To wonder why working class white boys do worse than any other ethnic group, and how we can change this?

What on earth are you smoking? What a mental response.

It is ignorant but if we take away the second part of that inflammatory sentence and say that “ societal (and I include the govt) and parental aspirations for working class white boys haven’t adapted to the ways in which the economy has changed in the places where many live”, there is some truth to that. As someone said elsewhere if you can look the problem squarely in the eye, then you can target intervention.

I think the example where local community schemes for girls/women in a largely white working class area had no uptake till it was being taken up by new (not v educated) immigrant women is very telling. You can’t throw schemes at historically deprived communities- you have to do the ground work to show them why it matters and how they will benefit.

My colleague came here from Iran in the early 90s along with her husband and two very small children. They had no money and lived in a dodgy high rise council flat. Married at 16, two children by 20. Their adult children are now a government advisor and a lawyer. She became a university administrator and her husband some whizz in tech. Their house was purchased for a million quid.

Generally, girls behave better at school because they seek approval from an authority figure whereas boys are programmed to push the boundaries further and harder.
Some of this is down to money from the government because they tend to have a “flavour of the month” idea and most recently it hasn’t supported white working class boys. However, that is not the entire problem, as previous posters have mentioned, unfortunately our working class doesn’t always appear to value education and therefore doesn’t encourage children to value education as a way of bettering themselves.
An education system that allows so many children not to achieve a grade 4 GCSE in English and/or maths is appalling. I know that teachers are ground down by poor behaviour in many classrooms but until we can resolve the issues of classroom management our working class children particularly will continue to be failed by the education system.
I wonder whether there is any difference in the levels of discipline in white working class homes compared to other homes and whether this is also having a bearing on the boys outcomes?

This is a really circular conclusion. Have you ever thought that it is generational neglect that has caused these issues (both political and emotional). They don’t think the world owes them a living because they are white - it’s that they have been left behind in our modern world. Children of economic migrants have always done well by the way - it’s why the catholic schools used to outperform. These children need to be given a real alternative and an ability to be aspirational. So many schemes are not open to these young financially poor boys often with chaotic homes - and they are commonly told they are actually privileged.

@FairKoalathe extra lessons and support you describe no longer exist IME. I was a teacher for over 20 years. Back in the late 90s-early 2000s, I worked as what was called an EMA (or EMAG) teacher. Essentially it stood for Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant and it was extra money given to schools to pay for extra teachers to raise achievement and attainment amongst children from specific backgrounds.

That money is long gone. There is no funding like that now that I know off. Yes, there is now funding attached to Pupil Premium but this funding isn’t necessarily linked to language and literacy development.

Your comments about reading by Year 3 are way off. Any child who starts school in Reception, who attends regularly through their first 3 years of schooling will have been taught a solid diet of phonics and how to apply it to reading. That’s as long as they attend and are willing/able/ready to engage.

I have taught in schools where 95% of the children speak English as their second language. Where some children walk through the door in Reception with no English or only a few words they know from CBeebies. In that school, every child was expected to be able to read in English by the end of Year 2. The children who routinely underachieved were the very small
numbers of white boys who came from unemployed families. Not working class as no one worked.

The biggest difference is the parent and their willingness to engage with the school and its teachers. Poverty of expectation is what harms white, working class boys. I have run early reading workshops for parents attend by mums who speak no English themselves and are desperate to help their dc learn. Families where older cousins help the little ones with reading at home.

I am from a white, working class family. My mum still lives in the council flat in which I was raised. We had very little growing up and money was extremely tight. During the winter months, my mum couldn’t afford to have the heating on. So l, every day, she took us to the local library where it was warm. No surprise, I was reading before I started school.

The other thing that has happened (and this has always been true to some extent) is that working class jobs are much more vulnerable to economic shocks. So look at COVID and it’s fall out.

When there is a recession it hits across the board and when you were a middle manager in a good company and you have to stack shelves in Tesco that feels terrible. But the reality is that your education means when the economy recovers you have the ability to bounce back. But if you started working with no educational qualifications in a largely dead end job and then that job disappears, where do you go?

Deindustrialisationand and automation is a big issue especially in rural areas it means there are less manual and industrial jobs.

I also think work ethics and parental expectations comes in to it.

Yes. I was often told, by wwc girls, "my mum hasn't got any gcses and she's doing OK. There's no point in gcses"
It's a bit difficult to answer that one without criticising mum. Dad had moved on and got a new family.

I've been surprised by the difference in parental attitudes towards school since my son started primary. I'm an immigrant and generally speaking, the white British parents at my son's school are often more entitled and less engaged. I was surprised at how they would cheerfully say they don't bother doing the homework or projects. Sometimes they wouldn't even know about them because they said they didn't read the emails.

This doesn't apply to every white British parent of course, and some of them were very engaged with the school. It's difficult to ignore the overall trends though. These parents seem to have high expectations of the school and demand more while also engaging less themselves.

I'm not from an impoverished background myself and haven't moved to the UK for a better life or anything like that. But I was raised with a strong respect for education and the educational system.

This is a big part of the problem, we should be able to talk about issues that are affecting white people without the mega fragility and being accused of racism. These things have been said about black and brown families and continue to do so. Tower Hamlets is a very good example where specific intervention went a long way. In order to come up with a solution the problems need to be spoken about first though.

Deindustrialisation.

When the mine or mill or factory went so did the miners institute, the social club, the friendly society, the sports clubs, the brass and concert bands, the outings, the apprenticeships, the day release and night classes, the chapel, the buses and trains, the sense of civic pride.

