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

Is this working class though?

Are the parents in work?

I don't think its the white working class.

More likely white on benefits.

They should separate the 2

To address the comment that when Black families fail we blame the system and when white families fail we blame the parents: it’s missing the point.
Black/immigrant (sweeping generalisation for a second) children do well inspite of the system because their families remind them how precarious their lives are and how they must do better.

White working class kids in the same system
are not told that at home. Their precarity is a result of economic deprivation. But they don’t feel like they don’t belong. They are told they are the core of the nation (and many white working class families were till industries and mines were decimated) so when they fail their community tells them it’s not their fault, it’s the system, it’s the elites and it’s the immigrants.

No working class immigrant family tells a struggling child ‘oh darling school is hard because of institutional racism.’ They tell them to get a grip and do better.

I think it comes down to parenting. I think parents disengage more with boys than girls (across the classes I have to say) and certainly around where I am, education is not especially valued.

Yes I think that’s exactly true

I’d question the premise slightly, on the basis of watching a ton of outwardly-able boys in my son’s year group pretty much check out of school. What I see is them concluding en masse that school has nothing to offer them, and that their future lies in working with their dads or with guys they know. Trades, casual labour within a trade environment, and ‘other projects’ basically.

On that view the problem wouldn’t be the boys, it would be school education funnelling kids towards the skills needed for office work, and measuring achievement accordingly. If boys are sensing that that’s all a waste of time, then maybe it’s no surprise to find them refusing to engage.

They might not even be wrong. If AI is going to be as revolutionary as some people think, then backing yourself to live off your wits is a pretty good strategy.

I'm a medical statistician and we wouldn't use working class etc. as categories when looking at data. We would use quintiles of deprivation based on a persons address. I think this is much more informative as, another poster has pointed out, there is a massive difference between families with traditional working class jobs who have a strong work ethic and contacts that they can put their children in touch with to get them trained into careers and families where there are generations of unemployment/ sporadic zero hours contracts and often a deprived or chaotic home life. I think the difference between those two groups of working class are much greater than any difference between the home lives and aspirations of people working in trades and middle class occupations.

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.

It always makes me laugh when any of our governments go on about a world-leading education - without parental support, it's never going to happen.

'Firstly, immigrants are a self-selecting group. They’ve looked at their situation and decided it is better to seek a new life abroad'

I'd say that it's more to do with motivation to try, and a belief that you can change things for yourself. Based on the experience of immigrants that I know.

I think white working class boys seem to do a lot more gaming than other groups. No statistics, just observed. I don’t know if there are any. But they seem to come home and watch TV or game till dinner/ bed. I don’t think that can be good for kids and I’m sure plays an impact.

Yes. The working class has changed. It tended to be manual workers such as builders and plumbers. Many of these trades are now doing quite nicely. I taught quite a few boys who were going to work for their dad's as electricians etc.
I suppose delivery drivers are working class nowadays. Many of our delivery drivers are Asian.
However, sadly, there is an unemployed class. The ones who neglect their kids, drink and take drugs. The ones who totally lack aspiration.
I suppose the definition of working class can vary from area to area

And I'd say well before this or the previous generation of parents

I think that comment that studying hard would be seen as social death or engaging with education would be looked down upon is indeed very British. I have lived on three continents and that includes North America. White working class people in rural areas also struggle (and some of the same rhetoric around illegals and education being for the elite) but there is absolutely no disparaging of education per se. Partly this is a result of the total absence of a safety net. And partly because it is okay to work very hard and be aspirational even if what you are doing isn’t glamorous or high paying.

Class structures in this country has meant that upper classes have looked down upon ‘aspiration’ or those who work visibly hard while enjoying generational wealth. This plus the availability of a safety net means that attitude has percolated through society.

I think also many don’t realise how ‘behind’ they are esp if you compare them globally. People in villages in Asia and Africa are often hugely and openly aspirational. They will go to great lengths to learn English, get access to things that will better their lives, move thousands of miles to the nearest big city to improve their lot. When their descendants who are now educated want to do better, they look to go abroad. Not just the UK but Canada, Australia, the Middle East- Asian migrants can be found all over. So many Chinese people from working class families who take up jobs with MNCs in Africa so that the next generation can do even better. There isn’t the same desire to do better, to take risks.

