ABSTRACT
Chapter 10, ‘Vocational Education, Imagined Futures and Cruel Optimism’, summarises prior research relevant to the experiences of the parents of school students, their expectations and the impact that these have on their children. It then goes on to consider the paradoxes of vocational education and the evidence that vocational education courses at secondary level are appealing to students from disadvantaged backgrounds due to the nature of the work that they offer but that this appeal is only in contrast to conventional academic routes through school. These courses still fail to provide the kind of education and challenge that these students hunger after. Finally, the chapter examines the effects of imagined futures and cruel optimism and their relation to the imagined futures of school children.
