Addressing the impacts of socioeconomic inequality on children and young people has been a key priority for successive UK governments across recent decades, particularly in response to wider concerns about development, wellbeing, and prospects for upward social mobility. The current government’s mission, ‘Break Down Barriers to Opportunity’, reaffirms this commitment and outlines key focus areas and strategies to mitigate these impacts. In this article, Dr Chae-Young Kim and Professor Carlo Raffo outline their research at The University of Manchester examining how Year 11 students view, and are impacted by, socioeconomic inequality.

• Government’s school careers guidance initiatives require more than raising aspirations and need consistent implementation to benefit disadvantaged young people.
• Research from The University of Manchester found that secondary school pupils tend to have high aspirations but lack strategic knowledge on how to fulfil them.
• The Department for Education and local authorities have an opportunity to tackle inequalities during the compulsory schooling stage through strategic thinking skills integration and enhanced careers guidance.

A lack of aspirations or a lack of means to achieve them?

The current government’s manifesto states ‘too many people see success as something that happens to others.’ This assertion echoes the longstanding narrative of raising aspirations among young people from low-income families: a prominent example being the previous Labour government’s Aim Higher programme, which aimed to widen participation in higher education among those with no family history of such attainment.

However, to be truly effective, the government’s current approaches would benefit from a more nuanced understanding of the tensions surrounding children and young people’s aspirations.

It remains true that students from affluent backgrounds are still more likely than their peers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to aspire to, and attain, higher and more prestigious educational qualifications, which in turn lead to higher-paying and higher-status occupations. However, our recent research with Year 11 students in Northwest England suggests that it is not always a lack of aspirations or beliefs in achieving aspirations but rather a lack of strategic thinking to help achieve them that may be problematic especially for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

About the research

Our study examined how Year 11 students in Northwest England understand socioeconomic inequality and its relationship to their educational and occupational aspirations, using questionnaire responses from 136 students from three comprehensive schools in and near Greater Manchester.

The study revealed notable gaps between students’ aspirational optimism and their strategic understanding of how to navigate structural barriers amidst their lack of awareness of structural causes of inequality.

Key findings and insights from young people

Our study findings revealed the following:

Limited structural awareness: Despite coming from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, 69.9% of participants positioned themselves in the middle of the UK’s wealth distribution. When explaining causes of wealth and poverty, students predominantly cited immediate factors such as job status or educational qualifications, without recognising underlying structural mechanisms that determine access to these opportunities: for example, university tuition fees and living costs, limited access to unpaid internships due to financial constraints, or regional disparities in graduate employment opportunities between the North and South. Additionally, less than 7% of participants acknowledged family influence on career choices, despite substantial research evidence of its significance.

High aspirations with strategic knowledge gaps: Most students (80.9%) aspired to achieve at least A Levels or equivalent qualifications, with 58.8% aiming for degree-level education. Furthermore, over half (56.9%) sought professional, office work or managerial occupations, often indicating aspirations for upward social mobility. Alongside these, students demonstrated relatively high confidence or optimism in achieving their career aspirations (average score 4.01 out of 5) but frequently lacked strategic knowledge about overcoming identified barriers.

Mismatch between challenges to aspirations and solutions: Strategic knowledge gaps appeared in the form of mismatches between perceived challenges in achieving occupational aspirations and suggested solutions. In particular, while 44.1% of students recognised not knowing career entry processes as a challenge, only 25% identified seeking career guidance as a solution. Similarly, despite 40.4% citing financial barriers, merely 5.9% considered seeking financial support as viable.

Socioeconomic impact on aspiration persistence: Differences across students from different socioeconomic backgrounds in their optimism about achieving their occupational aspirations were very small. Yet, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were noticeably more likely to have given up their aspirations before, compared to those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

These findings suggest that young people often hold aspirational thinking, but they have not developed strategic planning skills to help navigate structural challenges. Furthermore, this is likely to create disadvantages for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who may lack access to suitable resources to help navigate barriers.

Policy actions – from aspirational thinking to strategic planning

Our research with Year 11 students in Northwest England reveals that whilst young people hold high aspirations, many lack the strategic knowledge to achieve them. Despite 80.9% aspiring to A Levels or higher and 56.9% seeking professional occupations, students demonstrated significant gaps between recognising barriers and implementing solutions – suggesting current approaches to supporting educational and career transitions may be insufficient.

Our research shows how opportunities are missed during compulsory schooling – especially near GCSEs – when young people make important decisions that significantly influence their futures. Whilst existing careers guidance infrastructure provides a solid foundation, there remains a crucial gap in developing students’ strategic thinking capabilities to navigate structural barriers.

The Department for Education should integrate strategic thinking skills into national curricula through its ongoing Curriculum and Assessment Review. Currently, only three subjects explicitly reference critical thinking skills, yet our research demonstrates that students require systematic development of strategic planning capabilities to bridge the aspiration-achievement gap.

Building on the updated Gatsby Benchmarks introduced in September 2025, schools need enhanced guidance on developing careers curricula that help students understand structural constraints whilst equipping them with practical skills to navigate these challenges. This should address the strategic knowledge gaps our research identified – particularly the mismatch between recognising barriers and implementing solutions.

The Education Select Committee should monitor progress on implementing the 2023 careers guidance inquiry recommendations, particularly assessing whether the government’s commitment to an updated Careers Strategy addresses the strategic thinking skills gap.

Local authorities should expand their role beyond the admissions-focused Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to coordinate strategic career planning programmes, working with schools, employers, and communities to establish clear pathways connecting student aspirations to local economic realities.

Both central government and local authorities should strengthen existing family engagement requirements within careers guidance policy by developing targeted guidance that helps families support students’ strategic career knowledge and skills development. This could explore integration opportunities through emerging programmes like Family Hubs whilst recognising that less than 7% of our study participants acknowledged family influence on career choices.

These approaches integrate critical social awareness with practical planning skills to enable young people to develop both realistic understanding of structural constraints and strategic capacity to navigate them effectively. By building upon the UK’s comprehensive careers guidance infrastructure whilst addressing specific strategic thinking gaps, these policy adaptations can help young people more effectively navigate structural constraints that shape opportunities and outcomes.