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For this Ask the children, more than 1,500 children were surveyed about their experiences of work. We found that two-thirds of them did some form of work while at school over the last 12 months.

What they told us reinforces previous Commission findings that work is generally a positive activity for most children, that much of their work falls outside the usual understandings that adults have, and that the nature of work changes as children grow and develop.

Finding out what work they want to do is one of the big journeys children need to take and we need to help them with this. Adults also need to shift from seeing school and work as being in conflict and develop ways to improve pathways from school to work.

The findings revealed in Ask the children: I want to work include:

• Work is a positive activity for most children providing opportunity to learn and develop
• Most kids in the sample started their working lives through informal arrangements with family and friends, expanding into more formal work with businesses from about 14 years
• The majority of 15 and 16 years olds said they wanted to work and most of these had tried to find work
• The challenge for 15 and 16 year olds was they want to work but couldn’t find it. A major problem in taking up work opportunities because of lack of transport, the work was simply too difficult to get to.

Download a pdf of the report from the link below (requires Acrobat Reader), or download the text version here.

Hardcopy: Not Available

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