2024 is a big year for the COVID Social Mobility and Opportunities (COSMO) Study cohort. The vast majority are heading into the first full year of their chosen destination post-school, whether that be university, a full-time job or something else.
In light of this milestone, it was fantastic to catch up with some of the Sutton Trust COSMO Youth Panel recently, a smaller group of the same age range who we’ve been working with to inform the COSMO Study (led by ourselves, University College London and the Centre for Longitudinal Studies). Throughout our research with this cohort, we’ll be speaking to the Youth Panel, to help us to shape the issues we explore in the main study. In this session, we heard about what some of the group chose to do after leaving school, as well as how they currently felt about their futures.
There was certainly a sense of excitement amongst this group of young people about getting into something new. Some were also relieved that the period of secondary education, hugely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, was over. But it was clear that issues identified through wave 2 of the COSMO study, including poor mental wellbeing, were still affecting them.
Reflecting on their current circumstances, some from the panel felt they had entered a more mature stage of their lives, with new challenges to overcome, such as managing their own finances. One panellist said that even though they still felt young, the pandemic and changes in the financial climate in particular had led them to maturing more quickly.