(I am always baffled by MN threads where someone’s child has moved from England to Wales or Scotland and they are bereft…my parents made it very clear that their investment in my education was so that I could move far away and do better).

In my experiene its the give-a-shit factor -

Spent a long time in the 90's working with families in inner city Derby in hundreds of home visits for a local charity that offered summer camps for kids. Only once was I asked why their child was chosen and what they would get out of it - mostly the response was don't you want them now? Can't you have them all summer - too many parents just don't care, and without that family or generational support, it never ends well. Sadly, too many parents just don't give a shit about their kids. How is school ever going to succeed if there's no parental support

Lumping all Black children together is unhelpful. My class is 95% non White. No White boys. 3 Eastern European girls. The other children are mostly first generation immigrants having been born outside the UK. Most come from across the African continent and have very different histories, whilst a handful are from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. Their families are different, their culture is different, their only commonality is that they are not White British.
Also, CRT has a lot to answer for!

This is an ongoing multi generational issue among working class boys. Which has never been addressed fully, expectations in working always tended to sway towards apprenticeships post school. So, school itself was seen as unnecessary as high grades were seen as not required. My father now in his 60s got kicked out in the 70s and after his telling off, his parents managed to get him a carpentry apprenticeship. Which he went on to thrive in. My brother also had an apprenticeship after he failed his GCSEs, he only resat his maths to get minimal grades. He wasn't interested in school. Where as i was pushed towards uni to achieve financial independence, as any apprenticeship open to me for instance would not have had the same earning capacity.

Yes Im quite surprised at some of these posts, which would have been deleted had they used the word black, instead of white

I forgot to add in that a lot of boys and their families have a 'too cool for school' attitude too.

Sorry but you sound a bit clueless. The amount of ESL support a newcomer child gets can be zero. There are no special concessions for immigrant children, they are expected to get on in the class (especially in KS1) like everyone else. There is no parallel education system that favours non white children.

From my observations I recall many asian parents couldn't read to their children (depended on children to translate) lived in deprived areas not involved children with extracurricular activities due to expense etc. However, there was an expectation they wanted children to do better than they did.
They would be stricter, focus and pay attention to who they hanged out with, ensured they helped with household duties whether it was shopping or cooking and cleaning.
They often told them do you want to be sweeping streets (nothing wrong with streetsweepers btw) in a way to encourage them to work hard in education.
Basically focused a lot of effort and attention but not necessarily with money.

This makes sense too.

I’m aware that in quite a few of my family members there is a suspicion of education and educated people. Not just a lack of aspiration but a downright suspicion to the point where my teenage dd noticed it recently and asked me about it. These are not unintelligent people and they do have a work ethic, they all have jobs. But they didn’t do nearly as well at school as they could have done and I think it’s an ingrained cultural thing where they just don’t see it as ‘for’ them and education isn’t really presented to them like that either. It would also be social death for some to suddenly start concentrating on their school work.

Frank Field’s report here - it’s quite long

www.poverty.ac.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/The%20Foundation%20Years%20preventing%20poor%20children%20becoming%20adults.pdf

This

I havent read the article or brought up the stats but I believe this is a regional issue, rather than class per se

London and other big cities have huge advantages for the poor in terms of resources and services being poured into education/health etc

In other areas this does not happen, huge swathes of the North and also seaside towns around the country. All deprived areas unless its the posh bits

I would also be interested in the breakdown of what is considered 'working class' or the 'underclass' as these two groups seem to get combined together and they're very different in culture.

My guess would also be that geography is part of it. A lot of these working class white boys will be in areas where there used to be decent jobs for working class men, mining and skilled industrial jobs such as steel or car factories. When these were closed down nothing replaced them and these communities became very poor and still have poor job prospects. There can be really low aspirations in these communities based on a mix of a sense of hopelessness/ not getting above yourself/ a strong sense of family and community which means people may not wish to move away for work. In other words, very little to pull you up or aim for, especially if you are not an academic kid.

Black boys are perhaps more likely to live in cities where there is more opportunity and more wealth on display to aspire to.