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TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Today we want to • Tell you about our story• Share our research results• Make some recommendations• Try to answer questions
Introduction
• We are from five different schools St Georges, Greengate Juniors, Cambridge Primary and Sacred Heart. At the first meeting it came as a surprise to us when we had to work with people we had never metbut soon we all became good friends.
• we have been researching about aspirations.
• This is what we did.......
First meeting
• We met at Cambridge Primary school
• we had a surprise visit from Neil Doherty from Inspiring Barrow, and he explained to us what he wanted us to find out.
• The questions Neil asked us to investigate are:
Do young people in Yr 5,6 & 7 in Barrow have aspirations, and if so, what are they and do they feel confident that they can achieve them?
We explored how wanted our team to work
5
How did we want our team to work?
•good communication•respect•listening•working together•honesty•trust
We started by looking at some pictures and using them to make our own questions about Aspirations
Exploring Aspirations
We chose our favourite one, which was ‘Is your Aspiration different when you are young to when your are older?’
When we discussed together it helped us to see all the similar ideas.
Our Expectations
From our enquiry we found that • Aspirations are a goal that you want to
achieve
• most people have them
• lots of young people want to be famous but some people want to have a normal life instead of fame and glamour
We learned • skills, on how to be a good researcher to carry
out the research about aspirations
• that research is important because it helps us to improve what we know about the world so we can make good changes happen & avoid repeating our mistakes
Research
ResearchNext we explored what research isWe found it is a special type of ‘finding-out’ activity that is• Systematic - which means we do things in a
planned and organised way• Sceptical - which means we are always asking
questions! • Ethical - which means we make sure that no-
one comes to any harm, and it is always fair and respects everyone’s needs
The next step!
• After finding out about Research the next thing we did was to make our surveys about aspirations.
• When we planned the surveys we thought about what questions we were going to ask. We used what we had learned from our Enquiry about aspirations to help us
• Then we tested the questions
The next step!Then we had to decide how we could get everyone to do the questionnaire
• We decided it was a good idea to do a presentation to Assembly, explaining what we are doing
• We also wanted teachers and parents to join in.
• We sent the on-line links home and invited some parents to do the survey after school, using i-pads
We all did a presentation in our own schools, to let people know that we had put a survey on line and on paper as well
There was lots of survey data to sort .
Some of it was graphs of what people said,
but most of it was lots and lots of individual answers to our open ended questions. And each answer was different.
It was more difficult to interpret this data because it was all about people’s opinions and feelings.
But we think it is the most interesting part of our research.
For some questions, we took all the answers, cut up into strips, and started to look at them for any patterns
`Then we tried to see to see if we could spot any similarities, and put them into groups.
We counted how many was in each group using tally charts
257 Young People answered our questionnaire. We achieved a lot more than people would think.
36 Parents answered - to get these we sent an internet link home with the youngest sibling. 33 Teachers responded - over half were teachers, 2 were Head Teachers, and some were Teaching Assistants
These are the results:
90% of children said ‘yes’ they do have aspirations or goals in life. That’s almost all of them! Which confirms what we had expected at the start
We think this tells us that most young people in Barrow do have aspirations
When we asked parents the same question: Does your child(ren) have any aspirations or goals
that they want to achieve?
86% said they think their children do have aspirations or goals they want to achieve.
We think it is interesting about 1 in 8 parents said that their children don’t have any aspirations or goals that they want to achieve.
It is surprising, because children have influences from a very early age; for example Keith’s little brother wanted to be fireman as soon as he watched fireman Sam on TV when he was young.
Then we asked teachers the same question: Do you think that children in years 5 & 6 have
aspirations or goals that they want to achieve?
Just 13% of them thought that ALL children have some aspirations or goals that they want to achieve.
Most teachers are not confident that all of their pupils have aspirations, but the majority, 87% of think that some or most children have aspirations. We think this shows that teachers, parents and children have different opinions, and that teachers and parents both take their roles seriously. Teachers may not think that children have learned enough.
Do children in years 5 & 6 have aspirations or goals? Teachers told us:
•it depends a lot on their home environment
• their goals are sometimes limited, short term or unrealistic
• children are affected by a lack of opportunity or exposure to possibility
• Children sometimes find it hard to articulate their goals
Some of what Teachers said:•‘It's difficult to have a goal if you don't know what is
possible.’
•‘Young people’s aspirations are sometimes quite far fetched, for things they have seen on tv, like being a pop-star or a footballer....because it offers a lavish lifestyle.’
•‘All young people have dreams and aspirations ....all they require is support’
Parents mentioned When we asked parents about their children's aspirations they thought these are in...
•Careers in Sport
•Medical careers
•to ‘Get a good job’
•to ‘become a Teacher’
One parent with 5 children said to us
“ My 16 year old wants to be a music teacher/rock Star,
my 13 year old wants to be nurse,
my 12 year old wants to play for England women’s team,
my 8 year old wants to own their own cafe,
my 5 year old wants to be a fighter pilot...
.... and my 3 year old wants to be a Ninja Turtle : ) ”
We wanted to find out what young people’s goals are so we asked them ‘What are your Aspirations or Goals? This was one of our main open ended questions.
We didn’t want to give a dropdown list of options for people to choose because we didn’t want to influence what they told us.
Paul helped us sort the answers - these are the main categories.
What are your Aspirations or Goals?
