Abstract
Most British school students now work part-time but part-time working remains a contested issue, especially in relation to its impact on school performance. This article suggests that the debate needs to be widened and that much of the discussion appears to consider school students’ part-time work as if it were the only source of out-of-school activity that might compete with school work. It aims to contribute to a wider picture by examining the relationship between students’ part-time employment, their educational commitments, social life and family roles and how this varies in respect of gender, ethnicity, social class and location. The findings suggest part-time work is not in itself inimical to educational engagement or to involvement in social and other activities. The article puts forward the idea of the ‘active student’ who not only works part-time but also participates in a range of other activities.
Introduction
One of the few areas of common ground amongst researchers concerned with school students’ part-time employment is that a majority of British school students now work part-time while in full-time education (Hobbs and McKechnie, 1997; Hodgson and Spours, 2001; Howieson et al., 2006). Nevertheless, the desirability of school students doing so remains a contested issue and the question of its impact on school performance is a key area of debate and dispute. We suggest, however, that the debate needs to be widened beyond the often polarized positions that have been adopted as to whether or not part-time work detracts from a young person’s performance at school.
We argue that an understanding of students’ engagement with part-time employment requires a consideration of the wider context of young people’s lives. Students do not simply go to school and perhaps have a part-time job but are involved in a variety of activities in the context of their wider social world. Yet much of the discussion appears to consider students’ part-time work as if it were the only source of out-of school activity that might compete with school work. We suggest that the current picture of school students’ part-time work is a partial one: a great deal of research has focused on its impact on attainment, but how employed students combine job, educational demands, social life and family commitments has been largely overlooked. Although some research in Ireland on part-time work has taken more account of young people’s other time commitments (McCoy and Smyth, 2007), similar research in the UK has been limited. Moreover, the view of part-time work in the UK is also partial in that national level data is lacking on a number of important individual and background factors such as socio-economic status, ethnicity and geographical location and their inter-relationships with part-time work (Hodgson and Spours, 2001). This article aims to contribute to a wider picture by examining the relationship between students’ part-time employment, their educational commitments, social life and family roles and how this varies in respect of other factors such as gender, ethnicity, social class and location.
Background
The theoretical arguments on the impact of part-time work on education revolve around two contrasting perspectives: the zero sum model and the developmental model (Marsh, 1991). The developmental model perceives part-time employment as a valuable activity, and one to be encouraged, since it facilitates the transmission of knowledge and the attainment of skills, and encourages a greater sense of responsibility and the development of an adult perspective. In contrast, the zero sum model adopts a very different perspective: it emphasizes the negative influence of part-time employment on a range of mainly academic outcomes: given that a young person’s time is finite, the more time devoted to non-school work then the less time is available for school work.
Much of the empirical research on the impact of part-time work on performance at school has centred on the effect of the ‘intensity’ of work; that is, the effect on students’ academic attainment of the number of hours worked. It has been argued that working for a certain number of hours – the ‘critical threshold’ – is associated with poorer academic performance (McKechnie and Hobbs, 2001; Payne, 2003; Percy, 2010; Stern and Briggs, 2001).
Not only has research on part-time work focused on its effect on educational outcomes but much of the research in the UK has been confined to local studies. Comparing findings across these studies has been problematic because of different definitions of part-time work and focus of study (Hobbs et al., 1996); moreover, they are not representative or generalizable. The larger scale studies too have a number of limitations: some consider part-time work within a broader study and can only collect a restricted amount of data (Howieson, 1990; Payne, 2003), while others do not cover the full age range or concentrate on certain categories of young workers (e.g. Hibbett and Beatson, 1995).
National level data is lacking on a number of important individual and background factors and their inter-relationships with part-time work. The few studies that have addressed the issue of part-time work and ethnicity have been restricted to localized studies and in some cases have focused on involvement in family businesses (Chandra, 2002; Jolliffe et al., 1995; Song, 2001). The role of socio-economic status in influencing whether a school student takes up part-time work is a source of dispute. Mizen et al. (1999) regard poverty as an influence. In the Irish context McCoy and Smyth (2007) concluded that students from more privileged backgrounds were less likely to work. However, McKechnie et al. (2000) argue that the available evidence suggests that poorer students are less likely to be employed. A further gap in the evidence base concerns geographical variations in student employment levels: local studies in Cumbria found substantial differences between districts (e.g. McKechnie et al., 2007). If such differences are evident in one county, it raises the question of the extent of geographical variation nationally.