Then the deep vein of traditional socialism and collectivism that bound together industrial towns was vilified and we were told it was a bold new age of individualism and society didn’t matter.

And here we are.

Possibly not entirely related to race, but I suspect a lot of undiagnosed SEN / lack of support so young boys disengage and are made to feel stupid which is very sad. I’ve met a lot of very smart men over the years who failed at school / dropped out

I was reading James Rebanks' book about being a farmer. He says he was working on his family farm from about eight, being trained up to take over. His grandfather was terrified of the fact that he was good at school and put a lot of energy into convincing him that school was pointless. He went to an awful failing school and just couldn't see the point of learning when he knew what he was going to do when he left home. He quit school at 15 with no GCSEs.
Whereas his sisters knew there was only one farm and they weren't going to inherit. They also weren't expected to provide physical labour in the same way. So they both ended up going to grammar school and later university. (Rebanks also ended up at Cambridge, but not until his twenties).
I think a lot of working class towns were built around the idea that every boy went down the mine or worked in the local factory or on the land or whatever. Whereas girls had more freedom to choose something different for themselves if they wanted. Of course those jobs no longer exist for many boys but I'm not sure culturally people have caught up.
And I think if your dad has a trade or a business, there's still an expectation that you'll follow him into it in some areas. Or at least, there's that way out if you're struggling. Why should I bother with maths, I can just go work for my dad?
Rebanks points out that farming is actually a job that needs a lot of intelligence - it's so subsidence that making one bad deal can be disastrous. Whereas I think the equivalent jobs for bright working class girls are things like nursing, which need qualifications.

I saw what was happening at my elder DD’s school, it was for 14-18 so past the point school is “useful” as childcare. Attendance was at 70%, my dd wasn’t helping their stats but her was medical hence being there so much, senco said that many mums (and it was single mums) encouraged daughters to stay off to help with childcare and household tasks for younger siblings, for boys they were often off due to working off the record, dads (rarely lived with them) if working did manual jobs requiring no qualifications or just said claim the dole and work off the record. By year 11 a steady stream of girls were pregnant, still believing they would get a house (they didn’t, it was a bedsit if lucky). Population was predominantly white working class with just a small number coming in from an affluent suburb to the north (full disclosure, we lived there). My other dc didn’t go to this school, went to the only other school in the borough, this time 50% Asian (principally Gujarati decent via Kenya/uganda) and difference was stark, over a dozen getting into Oxbridge annually, many getting into top medical schools except average earnings per household was only £3-4K pa higher, not hugely different yet benefits were lower as most worked for low wages/profits from their many businesses.

seeing a problem isn’t the same as correcting a problem, good luck to whoever is sorting this out

The grandparents of those white working class boys were not aspiring for Oxbridge and neither were their fathers. Scholarships for Black students isn’t what is holding them
back. Inherent class structures are.
Hence studying hard being seen as social death or uncool. Or getting above your station.

Immigrants by virtue of being immigrants stand outside the class system. I know of a Filipino nurse who signed up her kid for Eton when he was born. And told him every single day to work hard so he could sit the test. He did, and got a scholarship. Good for him! He’s now going to medical school. She didn’t think ‘ah that posh place with a weird uniform isn’t for the likes of us.’ She wasn’t being held back by class expectations.

They are on benefits, in many cases, because traditional working class jobs like mining, dock worker etc no longer exist.

'Interestingly, my DD spent a year at a British uni in Southeast Asia - she's very educationally focused and doing a Master's in a STEM subject - she was amazed how much more focused the students were than those in the UK.'

I agree. Even comparing with some EU education systems, UK comes out... well, not great. We start school earlier, finish earlier, enter job market at a younger age.

There's also the power of low expectations. There's a ton of research on that topic.

There are less than 150 Black students across all degree courses at Oxford every year. 19% of Eton is BAME and most of that is wealthy immigrant families.

That post above is EXACTLY the problem.
If you are failing economically/educationally then someone else (usually a different race) must be to blame. Do you seriously think white working class boys in Year 5 are thinking ‘I had better not study because I can’t go to Eton or Oxford.’

Black and Asian kids have an awareness instilled into them that they have to work harder than their white counterparts do to even get a sniff of the same opportunities in life.

I would say their parents are the biggest factors.

Some parents just pass on their lack of respect for education/teachers combined with a poor work ethic and high sense of entitlement.

Of course funding cuts to family and young people support services are an additional factor.

Other ethnic groups and immigrants who are equally economically disadvantaged do better for their children because their values include praising education, good work ethics and a willingness to start businesses, religion and more respect for authority.

It is not something that the state only can fix until parents step up too.

I'm sure there is an element of this. I lived (and used to teach) in a former mining area. In the past every boy was almost guaranteed a job in the pit without formal qualifications but there are now two generations where this has not been the case and there are still a hardcore of families that have not moved on. Immigrant families, on the other hand, came with aspirations for their children to achieve and push them academically.

This is not a recent thing. When I was teaching in London in the 80s white working class boys were the ones lagging behind then while Asian children (a lot of Vietnamese 'boat people' at that time) arrived not speaking English but excelled in exams within a few years..

Anecdata and not from working class but gaming seems to affect boys far more than girls. It takes hours and hours and hours from their life. Affects focus and concentration, offers constant easy wins and is addictive.

Whilst talking about thatcher let's talk about Red Robbo and British Leyland. Arthur scargill and the miners strike.
White working class men who helped to destroy British industry.
Thatcher declared: we're all middle class now. For most people, living standards improved during her time in office.