Dave

Dave attended a mixed Comprehensive in a village just outside Bristol.

* He agreed that social class and aspirations are linked, but also felt that in his school, it tended to be the pupils from the middle classes who "could be bothered" and who therefore wanted to achieve in school and have challenging careers.

* Dave thought that universities were bound to choose people who had a high level of academic achievement, and it is often a fact that they came from the middle classes.  He also commented that the fees system would keep back people from the lower classes.

* He was unclear on his school's equal opportunities program: he had never seen any evidence of it in action as there were not many "ethnic kids".

* For his A-levels, Dave chose Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry.  This choice was influenced mainly by his interest areas, but also by his planned career.  Dave hopes to get into lecturing in a higher education establishment, and felt that a good grounding in the sciences was needed.

* Dave saw that there was an indirect link between social class and educational achievement.  He suggested that it was not necessarily a case of pupil's backgrounds, but how much effort they put into school.  He thought that social class affected effort which then affects achievement.

* Dave's school did not teach much about other cultures.....he commented that people "paid no attention" in RE lessons.  Dave also talked about his Headmaster, describing him as "middle of the road" in that he was very keen not to offend people of other cultures.

* People of other races were not stereotyped against in Dave's school.

* Dave felt that the girls were favoured in his school as they were less disruptive.  Teachers tended to ignore the boys who were misbehaving.

* Dave thought that it wasn't true anymore that certain subjects were specifically girls or boys.  However, he did admit that more girls took Food Technology, and that the only boys who took it were the "dossers".  In Dave's subject choices, Maths was fairly evenly split, as was Chemistry.  In Physics, however, there was 1 girl to 13 boys!