In this article we aim to widen perspectives on school students’ participation in part-time work. We use data from a nationally representative survey of school students in Scotland to consider part-time work in the context of school students’ other commitments and how it interacts with a range of potentially influential factors. In doing so we test out the assumptions that underpin the ‘zero sum’ model of part-time work.
Data and Methodology
The data used in this article were collected as part of a comprehensive study of school students in Scotland commissioned by the Scottish Executive (Howieson et al., 2006). We focus here on the survey element of the project.
The survey covered a random 10 per cent sample of S3, S4, S5 and S6 students (equivalent to Years 10, 11, 12 and 13 in England and Wales) in both local authority and independent or private secondary schools across Scotland, providing a nationally representative sample. In Scotland the overwhelming majority of young people who continue in full-time education beyond the compulsory stage do so at the same secondary school rather than transfer to FE or sixth form college so that the survey captures the full post-compulsory cohort; furthermore, it covers students from all social classes since it includes the private as well as the state sector.
The survey was administered to students at school between January and March 2004. The number of questionnaires achieved was 18,430, an 89 per cent response rate. To ensure that the sample was geographically representative, the data were weighted on the basis of the school rolls in each local authority.
The student survey covered 88 schools across Scotland: 1
6043 in S3/Y10 (aged 14–15)
5919 in S4/Y11 (aged 15–16)
4135 in S5/Y12 (aged 16–17)
2333 in S6/Y13 (aged 17–18)
Paid part-time work was defined for the students as:
When we ask about any part-time jobs we mean any paid part-time employment that you have, or have had, outside of school. This includes such things as newspaper delivery jobs, shop-work, selling goods door-to-door, babysitting and office or factory work etc. Please do not include work experience.
The question on ethnicity was the one asked in the 2001 Census with the addition, at the request of the Scottish Executive, of ‘Gypsy/Traveller’. Father’s and mother’s social class is based on the office for National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (ONS, 2005).
Setting the Scene: An Overview of Participation in Part-time Work
As we would expect from other research, it is clear that part-time work is a common experience among school students. Participation rose in line with students’ age and stage of schooling: over half of S4/Y11 students were currently or had been in part-time work (56%) and by the S6/Y13 stage, 83 per cent of them had done so (Table 1). By S6/Y13, students who had never had a part-time job were the exception.
School students’ experience of part-time work by school stage and sex 1
Note: 1Some students did not answer the question on their gender so while they are counted in ‘All’, they do not appear in the ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ figures since we do not know their gender
Among those currently in a part-time job, three sectors predominated: retail (28%); catering (28%) and delivery work (18%). The remaining students were employed across a range of job types: babysitting, hairdressing, office work, farm work, manual trades, cleaning, and a miscellaneous category. The type of work varied across the school stages: delivery work was mainly carried out by S3/Y10 and S4/Y11 students; the proportions employed in retail rose over the years and especially after S4/Y11. Overall, there was a trend away from less structured employment in S3/Y10 and S4/Y11 to more formal types of employment in subsequent years.
It is also apparent from Table 1 that there are gender differences in part-time work after S3/Y10 and especially after S4/Y11 with higher levels of part-time employment amongst young women (Table 1). This gender divide may be partly related to the sectors in which young people were found to work in the later school years. Delivery work is one of the main sectors of part-time employment in S3/Y10 and S4/Y11, accounting for over a quarter of part-time employment and is male dominated (S3/Y10 + S4/Y11students: 43% male vs 11% female) but it declines dramatically in S5/Y12 and S6/Y13 to one of the least important sectors (only 5% of S5/Y12 + S6/Y13 students). After S4/Y11, the biggest increases are in three areas: supermarket work, chain stores and ‘other shops’. Supermarket work is male dominated (18% male vs 7% female), while chain stores and other shops are female dominated (9% male vs 19% female, 9% male vs 16% female respectively). But supermarkets only employ 11 per cent of working students compared with 29 per cent in chain stores and ‘other shops’ combined. The shift in the type of work undertaken by students after S4/Y11 appears to disadvantage young men; we consider this issue further later in the article.
