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Young people's aspirations remain an enduring focus of education policy interest and concern. Drawing on data from an ongoing five-year study of young people's science and career aspirations (age 10-14), this paper asks what do young people aspire to at age 12/13, and what influences these aspirations? It outlines the main aspirations and sources of these aspirations as expressed by young people in England in the last year of primary school (survey of 9000+ Y6 pupils, aged 10/11, interviews with 92 children and 76 parents) and the second year of secondary school (survey of 5600+ Y8 pupils, aged 12/13, interviews with 85 pupils). We demonstrate how aspirations are shaped by structural forces (e.g. social class, gender and ethnicity) and how different spheres of influence (home/family, school, hobbies/leisure activities and TV) appear to shape different types of aspirations. The paper concludes by considering the implications for educational policy and careers education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon an earlier analysis presented in this journal. Using official figures for school compositions and for outcomes at KS4 from 1997 to 2007, this paper considers each of the annual cohorts of new Academies in England, from 2002 to 2006. It shows that their level of success in comparison to their predecessors, national averages, their changing compositions and their changing exam entry practices are insubstantial. Of course some schools are gaining higher scores since Academisation, but others are gaining lower scores. Using the most recent results available there is no clear evidence that Academies produce better results than local authority schools with equivalent intakes. The Academies programme therefore presents an opportunity cost for no apparent gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Civil defence pedagogies' normalise continuous emergency through educational channels such as school, community and adult education. Using critical whiteness studies, and critiques of white supremacy from critical race theory, as a conceptual base, the protection of whiteness, and particularly the white middle-class family, is considered to be centrally important to civil defence in education. Civil defence is not only classed and state-centred, but a racialised and eugenic discourse where the state considers not necessarily the survival of the majority of white people, but the continuity of whiteness to be prioritised above the survival of people of colour. Within these policies, the enterprising white, middle-class, suburban family has provided a key role as main reference, beneficiary, activist and supporter of civil defence pedagogies. Through the use of policy analysis and documentation from the USA in the 1950s and the UK in the 1980s, I discuss representations of the family, race and class in civil defence pedagogies. Although whiteness is contextualised by geography and history, there is congruence in terms of the eugenic tendencies of these seemingly innocuous pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]