Epilogue

Abstract

The 35 young men that made up the core of the study have had a mixture of futures since the fieldwork ended. Three were to leave school before the completion of their courses (Jonesy, Steveo and Davies) and two of these were to return to the Sixth Form again to resit some of their subjects (Sin and Gavin) due to poor final grades. Out of the remaining 30, 15 went on to university, 13 to study for degrees and two to study for HND qualifications. Four of this group left Wales to study (Sam to Nottingham University to study English literature, Scott to the University of Lincoln to study architecture and Leon and Ieuan to Portsmouth University to train to become pharmacists); the rest (11) stayed in South Wales. Ruben went to study engineering at Cardiff University; Birdy enrolled on a geography course at Swansea University; Sean opted to take English literature and creative writing at Cardiff Metropolitan University; whilst Alan, Nibbles, Nixon, Jimmy, Hughesy, Clive, Bob and Shaggy went to the local university, the University of South Wales. Unfortunately, after his first year Clive dropped out followed by Jimmy and Sean at the end of their second years. Sean returned home to Cwm Dyffryn and went to work in McDonald’s. Similar to other studies with working-class young people, only two of this group went to Russell group universities which appear to offer more opportunities than other higher education institutions (for a discussion of the importance of this see Ball et al., 2000; Reay et al., 2005; Breen and Jonsson, 2005; Bradley and Ingram, 2013).