Levels of participation in part-time work varied across students from different ethnic backgrounds. The percentages of students from Asian, Pakistani, Black and ‘other’ backgrounds who had never had a part-time job were 56 per cent, 51 per cent, 54 per cent and 56 per cent respectively compared with 41 per cent, 39 per cent, 40 per cent and 39 per cent among students from Scottish, other British, other white and gypsy/traveller backgrounds respectively. Further analysis revealed that among several ethnic minority groups, the lower level of part-time work was related to the lower participation of young women from these backgrounds, although, as we have seen, overall, young women were more likely to work part-time than were young men. Among Pakistani students, 62 per cent of young women had never worked compared with 43 per cent of young men and a similar pattern is evident among students from a Black/Black Scottish-British background (63% female vs 48% male never worked). These young women were also less likely to have ever applied for a job. We return to the issue of ethnicity later.
Part-time Work in the Wider Context of Students’ Lives
In this section we present the results of the multivariate analyses we carried out to explore the relationships between a set of factors and their impact on the likelihood of participation in part-time work. We used a logistic regression model to examine the likelihood of students currently being in a paid part-time job compared with never having had a job. The analysis therefore excludes former workers.
After a number of exploratory models, the analysis was built up in a series of steps, entering the variables in a conceptually logical order starting with students’ individual characteristics, adding factors relating to family background, followed by students’ behaviours and activities. Factors that proved significant at the level of 0.05 were carried forward to the next step while the non-significant factors were omitted. Factors initially included but subsequently excluded as non significant were: attainment, disability, father’s current activity, mother’s social class, and voluntary work. The classification table for the initial model before adding the predictor variables gives an overall percentage of 51.4; the classification table for the final model shows that it correctly predicts an overall percentage of 66.4.
An issue in modelling is that of ‘multi-collinearity’; that is, a high degree of correlation between independent variables which means that it can be difficult to separate out the influence of one variable from that of another with which it is related. Consequently, the models may underestimate the effect of some factors and this may well apply to the factors relating to students’ activities.
School stage is the key predictor of involvement in part-time work. The likelihood of a student being in a part-time job rose over the school stages and especially between S5/Y12 and S6/Y13 (relative odds 2 of 8.458 for S6/Y13 students, Table 2). After school stage, location emerges as the second most important factor in predicting part-time work but in a perhaps unexpected way: it is often assumed that students in rural areas may be disadvantaged in the extent of work available to them but this was not the case. Location was a consistent factor throughout the modelling process and its effect changed very little as we added in other variables. Students in rural areas were more than twice as likely to have a part-time job as their counterparts in large urban locations (odds of 2.150). Those living in other urban locations also had higher odds than students in large urban locations of being in part-time work but the difference was less marked (1.225). The timing of the survey rules out the possibility that this is explained by seasonal holiday work in rural areas since it refers to current employment in the months of January–March.
The likelihood of S3/Y11 - S6/Y13 students currently being in a part-time job vs never working (logistic regression)
Notes: Unweighted sample, n = 12694. Block 0, Classification table overall percentage 51.4; Block 1, Classification table overall percentage 66.4
Gender is another significant predictor of participation in part-time work although with a weaker effect than stage of schooling but also than location. Young women are somewhat more likely to be in part-time work than young men (relative odds of 1.417). The exception to this concerns girls from a Pakistani background.
When we explored the relationship between ethnicity and part-time work in the modelling, students from a Pakistani background had a greater probability of being in paid part-time employment compared with students from all other ethnic backgrounds (odds of 1.718), controlling for all other factors. But when we added an interaction term for gender and ethnicity, it became apparent that while boys from Pakistani backgrounds were more likely to have a part-time job than Scottish boys, the opposite was true for Pakistani girls who had a slightly lower probability of part-time employment than Scottish girls (odds of 0.321).
It is sometimes argued that greater involvement in unpaid work, especially within the family, means that students from certain ethnic backgrounds will be less involved in paid part-time work. Our research does not bear this out. A specific comparison of the ‘ever worked’ and ‘never worked’ students found little difference between their levels of unpaid work according to their ethnic background. Further analysis illustrated that there is no simple trade-off between paid and unpaid work: among students from a Pakistani background, for example, it was those who had a paid job who were more likely to be doing unpaid work while those who did not have a part-time job had less involvement in unpaid work (20% of those in a paid job were also doing unpaid work compared with 4% of former workers/never worked).
At no stage of the modelling did unpaid work make any difference to the main effect of ethnicity or to the interaction between ethnicity and gender. Overall, controlling for all other factors, we found those who had an unpaid job had a greater likelihood of also being in paid employment (odds of 1.685).
