Is the Role of Parents in Student Career Decisions Shinking?

Two years of our National FE Student Choices Survey are telling us the same thing. Parental influence on students' course and career decisions is falling. The drop is visible across both further education and sixth form colleges, but it is not happening evenly, and the data offers some clues as to why.

The headline numbers

In 2024/25, 73 per cent of FE college students and 69 per cent of sixth form students said their parents had been at least quite important in their course decisions. By 2025/26, those figures had fallen to 57 per cent and 44 per cent respectively. That is a drop of 16 percentage points at FE colleges and 25 points at sixth form colleges in a single year.

The proportion saying parents were "very" influential tells a similar story. At FE colleges it fell from 36 per cent to 21 per cent. At sixth form colleges it fell from 25 per cent to 11 per cent.

It is worth noting that the two surveys used slightly different question wording, which means the absolute figures should be treated with some care when comparing directly. But the direction is consistent across every measure we have, and the scale of the shift at sixth form colleges in particular invites some explanation.

Fewer family connections in the same field

One of the strongest amplifiers of parental influence in our data is having a family member already working in a similar sector to the one a student wants to enter. When that connection exists, parents are roughly twice as likely to be rated as very influential. When it does not, their influence is considerably more modest.

Between our two survey years, the proportion of sixth form students reporting a family connection in their target field fell from 21 per cent to 13 per cent. At FE colleges the figure barely moved, from 29 per cent to 27 per cent. Fewer sixth form students are arriving with a parent whose experience is directly relevant to where they want to go, and that is one plausible contributor to the steeper drop in reported parental influence at those institutions.

Sixth form students are becoming less certain about their direction

A second pattern stands out at sixth form colleges specifically. In 2024/25, 67 per cent of sixth form students said they knew what job they wanted after finishing their education. By 2025/26, that figure had dropped to 55 per cent. At FE colleges the equivalent figures were 71 per cent and 70 per cent, effectively unchanged.

This matters because parental influence tends to be strongest when a parent has direct experience of the path their child is considering. When students are less certain about where they are heading, the relevance of any one source of guidance, including parents, may naturally diminish. The drop in career certainty at sixth form colleges tracks closely with the drop in reported parental influence at those same institutions.

The growing role of AI in career research

Our 2025/26 survey included questions about AI and automation that were not part of the earlier wave. The results suggest a significant level of anxiety, with 44 per cent of sixth form students and 43 per cent of FE students saying they were worried that AI would replace jobs. A further 9 per cent of sixth form students said they had already changed their career plans because of AI.

One possible effect of that anxiety is a quiet erosion of parental authority on career matters. If students feel the careers their parents know are less stable than they once were, parental experience in those fields carries less weight. A parent who spent 20 years in a profession that AI is reshaping may feel like a less reliable guide than they did even a year ago.

There is also a more direct possibility. Students may increasingly be turning to AI tools to research course and career choices before they speak to anyone else. Wider research suggests this is already happening at scale. HEPI's Student Generative AI Survey found that 92 per cent of UK undergraduate students were using AI tools in some form in 2025, up from 66 per cent the previous year, a pace of change its author described as "almost unheard of." A landscape review of AI in career guidance published jointly by the Nuffield Foundation and the Ada Lovelace Institute in 2025, and highlighted by the Career Development Institute, found that young people are already using tools such as ChatGPT for career exploration, with 43 per cent of graduates having used AI to work on job applications and 29 per cent to prepare for interviews. The CDI has since issued its own guidance for careers practitioners on how to respond to students arriving with AI-generated research, recognising that the shift is already well underway.

Researching which jobs a course leads to, what qualifications different roles require, what sectors are growing: this is precisely the kind of task these tools handle well. It is also precisely the kind of information our students say they most want when making course choices.

Whether students are using AI alongside traditional sources of guidance or instead of them remains an open question for the sector. What is clear is that the tools are there, the adoption is rapid, and the information students are looking for is well within what those tools can provide.

A shift in the nature of the relationship, not just its strength

Perhaps the most intriguing finding sits alongside the drop in influence. In 2025/26, sixth form students were more likely to name parents as their primary source of advice on courses and careers (34 per cent) than to name teachers (31 per cent). In 2024/25 it was teachers who came first at both college types, with parents in second place.

So sixth form students are reporting lower parental influence on their decisions, while simultaneously turning to parents more often as their first source of advice. This is not necessarily a contradiction. It may suggest a shift in the nature of the relationship, with parents moving from a directive role to a more consultative one, where they are a trusted sounding board without necessarily shaping the outcome.

At FE colleges the picture moved in the opposite direction. Parents dropped from 28 per cent to 24 per cent as a first advice source, while teachers rose from 37 per cent to 41 per cent. FE students are turning more to institutional guidance as parental influence falls, rather than to parents for conversation.

What this means for guidance

A reduction in parental influence is not straightforwardly good or bad for students. Parents are not always better-informed than careers professionals, and the data consistently shows that students with family in a vocational field tend to choose that field regardless of other options. Reducing that pull could mean more genuinely open decision-making.

But it does create a space that needs filling. Students who previously relied on parents for directional confidence are now less certain, particularly at sixth form colleges, where career clarity has dropped by 12 percentage points in a year. Career advisers appear consistently across both years and both college types at around 23 to 27 per cent as a first advice source. That figure has barely moved despite the shifts around it.

If students are becoming less anchored by parental guidance and more uncertain about their futures, the role of professional careers support has rarely been more timely. The question is whether it is currently scaled to meet that moment.

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The National FE Student Choices Survey is carried out annually by Pathways. The 2024/25 survey ran in March and April 2025. The 2025/26 survey ran between November 2025 and March 2026. Combined responses across both years total 2,209 students across further education and sixth form colleges in England and Wales.