Forget becoming a Premier League footballer, writing era-defining computer games or designing catwalk-aweing fashion.
What today’s teenagers really aspire to is a career in the classroom.
A survey of more than 2,000 secondary pupils has found that more want to work in education than in any other profession. In what may prove the ultimate solution to the education recruitment crisis, teaching was the first choice of profession for 18.8 per cent of teenagers.
It easily hurdled over professional athletics, with 15.6 per cent of pupils saying that they wanted to be footballers, tennis players or non-specific - if undeniably high-achieving - “Olympians”.
Education has even overtaken last year’s first-choice profession: medicine. This year, only 14.8 per cent of pupils said that they wanted to become doctors.
Even the appeal of the bright lights, red carpets and champagne-soaked green rooms of Hollywood faded next to the fluorescent lights, industrial carpet and coffee-stained staffrooms of education: only 13.3 per cent of respondents wanted a career in acting.
In addition, 12.2 per cent wanted to design computer games, and 10.9 per cent to work in fashion.
Idealistic ambitions
The survey, conducted by classroom-rewards company School Stickers, found that the teenagers tended towards idealism, which may go some way towards explaining their career choices. Almost half - 46 per cent - said that they wanted to do something interesting. By contrast, only 16 per cent said that they wanted to earn lots of money.
The full list of pupils’ top-10 careers is as follows:
- Teacher (18.8%)
- Athlete (15.6%)
- Doctor (14.8%)
- Actor (13.3%)
- Photographer (13.2%)
- Lawyer (12.2%)
- Game designer (12.2%)
- Scientist (11.9%)
- Fashion buying/designing (10.9%)
- Business owner (10.9%)
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