Positive Influence? A report into parents’ attitudes to their children’s career choices

This report is informed by a survey of over 600 parents of children aged under 18, commissioned by ConstructionSkills and carried out by ICM Research in February 2007. The survey itself builds upon previous qualitative research with Black and Asian teenagers in Tower Hamlets, Leeds, and Leicester in February 2007.

The overall aim of the research is to facilitate a better understanding of the factors influencing course study and career choices among young people.

The survey provides a snapshot view of UK parents and their aspirations for their children’s future. It asks whether Britain is a nation of ‘pushy parents’, or by contrast, are mothers and fathers so keen to be ‘best friends’ with their teenage children that they are reluctant to appear as authority figures?

The Positive Influence? report sets out to discover the factors motivating young people’s education and career choices, from peer groups and pop stars to TV and tabloid newspapers. Is the next generation likely to want to change the world? Or more simply to want to make a difference to their bank balance?

It identifies the challenge faced by the UK’s largest industry, as it battles to overcome the traditional perceptions that construction is a career for those under-achieving in other school subject areas - a career summed up by the image of ‘blokes, bums and bricks’. How can the industry successfully communicate the range and quantity of opportunities it offers, and increase its allure as a first-choice career path for everyone regardless of background, colour, gender and other traditional barriers to entry?

Most vitally, it seeks to reach Black and Asian parents to understand their views on a desirable career for their children, and to provide a platform for the construction industry to communicate the opportunities it offers to this community.

Whilst recognising large disparities in the Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAAME) population the report seeks to identify some common concerns and barriers to help us address the general under-representation of BAAME groups in the construction industry.

Click here to read the full report