White British pupils underperforming because of parents

If children are doing better up to the age of 5, then surely it is schools that are lettingt the kids down.Would be interested to know how the resesracher has isolated 'parental support' as the reason for under achievement. I find it hard to believe that a family eating meals together really outweighs all the educational stuff going on at school
My belief is that 'minority groups' have in thepast been targeted as prioities in schools.
Wonder whether white kids will now be top focus.r

Increasingly some parents complain about so much - there is an expectation that it the school alone that educates.

There was a very neat table out last year which I now can't find which split GCSE results by race (broader groupings than this report), sex and FSM/non-FSM.

It was obvious that for almost every comparable group, rich trumped poor, girls trumped boys, and non-white trumped white. So a non-FSM south-Asian boy would do better than a FSM south-Asian boy, or a non-FSM white boy, but worse than a non-FSM south Asian girl.

The exceptions were the Chinese children who did exceptionally well regardless of financial status, and the non-FSM black children who did a little worse than the non-FSM white children, (but I suspect that the latter is attributable to the fact that "non-FSM" is a very broad-brush measure of wealth, and the results might reverse if you split down properly by family income quartile).

I agree with the increasing feminisation of early education.Infants are expected to conform and sit quietly from a very young age.Even PE was set up.to be very controlled ( and boring according to ds2).
The syllabus has become so narrow - especially in SATs years - virtually no Sciences ,foreign languages no music.
Derxa I think teachers become disaffected maybe because of SATs.Repeated teaching of the same topics must be very boring.My kids had homework set once a week.It was hardly ever marked.One time my DD spent days drawing a very detailed comic-strip poster on a ' happy heart'.It was never collected in and the teacher never mentioned it again.We actually used it as part of her application for an arts scholarship.at the local independent school.

noble why do you think that is? I wonder if it's a self fulfilling prophecy - boys are expected to be that way and so they are.
I'm a single parent on benefits and so I could just accept that my children won't do well academically and will grow up to be feckless scroungers with ASBOs who will be pregnant/have got their girlfriends pregnant at 16. I won't accept that and my two have grown up with the expectation that their school reports will always have straight As for effort and the knowledge that I would give them a hard time if there was anything less but I could equally have bought into the stereotype of the lone parent and low achieving kids who didn't stand a chance of achieving anything.

I wonder why that is noblegiraffe?

Eh? Surely this is worrying for everyone, no matter what paper they read? Or because it's class-based you think the Telegraph readers won't give a shit?

It's certainly worrying for everyone, yes. It upsets what I would loosely refer to as the 'Guardian' narrative because it implies that it's a cultural rather than governmental deficiency that has given rise to poor achievement amongst the white working class. That could also be viewed as an indictment of Labour giving money to people to stay home for decades.

Pirate I agree. Boys do seem to be seen negatively in the education system, in fact in general. A midwife told me that my son was being a lazy boy because he didn't kick much! She had to listen to a diatribe as well.

Would add, this was the case a couple of years ago - they are all struggling now with the benefits cap.

It's a general impression noblegiraffe which probably encompasses a number of things. For example, teachers preferring to teach girls (as was my experience), teachers not believing that boys enjoy reading, boys behaviour being perceived as worse than girls simply because of their gender.
I may be wrong, but I believe it's an issue in our education system.

"They're already housed for life by the council and/or their parents, and with 70 quid a week dole money, they're making a hefty profit on what they'd get in a NMW job. "

I know 3 women who are in their 30's, with secure tendencies on 4 bedroom houses, the equivalent of 55k a year in earned income each through benefits (40k in hand to cover all living costs including rent). None of them has any qualifications or work experience. They have achieved this income and secure housing by producing 6 children each as single parents.

Pirate my son will read but it's very much on his terms. He goes through the school reading scheme books at a rate of knots because they get points for doing the quizzes and he wants to be the one with the top number of points, he's extremely competitive. He's had all the encouragement to love books and if he finds a book he likes then he will read it in a day but he refuses to look at books and so on, it's a nightmare. School have been f* all use in encouraging him. I just get the crap that he's a typical boy, thankfully he is interested in learning and that makes up for it - I can get him to read but on his terms; he'll read BBC History magazine or National Geographic but won't touch a fiction book.

I am a full-time private tutor and tutor children from a wide range of backgrounds.

