Based on doctoral research in the West of Scotland, this paper examines the educational trajectories of working-class girls engaged in beauty education at post-16 vocational colleges. Through the use of creative ‘lifeline’ interviews with participants, this study found that school experiences and school cultures played a significant role in the direction and timing of post-school transitions for participants, with the hostile space of the school often a key driver of entering beauty college. Indeed, many participants had little interest in beauty prior to arriving on the course. Leaving school was the goal; beauty college was merely a way of achieving it. Overall, this article argues that negative school-based experiences are central in girls’ ‘decisions’ to leave school.

Taking a feminist-Bourdieusian theoretical approach, the school experiences of working-class girls understood as a space of ‘networks of violence’ relating to fights, bullying and complicated, often hostile, relationships (Kidd 2016). In turn, these experiences served to entrench the differences between local and institutional habitus, as the working-class culture of the students clashed with that of their school and teachers. Specifically, these experiences of humiliation, being unsupported, judged, and generally feeling like they cannot trust the institution of the school, contributed to the establishment of an anti-school culture amongst participants. 

More broadly, this speaks to the ways in which school cultures carry specific ramifications for young people, and have the potential to significantly impact their lives into adulthood. Though there are numerous merits to beauty education, the funnelling of working-class girls into these highly gendered and classed educational spaces contributes to the reproduction of intergenerational class and gender disadvantages experienced by working-class women. At times, participants left school before they had completed their school-based exams, or gained any qualifications, complicating routes to other modes of post-16 education such as university. 

Though there is significant and important work in the area of school cultures (Ingram 2009), there remains a lack of research into the relationships between these experiences and youth transitions. More broadly, mainstream discussions around youth transitions fail to adequately take into account the role of school experiences and school cultures in directing the trajectory of girls’ post-school destinations. 

Overall, this paper both demonstrates the importance and power of school cultures in informing the directions young people’s lives post-compulsory education and into adulthood, meanwhile calling for a closer examination of the relationship between youth transitions scholarship and research on school cultures.

This study is based on a series of individual lifeline interviews (n=20), a feminist participatory creative method for working with young people originally designed by Thomson and Holland (2002; 2004) to explore young people’s imagined futures. The lifeline interview method entailed the co-construction of a visual ‘lifeline’ by me and the participant: on a large piece of paper, a lifeline was created (with coloured pens and pencils) on which participants were invited to plot their lives. This began with the year they were born and a drawing of their family and home life. This was followed with educational experiences en route to beauty education (primary school, secondary school etc.), and beauty school itself. Finally, participants were invited to plot where they wanted or expected to be at certain points in their future lives (for example, at ages 25, 35 and 45). Discussions were designed to include educational, professional and personal experiences, perspectives and expectations, and a semi-structured interview took place verbally throughout the process. Lifeline interviews tended to end with my asking participants if there was anything else they would like to add before we finish the interview, in an attempt to empower them to direct the flow and content of the interview themselves.

School cultures represent a key driver of post-16 trajectories for working-class girls. While they represent part of a wider, complex matrix of determinants (including local habitus, patriarchal capitalist articulations of femininity, personal agency etc.), school represented a particularly hostile space for the participants of this study. This central conclusion speaks to two further conclusions around the nature of the sociology of education and youth studies as scholarly fields: • More work is required on the specific classed/gendered experiences of working-class girls. • More scholarly work is required on the connections between youth transitions literature and school cultures scholarship.

Ingram, N. (2009). Working‐class boys, educational success and the misrecognition of working‐class culture. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(4), 421–434 Kidd, A. (2016). Networks of violence in the production of young women’s trajectories and subjectivities. Feminist Review, 112(1), 41–59 Thomson, R., & Holland, J. (2002). Imagined Adulthood: Resources, plans and contradictions. Gender and Education, 14(4), 337–350. Thomson, R., & Holland, J. (2004). Youth values and transitions to adulthood: An empirical investigation. London: Families & Social Capital ESRC Research Group.