Constructing choice in contiguous and parallel markets: Institutional and school leavers' responses to the new post-16 marketplace

Since the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, the new further education (FE) marketplace created in England and Wales has demanded that schools and colleges compete in a bid to secure larger shares of funded post-16 provision. Little attention has been devoted to establishing how 15 and 16 year-o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Oxford review of education 1997-09, Vol.23 (3), p.299-319
Main Authors: Foskett, Nicholas, Hesketh, Anthony J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic education
Adult Education
Competition
Compulsory Education
Cultural Capital
Decision making
Education
Educational Methods
Educational Policy
Educational research
Educational Strategies
Entscheidung
Federal Aid
Funding
Großbritannien
Higher Education
Information Sources
Labor Force
Labor Market
Learning
Management Development
Marketing
National Surveys
Oberstufe
Polls & surveys
Qualifications
Resource Allocation
School Districts
Schulabgänger
Schullaufbahn
Schulwahl
Schüler
Sekundarstufe II
State Surveys
Students
Trajectories
Vocational education
Wettbewerb
Young Adults
Übergang
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Summary:Since the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, the new further education (FE) marketplace created in England and Wales has demanded that schools and colleges compete in a bid to secure larger shares of funded post-16 provision. Little attention has been devoted to establishing how 15 and 16 year-olds interpret this new competitive culture, or how individual institutions perceive and respond to their marketplaces. This paper reports some of the key findings of the 'Post-16 Markets Project', a national survey of the decision-making of pupils as they approach the end of compulsory schooling at 16, and of the influence of FE institutions' marketing practice on that decision-making. Particular attention is focused on the different educational pathways or 'trajectories' young people choose in an increasingly diverse FE sector, and on the timing of decisions and the factors that influence them. The balance between course and institution in decisions is explored, establishing the market-value placed upon particular educational pathways by pupils according to, for example, academic intentions and cultural capital. It is demonstrated that the decision-making processes engaged in by school leavers are more complex than hitherto identified, and that they have bought into the idea of their role in the education market as consumers. Analysis enables a conceptualisation of FE market forms and processes to be identified, within which diverse perspectives on choice processes and the interplay of supply and demand on the realisation of student choice emerge.
ISSN:0305-4985
1465-3915
DOI:10.1080/0305498970230303