Vocational Attitudes Survey: what did parents say about young people’s career choices?

Earlier this year Enginuity collected its third wave of answers from 1,000 parents and young people across the UK on their views around vocational education, and routes into a chosen career.

When asked why they would support their children in choosing the vocational route over university, the top answers have remained relatively steady despite some interesting trends over time.

Q4. What, if anything, would be reasons why you would support your children in taking a more vocational routes into their chosen career?

Answer	% agree, 2024	2024 rank	% agree, 2025	2025 rank	% agree, 2026	2026 rank
Potential opportunities to 'earn while they learn'	14.26%	2	14.38%	3	15.08%	1
Developing skills that mean they are better prepared for the workplace	14.72%	1	14.86%	1	14.01%	2
Developing skills specific to the career they want to go into	14.12%	3	14.76%	2	13.88%	3
Avoiding the cost of university and potential debt as a result	11.78%	5	10.63%	6	12.74%	4
Developing practical problem-solving skills	10.91%	6	12.34%	4	11.75%	5
Suiting your child who is more interested in practical learning	12.30%	4	11.25%	5	11.15%	6
Getting to know local employers who might want to offer them a job	9.86%	7	9.35%	7	10.04%	7

For the three years of the survey so far, the same three answers provided by parents have ranked as the top three, only in different combinations.

In 2024, ‘potential opportunities to ‘earn while they learn’’ was parents’ second-most provided answer, before dropping to third in 2025 and coming top this year. Despite the shifting rankings, the percentage of parents providing this reason has steadily increased over the three years of the survey. It went from 14.26% in 2024, up to 14.38% last year and improved to 15.08% this year.

Young people also recognised the value of a role that helps them earn while they learn – this came top for them in this year’s survey.

The top answer from adults in 2024 and 2025 surveys was ‘Developing skills that mean they are better prepared for the workplace’. It came second this year after a drop of 0.85 percentage points from 14.86% to 14.01%.

The reason ‘developing skills specific to the career they want to go into’ ranked third in 2024 and 2026, with a 2025 position of second – dropping even further from 14.76% to 13.88% in 2026, the largest drop in positive sentiment in this year’s wave.

The last two years have thrown up other interesting results regarding adults’ financial motivations. Only three out of seven of the reasons why parents would support their children into a vocational route increased in sentiment from 2025:

• ‘Getting to know local employers who might want to offer them a job’
• ‘Potential opportunities to 'earn while they learn'’
• ‘Avoiding the cost of university and potential debt as a result’.

This third reason lost support between waves one and two, before returning with a vengeance to place fourth in 2026 – and having gained two percentage points (+2.12pp) since 2025, it was the only reason that gained more than one during the past 12 months.

Enthusiasm for vocational route grows as universities count the cost

In October 2025 the UK Government announced that, from 2026 onwards, tuition fees in England would increase each year in line with inflation. This has some considerable impact on the cost of student loans, and the share pulled from graduates’ wage packets for potentially decades to come.

Furthermore, according to figures from UCAS, the number of students choosing to live at home during their time at university is up 8% on last year.

And a survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) revealed that more than two-thirds of full-time students are taking paid work during term time.

With all these reports released within the last 12 months, it’s clear that financial motivations could lead young people to seek their foundational career experiences in a different way.

And enthusiasm for apprenticeships is growing: Government statistics say the number of apprenticeship starts increased in the last academic year, from 284,190 for 24/25 to 308,770 for 25/26. Just over a fifth (20.6%) of those were under 19s, slightly down on the 24/25 figure of 21.2% but still representative of a good amount of young people taking the next steps in their career away from an academic direction.

The enthusiasm that both parents and young people have shown for vocational training in our 2026 survey shows that families are not simply looking for the cheapest way to kickstart a career; they are weighing cost, outcomes, learning style, and long-term opportunity as they carefully weigh up the options available.

Read more from the 2026 edition of the Vocational Attitudes Survey, and look out for more analysis of the emerging themes.

Vocational Attitudes Survey 2026