The main point in relation to social class is its very limited effect on the probability of students being in part-time employment. Mother’s social class is not significant. In relation to father’s social class, we found no significant differences between students from working class, intermediate and managerial and professional backgrounds being in part-time employment taking all the other factors into account. The only significant finding concerns students whose father is in the ‘not classified’ category. 3 They were less likely to work part-time than were students with a father from a managerial and professional background but even so, the difference is not large (odds of 0.744).
The impact of parents’ current activity or status is also limited. Father’s current activity made no difference but where their mother was retired, looking after the family/home or they responded ‘don’t know’, then students were less likely to be in a part-time job than their counterparts whose mother was in one of the other statuses (i.e. employed, unemployed, a student or unable to work).
We also considered the effect of different family living arrangements: the only situation that remained significant once other factors were controlled for was living with a parent and step-parent. Students who lived with a parent and step-parent were more likely to have a current part-time job (odds of 1.282). Other research suggests that a part-time job may offer young people an ‘arena of comfort’ when they are experiencing change in other aspects of their family life which may be part of the explanation of this finding (Call, 1996).
A part-time job is commonly perceived as displacing homework (Hodgson and Spours, 2001; Howieson et al., 2006) but we found that the relationship between part-time work and time spent on homework is not a straightforward one. Students who allocated a reasonable amount of time, 9–12 hours a week, to homework were in fact more likely to have a part-time job than their counterparts who did no or very little homework (odds of 1.159). However, the students devoting the greatest number of hours to home work (13+ hours) had a lower probability of part-time employment compared with those who gave little if any time to it (odds of 0.753). The modelling demonstrates that there is no simple displacement of homework by part-time employment, indeed, working part-time is compatible with also spending a reasonable amount of time on homework; rather it is no job and no or little homework that go together.
How does the time that students give to other activities relate to their likelihood of working part-time? We considered several types of activities: contributing to household work, caring for others, and participation in sports and social activities.
Students who carried out a moderate level of household duties had a lower probability of being in a part-time job compared with students who did only a low level of household chores (odds of 0.866 and 0.809). In respect of caring responsibilities, compared with their counterparts who had least involvement in caring, students who had a higher level of involvement were more likely to have a part-time job.
The level of students’ participation in sport is only weakly related to their likelihood of having a part-time job. Compared with students who had had no involvement in sport in the previous two weeks, those who did slightly more (1–2 times) had a higher probability of being in a part-time job (odds of 1.145).
Students who were more active in terms of participation in a group or society had somewhat higher odds of having a part-time job than those who had not taken part in any such group in the previous two weeks (the odds range from 1.169 to 1.212). Similarly, a more active social life in terms of going out to discos, concerts, cinema or sporting events is a predictor of part-time employment, increasing the odds by between 1.141 and 1.400.
When we consider the final three factors in the model – seeing friends outside of school, watching TV and using a computer (apart from for homework) – these point in the direction of a scenario in which students who spend time on activities outside of the home are also more likely to have a part-time job.
The frequency of seeing friends (apart from at school) made a difference to the probability of part-time employment. The odds of working part-time are lower than among students who report seeing their friends less often than the reference group (those who had spent time with their friends six or more times in the previous two weeks).
In terms of TV watching, the chances of having a part-time job were reduced among those who watched TV most frequently. Compared with those who watched more than six times in the previous two weeks, those who reported a lower level had a higher probability of being in a part-time job. It may be that when students gain part-time employment, they choose to spend less time on TV viewing in order to provide the time to maintain other social activities and to meet their part-time work commitments. Critically, what this result demonstrates is that it cannot be assumed that if students do not have a part-time job they will instead spend their time doing homework rather than watching TV.
Higher usage of a computer (not for school work) was associated with less likelihood of working part-time. Students who had not used a computer for non-school work purposes in the previous two weeks or had only done so 1–2 times had higher odds of being in part-time employment (odds of 1.113 and 1.163).
Discussion and Conclusions
We found, in common with other studies, that part-time working while at school is now the common experience and that by the S6/Y13 stage a dual status of student-worker is the norm.
Our results also show regional variations in students’ employment. But perhaps unexpectedly, it is young people in rural locations who are more likely to work than those in large urban areas and this is not explained by seasonal holiday work. It could be that labour markets in rural areas are much closer to reaching saturation with respect to available adult employees so that school students are drawn into employment, or perhaps the range of leisure options open to students in urban areas influences their decision to work. Another explanation could be the existence of more developed local networks in rural communities: our analyses of how students had heard about their part-time job found that while there was no difference in the role of family and friends, a higher proportion of students in rural than in urban locations reported that an employer had approached them (15% rural vs 8% large urban), which may be an indication of the role of local networks.