Fire / Police - Accountant - Lawyer Creative - teacher – Digital -archaeologist - work with Animals - become famous - Medical - Scientist - Improve my learning - beautician - hairdressing - BAE - motor-biker / racing driver - Travel - trade / commerce
Sport
Creative
Digital
teach
er
Animals
Famous
Medica
l
Scien
tist
Impro
ve le
arning
Beauticia
n Hairdres
sing
BAE
Fire
/Police
motorbike
r raci
ng driv
er
Trave
l
Accountan
t / La
wyer
commerc
e
Archae
ologist
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What are your Aspirations or Goals?N
o of
pup
ils
Aspiration or Goal
This graph shows how many people are interested in each
As you can see, in years 4, 5 and 6 sporting aspirations are the most common, followed by ones that are creative.
But even though the other choices weren’t as popular, there is a very wide range of different aspirations and goals that the children have.
These are some of the things in the main categories
becoming a professional footballer / rugby player / runner / wrestler / referee / gymnast / tennis & table tennis player / swimmer / boxer / golfer / hockey player
Sport
Creative
Digital
Animals
being a professional artist / designer / author or writer / performer or actor / singer / dancer / photographer / architect / chef / working in fashion
working on You-tube / games designer / working in film
being a Vet, working for the RSPCA, with Horses
To make sure everyone was included in the questionnaire we asked the people who don’t have aspirations or goals at the moment: ‘Have you had any in the past?’
Nearly two thirds said they have NEVER had any aspirations.
Just over a third said they have had aspirations in the past, and we concluded that SOMETHING must have happened to make them lose their aspirations.
We also asked the same people without aspirations Do you want to have them in the future?
And we found that most do want to have an aspiration when they get older
We asked Pupils an important question:
How confident do you feel that you can achieve your aspirations?
We gave a them a choice of answers:
very confident / confident / not very confident / not confident at all.
The majority of young people (80%) say they are either confident or very confident that they will achieve their aspirations.
However about one in seven, or 14% of children, feel not very confident or not confident at all. We hope that the findings of our research can help those children who don’t have aspirations or goals, or who don’t feel confident about them.
We asked Parents:How confident do you think your children are that they can achieve their aspirations?
92% of parents believe that their child is confident or very confident that they could achieve their goals and aspiration.
We think this shows that they know their children quite well because about 80% of children said they feel confident or very confident
We asked Pupils:What helps you be more confident about achieving your goals or aspirations?
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They told us that their family helps the most, followed by practicing or gaining experience, and having help from friends.
They also talked about praise and encouragement, support from school, self belief, and watching others including on tv and on-line as making them more confident about achieving goals.
Most think that the people who can help them a lot are their parents/carers (63%), followed closely by other family members (58%) and friends (56%).
42% said that teachers can help them a lot. Youth leaders were also seen as helpful, but only a little
We compared this to what teachers said about who can help young people's aspirations
and they thought that they are the most important
The results show us that parents believe that they themselves have the most influence. Next, they think that teachers can inspire children.
We think this is telling us that parents and teachers take their roles seriously
When we had our Enquiry about aspirations, to find out what are the important things to research, we wondered whether aspirations change as you get older, or stay the same. So we asked Pupils: Do you think your aspirations will change as you get older?
And we found that 19% of children thought that they would change, 36% thought they wouldn’t, but most children (45%) weren’t sure.
It’s telling us that most young people don’t know if there aspirations will change when there older.
We asked parents the same question: Do you think children's aspirations will change as they get older?
Although only 19% of children said yes to this question and we found that parents have a different view
almost half of them expect their children’s aspirations to change. About the same amount weren’t sure whether they would change or not.
Answered: 32 Skipped: 0
When we asked Teachers ‘Do you think children's aspirations change as they get older?’ We found they are more certain that children’s aspirations will change as they get older.
Opportunities or chances
Being encouraged
Self esteem
Feeling safe
Being inspired
Experiencing success
We asked Teachers:What do you think helps children develop aspirations or goals?
Teachers’ answers included
‘Having opportunities or chances ’ is what helps children the most to develop aspirations.
We think teachers’ opinion is important because they’ve known lots of children as they grow up and they know children well
When we asked Pupils:How did you get you aspirations or goals? they told these things:
From Inside
T. V. / on-line
Parents
Outside immediate family
Friends
Siblings
Out of School activity
and the ‘From inside’ included things like ‘Because I just like it / because I am interested in it
Watching t.v. or you-tube clips is also important for developing aspirations, and so are parents and family
We asked Pupils:What might stop you from having aspirations, or from achieving your goals?
175 children answered this question. 51 of them actually said “nothing” will stop them! This tells us that they are already really confident.
We printed out ALL of the answers, and found that they were evenly split between two main categories:
46% said“inside me”, which is things about who I am, how I feel and think.
45% “outside me” which is things that happen in life that I don’t have control over
SummaryWe’ve learned - about research and that it is fun and important
- the majority of YP in Barrow do have or want aspirations
- that young people think their parents are important for helping develop aspirations
- that adults, teachers and children see their goals differently
SummaryFrom our research we have understood that -parents and teachers take their role of helping young people’s aspirations seriously
- that many children see their goals coming from somewhere ‘inside’ themselves
- some young people might have problems stopping them from developing aspirations, but others think nothing will stop them from following their goals
Our recommendations
We recommend that
• more help is available for young people to believe in themselves, and to have aspirations that they follow
• young people have encouragement from parents, teachers, and others
Our recommendations
• parents, teachers, and others are supported to
help them develop young people’s aspirations
• there are more opportunities for young people to see what is possible through - making visits and trips out of school- through experts visiting class.
This will help them to understand that it is a large world, and that you have to work hard for your goals and never give up.
Thank you for your time!!!!
Any questions?
(For more details contact CDEC:Paul Jenkins
[email protected] tel 01539 421602)