'Helicopter parents' should not push children towards A-levels with high earning potential but that bring 'joy', says top girls' school head

“Helicopter parents” should not push children towards A-levels with high earning potential but instead to subjects that bring “joy”, a top girls’ school head has said.

Students’ choices must not be “governed by a certain earning capacity”, according to Jenny Brown, headmistress at the £19,200-a-year City of London School for Girls.

Her comments come as English A-level is experiencing its biggest drop in students in 20 years. The number of students taking the subject has plummeted by 13 per cent since last year, according to provisional data published by the exams watchdog Ofqual.

Earlier this year, headteachers called for an inquiry into whether GCSE reforms are killing the subject. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, described it as “alarming” and urged ministers to take “urgent action”.

Speaking at the Girls’ School Association annual conference in Bristol, Mrs Brown said that when it comes to advising teenagers about which A-level subjects to choose, there can be a “fear” among parents about “earning power" and "steadiness of income”. She said there has been a huge focus on encouraging students to take science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) subjects.

But choices must be about “intrinsic joy and love of the subject”, she said, adding: “People do worse when they are not doing what they love but what they think might get them somewhere. It is a disastrous route to success in exams.”

The “helicopter generation” of parents are now far more involved in their children’s decisions, she said adding that her own parents were “much less worried about our futures”.

Official figures released earlier this month showed that Physical Education and Travel and Tourism A-levels are more lucrative than taking English Literature.

Six years after finishing school, the median salary of those who took History, Classics and Philosophy is below that of their peers who took more vocational subjects, according to data published by the Department for Education.

At age 24-25, the highest earners are those who studied Further Maths at A-levels who are being paid £25,600 on average.

Meanwhile, those who studied humanities subjects for A-levels generally earned under £20,000 by their mid-20s. The median salary for former English Literature students was £19,200 and for their peers who took Philosophy  it was £18,500.

But teenagers who took more vocational subjects went on to earn higher salaries, with Travel and Tourism students going on to earn £20,200 and PE students earning £20,400.