A longitudinal study of young women’s transitions in Tower Hamlets i
n an age of austerity.
By Professor Charlotte Chadderton, Bath Spa University
Funded by Aldgate and Allhallows Foundation
Aldgate and Allhallows Foundation is delighted to launch our new report looking at young women’s transitions within Tower Hamlets.
This five-year longitudinal study looks into the career aspirations and transitions for young women in Tower Hamlets, predominantly from Bangladeshi backgrounds. For this project, it was important to concentrate on one school in the borough. It was conducted over the period 2014–19, at a time when austerity measures disproportionally impacted those from low income families, women and minority ethnic groups. For us, it was important to know what this looked like on a micro-scale, and to use this learning to inform our funding more widely.
As a relatively small charity and funder, most of our grants are awarded to educational projects delivered by schools and charities across our small area of benefit, or as bursaries made to individuals in further and higher education. Only a small proportion of our funding would normally be spent on research, so when we do fund research we are keen to ensure that it can be used to directly inform our wider grant making.
2020 marks the 125th anniversary of Aldgate and Allhallows Foundation, so we are delighted to mark this occasion with the launch of this publication. It feels even more pertinent to be launching it in the current climate, as we try to understand the challenges young people are currently experiencing, and will face in the future, as they transition from education.
We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Charlotte Chadderton once again for her commitment to this project, as well as all the participants, their families and school staff, who shall remain anonymous, but without whom this project would not have been possible.
We hope that readers from across the education and political sectors find this report as useful and insightful as we do, and that it can help to lead to policy changes in careers education both in Tower Hamlets and beyond.