Danielle

Danielle attended a small, rural, mixed comprehensive school in St Ives.

Although Danielle does believe that there is a link between social class and aspirations she does not think that 'people from working classes necessarily have really low aspirations just because they have less money'.

She thinks that selective schools and 'top' universities are more likely to accept students from the upper classes.

No equal opportunities policy was obvious at Danielle's school, though she thinks that there 'probably' was one.

The school which Danielle attended did not overtly influence her subject choices, though the options available were made clear.  Her friends also had no influence over what she chose.  However, her chosen career was an influence on her A Level decisions, where she took computing due to the need for a curriculum subject to get a place on teaching courses.

Danielle feels that in the past there was a greater link between social class and educational achievement that there is now. 

Different religions were covered in Religious Studies, but teaching on other cultures was not given elsewhere.

Danielle believes that, in general, girls were favoured in her school because 'the boys had more of a tendency to misbehave'.  Girls were trusted more with jobs such as delivering notices.

Although subjects were not clearly labelled as for a single gender, in some subjects there was a majority of one gender.  For example, in her Religious Studies class at GCSE level there was only one boy.  In Physical Education girls did netball and hockey, whilst the boys did football and rugby.