. This was not straightforward as the number of pupils ticking each box was not proportionally
represented in the volunteers28.
The specific process of sampling students for interview involved sorting the questionnaires of those who had volunteered from each school in each year group into specific piles. As my sampling frame included three girls and three boys from each year group in each school I split the piles again by gender. In any pile where there were more than three to sample from I moved on to secondary sampling considerations. First I compared the pupils within each pile in terms of their social class backgrounds looking to ensure the least ambiguity in class terms. Where I still had choice between students who fit all of these criteria, I then looked at their responses to the question on their expectations for university, trying to ensure I had a variation in terms of those who indicated a positive, ambivalent or negative response.
Through applying these parameters I was able to comfortably sample a total of 54 pupils. This sample increased slightly as when interviewing the Eagles Academy year 11 pupils I felt that I needed to speak to a couple more of them as their narratives were more diverse than the others. The final sample included nine year 11 pupils in Eagles Academy leaving
space, they are distinct, in particular in relation to the schools they attend; something which in itself is a major focus of this research.
27 Whilst a consideration of the experiences of middle-class pupils in a predominantly working-class school,
and that of the working-class pupils in a predominantly middle-class school would have been fascinating, it was not the focus of this study.
53
me with a total of 57 pupils29. I also sampled one careers advisor to be interviewed per
school30 giving me a total of 60 interviews conducted.