We tried to investigate whether the geographical differences in part-time employment are related to the local unemployment rate but were hampered by a lack of data on two key variables: students’ home address and their employers’ address. Analysis using the unemployment rate based on their school address did not find any effect on levels of participation but this is probably because students’ employment is more likely related to where they live, not where they go to school. Geographical variation in school students’ part-time work is clearly an area where further research is needed.
Female students have a higher level of part-time work than their male counterparts and we have suggested that part of the explanation might be the type of the jobs on offer, especially after S4/Y11, where the biggest increases in employment are found in chain stores and ‘other shops’. The question is why job type might make such a difference: is it because employers in these areas of retail prefer to employ young women whom they may perceive to have better communication skills and to be more ‘presentable’? Certainly, employers’ desire for young recruits with these sorts of employability skills is well documented, and especially among employers in the service sector (FutureSkills, 2006; Keep and James, 2010; UKCES, 2010). Nickson et al. (2004) have drawn attention to the growing demand for ‘aesthetic skills’ – the ability to look and sound good – in certain parts of the retail and hotel and catering sectors. The gender differences we have identified may reflect this trend. The differences may also relate to the perception of some young men that these are not gender appropriate jobs; other research indicates that beliefs about gender appropriate jobs continue to shape the occupational decisions of both young men and women (Francis, 2002; Jackson and Wain, 2002; Miller and Hayward, 2006).
In considering how the gender differences in school students’ part-time work relate to the wider debates about inequalities in education, especially the discourse around male ‘under-achievement’ (Arnot at al., 1998; Younger and Warrington, 2005), we would first note that this concept is a contested one (Egerton and Savage, 2000; Walkerdine et al., 2001). Nevertheless, some of the literature suggests that some young men, especially white working class, perceive school work and academic success as compromising their masculinity and popularity, are ‘turned off’ by school and put in little effort (Arnot et al., 1998; Jackson, 2003; Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Warrington et al., 2000). This literature does not offer a simple explanation of lower levels of part-time work among males since, while it might be expected that male students uninterested in school would be especially eager to seek part-time employment as a way to reinforce their masculine identity and acquire an adult role, the research also suggests that the type of work available might be seen as compromising their masculinity. So, alternatively, is the lower rate of part-time employment among young men an extension of the (apparent) lack of motivation of some in relation to school work? We are limited in how far we can explain the gender differences but analysis of the data we have on reasons for not applying for part-time work did identify some variation by gender. A higher proportion of young men than women cited as their main reason for not applying as ‘can’t be bothered’ (14% male vs 6% female), but males were also more likely to give as a reason that their hobbies or sports took up all of their free time (23% male vs 11% female). This suggests that while some young men may be somewhat less motivated to undertake part-time employment than are young women others are making a positive decision to give priority to other activities in terms of how they spend their free time.
Our study found that students from Asian, Pakistani and Black backgrounds had lower levels of part-time work, but we also found that this is not explained by the common assumption noted by Pond and Searle (1991) that young Asian school students are less likely to have part-time jobs because of greater (unpaid) involvement in family businesses. As well as having lower levels of part-time work, we also found that students from Asian, Pakistani and Black backgrounds were less likely to have ever applied for part-time work. For many Asian and Pakistani students, this seemed to be a positive decision – over half responded that they wanted to concentrate on their school work instead, which is in line with the notion of the drive among some ethnic minority groups for qualifications (Li et al., 2008); nevertheless it was not a main reason among Black students. Our data do not enable us to determine whether some students are discouraged from applying or if they experience less success when they do seek part-time employment, but other research has pointed to both the ‘discouraged worker’ effect among ethnic minority groups and discrimination in recruitment in the adult labour market (Cabinet Office, 2003; Li et al., 2008; Modood et al., 1997).