I realise it's hardly a scientific sample, but ime, Asian families (and other non-white British backgrounds for want of a better way to express it) will often pay for extra help and support outside of school, even when they are relatively poor and they will invest in it long term, not just for a couple of weeks before exams. My theory is that having relocated from elsewhere, there is a bigger interest in the children being able to fulfill the potential that the move afforded them (even if 2nd or 3rd generation, they are often more aware of the opportunities out there etc), whereas there is maybe more of a tendency from white British from poorer backgrounds to "accept their lot", to not aspire to as much etc. I think it's probably associated with the typical class-system, not to aspire to ideas above your station etc. I remember once a teacher saying about ds1 (aged 6 at the time, " he thinks he's something special " (said in a not nice way). My reply? "They should ALL think they are something special" - his dare society try to manage the expectations of a child so young already. (And yes, I think it is society, not just that particular teacher. I think she was simply voicing what many others think - children from certain areas, certain backgrounds etc shouldn't want too much, expect too much, get too many ideas about themselves etc).

I can relate to your post smallcarrot Both my ds devour books and yet I've had several teachers tell me how boys don't read
When ds1 started school another teacher told me how ds's teacher didn't like teaching boys. I was appalled. The feminisation of teaching, especially in the early years, is a problem for boys imo. That probably sounds terribly sexist but I really don't mean it to.
Both ds attend school with a high percentage of friends who are Asian. Most of these friends tell my boys that if they don't do well at school, they will find themselves in huge trouble. A couple claim to get physically beaten in they don't perform well in exams.

I don't think children have shorter attention spans- look how long some of them will play minecraft!
I think it's not channelled the way it would have been previously, and I do think fast cut television had a part to play in that. However, children beginning school now haven't been raised on television, but apps. We will see what the impact of that is in fifteen years time.

You don't need qualifications - or basic literacy - to get that. Low earning jobs aren't that appealing, to be honest - and with centuries of manual labour in their veins, they aren't being shown any other options.

So why aren't they being shown any other options? Maybe the parents lack the motivation to demonstrate that there is more out there than NMW jobs but can schools do anything to help?

DS says that his peers want to be you-tubers, footballers etc etc. His little group of friends want to be a doctor, a physiotherapist, a teacher and a hotel manager. Why the difference? Aspirational families presumably make the difference?

Children from first generation immigrant families are part of a self selecting group: those who come from a background where they are smart enough, energetic enough, enterprising enough to organise a new life in another country and learn a new language. They are a cut above the rest.

A lot of English people can't speak their native tongue well, and couldn't organise a trip to the next town, let alone emigrate and learn a new language in a completely alien country.

I've ALWAYS been grateful for new immigrants coming here and improving the stock (so to speak).

I don't know if this was mentioned but there was a thread where a MNer had been burgled by a couple of ten year olds who she'd been kind to. Ten years old!!!

The police suggested that the victim accepted a hand written apology letter rather than press charges. These children were already doing antisocial things like throwing stones at the Deputy Head's house.

I know somebody is going to mentioned Special Needs but some children don't and need rescuing. Cutting investment in social care is just storing up police problems in future.

Yes exactly. I have two now teenage boys. I never had any truck with that bollocks. The elder has 11A* at GCSE. He I wouldn't have got that if he hadn't been able to sit and concentrate, if I'd assumed from before school that boys aren't able to do that.

Of the white youngsters I know who've failed at school, there's shrewd financial reasons. They're already housed for life by the council and/or their parents, and with 70 quid a week dole money, they're making a hefty profit on what they'd get in a NMW job.

You don't need qualifications - or basic literacy - to get that. Low earning jobs aren't that appealing, to be honest - and with centuries of manual labour in their veins, they aren't being shown any other options.

Nowadays, with the poor getting even poorer, you'd have to be an idiot to waste a lot of time at school only to end up on 7 quid an hour, which won't house or feed you.

I think there is a severe problem in England with edutainment, people don't expect or want learning to be boring and hard. Well- it is. And the sooner we lose the attitude that school should be fun and entertaining, the sooner learning will improve.
I agree to an extent. I think instant gratification has stolen the satisfaction of achievement from hard work (not that learning is boring). There is a defeatist attitude that children have shorter attention spans, but evolution doesn't work that quickly. Low expectation is a problem and the edutainment approach is part of this.