The issue of part-time work and ethnicity is not straightforward. Amongst those who identify themselves as ‘Pakistani’, males are more likely to work than other ethnic groups, including Scottish, whereas females are less likely to work. In general, women from Pakistani backgrounds have the lowest employment rates among ethnic minority women (Li et al., 2008) but one of the reasons – lack of fluency in English (Modood et al., 1997) – is unlikely to apply to the young Pakistani women in our study. Other research suggests that social or cultural reasons may be part of the explanation: that young women in the Pakistani community are expected to guard their reputation as part of maintaining the family honour and that ‘unregulated’ activity, including work, outside the family home might jeopardize this (Dale et al., 2002b; Thapar and Sanghera, 2010). Studies also point to the focus among young Pakistani women and their parents on gaining high status ‘respectable’ jobs via higher education (Dale et al., 2002b; Lightbody and Nicholson, 1997; Shah et al., 2010); not only are the type of part-time jobs available to school students generally low level but involvement in part-time work might be perceived as undermining this longer-term goal. Certainly our study found that young women from a Pakistani background were more likely than their female counterparts from most other ethnic groups to say that they had not applied for a part-time job because they wanted to concentrate on their school work (e.g. 17% vs 8% Scottish background). Nevertheless, they were no more likely to say that parental disapproval was a factor than were young women from other ethnic backgrounds. It might be argued that parental expectations have been internalized and therefore not perceived as ‘disapproval’, but we have to conclude that simple explanations do not adequately explain what is clearly a complex phenomenon and likely to be subject to change across generations (Dale et al., 2002a).
Parents’ social class had a minimal effect on the whether a student has a job, related only to the ‘not classified’ group. This lack of variation between social classes casts doubt on the proposal that poverty is a major causal factor in child employment in Britain put forward by Mizen and his colleagues (1999). While, from a historical perspective, the link between ‘child employment’ or ‘child labour’ and poverty and social class is well established (Lavalette, 1999), in contemporary Britain such links are contested by our data.
It could be argued that social class may have a more subtle impact which goes beyond whether a young person does, or does not, have a job; for example, it may be associated with the total number of hours worked or the type of jobs obtained. However, when we considered this in the full report on this data set we found only a weak relationship between working hours and social class while there was no clear pattern in respect of social class and job type (Howieson et al., 2006).
Work, Schooling and Other Activities
The research was not designed to examine the specific question of the impact of part-time work on attainment, but it does offer evidence about engagement with education through data on two factors which indicate commitment to education: level of study and attainment at Standard Grade and time spent on homework. Our findings fail to offer any support to those who suggest that working is in itself inimical to educational engagement.
When we consider work and other activities outside of school, it would appear that working is not associated with any lessening in an individual’s social commitment. Indeed, there may be a case for proposing a concept of an ‘active student’ who is more likely to engage in work as well as other out of school activities than his or her peers. This concept is supported by several results of the modelling. Students who are more active in terms of participation in a group or society, going out to discos, concerts, cinema or sporting events had somewhat higher odds of having a part-time job than those who had not done so. Equally, a less active social life in terms of more TV watching and computer use was linked to lower odds of working part-time.
Linking the ‘active student’ to employment raises the question of causality. It could be argued that having a job allows students to fund an active social life (McCoy and Smyth, 2007; Mizen et al., 2001), but we found that, as well as an association with activities that require money, there was a relationship with activities not requiring money to enable participation. It can also be argued that it is the more sociable and active students who are more likely to have a job because they are more assiduous in their job search and may be more attractive applicants to employers; this relates to the issue of the type of skills and attributes wanted by employers.
As noted earlier, the debate on the impact of part-time work on education has focused on two opposing viewpoints: the zero sum model, emphasizing the notion of the trade off of time between competing activities, and the developmental model of part-time work as a valuable learning opportunity. We argue that there is another way of conceptualizing the relationship that sits alongside the development model but which contradicts the zero sum argument: rather than displacing other activities, part-time work is, on the whole, undertaken along with other activities. This view is borne out by the statistical modelling which demonstrates that students who have part-time jobs are active and engaged in a range of other activities. It is supported by research in the USA which concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that students who worked part-time were likely to disengage from a range of educational and social activities because of their employment (Mortimer, 2003). It may be more productive to think in terms of the ‘active student’ who undertakes a range of activities and the ‘inactive’ or ‘less active’ one who does not work part time but who does not instead devote this time to homework or to helping out in the home or various social activities. One explanation is that students are making time management decisions. For example, those watching the least amount of TV were more likely to have part-time jobs, which may indicate a conscious decision to reduce time spent on non-productive activities (Schoenhals et al., 1998).
Our findings highlight the need in Britain to acknowledge both the significant role played by part-time work in the lives of school students and that having a part-time job does not of necessity mean that the time given to education or other domains suffers as a result. The idea of the ‘active student’ suggests that it is only by looking at work in the broader context of young people’s lives that we will begin to fully understand this experience and how school students balance these different domains.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article is based on the research project ‘The Nature and Implications of the Part-Time Employment of Secondary School Pupils’ commissioned by the Scottish Executive.