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

[Carla786]

A lot of stuff I've read recently has argued the way school is set up disadvantages boys compared to girls. But this doesn't explain why white working class boys would perform worse than wc boys of other ethnicities.
Asian wc boys are more likely to have present fathers,,but black wc boys less likely than white boys (I think). So absent fathers I'm sure are part of the problem, but then maybe also black boys then have a protective factor that still boosts performance which white boys don't have? What could this be?

And how can white wc boys be helped? The question also remains why white wc girls are apparently less affected too : maybe I suppose tying in to school methods being more suited to the average girl?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/03/24/the-betrayal-of-white-working-class-boys/

Over complicating things here. Just read with your kid at home, I taught mine to read before she started reception. It’s not a big deal but does require parents to take responsibility for their own children, if you know your child can’t read then sort it out. In the absence of SEN theres literally no reason a child shouldn’t be able to read by yr 3.

Your whole reply shows how clueless you are. You're talking nonsense. Having worked in schools I've never see what you're referring to. It may exist in some places, but isn't widespread across the country and thus isn't relevant to the discussion.

A multi-generational lack of opportunity following de-industrialisation in the north. The world of work looks very different to what it did when WW2 ended. Increasingly the options available for manual and skilled labour decreased (and those jobs were lower paid compared to those in professional jobs). Many immigrant families have done a pivot in the course of generations: it might be that your grandfather was working class where you came from, but many I think were quick to see that they needed new skills and education.

It may be that Black British boys growing up in single family homes see their mums juggling multiple jobs (just as their grannies and grandads did). There is a memory in many families of life in Britain being precarious. So the community around them reminds them that they must do better.

White working class precarity is based on rapid industrial change and not having to uproot one’s life or racism. So it is easy to blame the state. That plus an unwillingness to invest in these areas from governments who didn’t consider them their allies (years of Tory govt from the 1950s onwards that deeply mistrusted northern working class families, viciously attacked strikers etc) and simply told these families to do better without investing in them.

@FairKoala I see what you’re saying but I also think the way school is set up also doesn’t really suit many girls. Also the way schools are set up is pretty much the same as it was when most girls had no education at all, so it’s not set up that way to favour girls, it’s set up that way because it’s the most expedient way of educating a large group of kids.

I do agree that if for any reason you get left behind in English or Math at a young age in the UK then that is generally that and you’ll be unlikely to ever catch up. That was probably also the same in the 80s and 90s.

Parental attitudes and value of education is key. My DC went to a very diverse primary school for a time. Quite a few Syrian refugees, Pakistanis, Brazilians..... They all really valued education, made sure their DC attended and paid attention. The cohort that really dragged the school down was the white working class - they thought school was pointless and was a chore. I felt really sorry for these DC, particularly the bright ones as they never achieved their potential as it was sapped out of them.

Geographic location - unfortunately other regions have not been able to replicate the 'London effect' in education. It's hard to get excellent, highly motivated teachers out to other parts of the country.

Accessibility to cities or wealth centres. Blackpool has already been mentioned, but any working class area with poor transport links into the nearest biggest city has a real detrimental effect. It's very difficult to commute from Blackpool to Manchester without a car and even then it's a schlep. Northern rail is crap. I grew up in this area. I now live in the commuter belt to London. Having access to London just gives you so many more opportunities than living in other areas of the country.

Interesting thread @Carla786 . I’m Black Caribbean but live in a diverse area . Without making sweeping generalisations, Black Africans really value education, even if dad isn’t on the scene . Comments such as “you should be a Dr, accountant, architect and engineer” are normal comments within the community.

I think some white working class parents do not realise the world of work isn’t the same anymore. A few of my white working class parents friends from school were told to leave colleague and get a job in a shop when I was 16, I was aghast. One friends mum was so proud that her daughter at 17, was earning £600 a month (2006), I thought it would be better to earn £600 a week.

My white working class friends who left school early and whose parents didn’t value education , are now stuck in low paid jobs with little options for progression. I went onto to study a masters degree and have a complete different lifestyle .

Also, if you live in an area where education isn’t valued , you’d be the odd one out studying , going to uni to “better yourself”.

But for those kids left behind in English and Maths there were other employment options. When those vanished, those families became reliant on the state. Black British families who came even before Windrush didn’t always live in these northern towns- they were concentrated in the metropolitan areas as that’s where jobs were. And remember many came to Britain to work for the NHS or in post war industry. So they came to work, and as their jobs disappeared both geography and a sense of precarity meant that they encouraged the next generation to pivot and at least get a bare minimum education.

It is also possible that the gap has then widened in the last decade as a result of austerity and an attitude of ‘what’s the point of studying’ which political leaders have used- the anti intellectual culture, the demonisation of the ‘other’, being told that it’s not your fault if you are failing or three generations haven’t had a job, it’s the ‘elite’, the migrants, the system. Note those politicians never have a solution for these young boys except to rile them up.

Growing up in deprived areas, multigenerstionsö unemployment due to de industreslasation no job prospects, no political intrest, school always pushing university, .....

This, the uk had a strong tradition of pushing working class boys towards trades & manufacturing/heavy industry jobs that didn't require academic exams. Lots of white working class boys for generations had fathers who had decent apprenticesship routes open to them and became plumbers, bricklayers, roofers, or rose through ranks in industry, who did fine in life and earned decent wages.

We then mysteriously stopped encouraging this and now have a shortage of tradespeople. We also got rid of industries and now pay everyone except lawyers, finance folk & IT crap wages.

Also for many other ethnicities there's a backstory of migration. The people who tend to choose to migrate thousands of miles to improve their life tend to be driven, value education and aspire to professional occupations, and they pass this on to their kids.

I might get flamed for this but look at the boards about schools and exams on MN (which is largely still MC). So many parents saying that they have allowed their kids to opt out of doing well because ‘I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on a child.’ The thing is that the broad structure of the UK education system hasn’t changed in decades. The idea you take one set of exams at 15/16 and then more specialised exams at 17/18.

In fact the British exported this to the colonies and many colonial countries have the exact same system (but with local exam boards). So the system is not new to families. What has changed is what you can do with that education. Except that people don’t realise that even if you are going to do something manual, having that education to begin with gives you options as you grow older. Do you want to upskill in your 30s- suddenly the lack of English and esp Maths is holding you back. And politicians have again played on this divide- devaluing education, underfunding it and allowing divisive rhetoric to flourish.

In the example above what is the career progression of the 16 year old working in retail? At some point unless she is exceptionally lucky, a new grad will become her manager at 25. And that route upwards will be closed by her lack of education.

This in droves. Two years ago I moved to a boy's secondary that is fairly high in FSM. Classes are streamed and FSM recipients are much higher towards the bottom end. The above quote could sum up the crux of the problem. Generational unemployment has led to a particularly warped type of man. Zero accountability, zero responsibility, high levels of anger misdirected towards "illegals" and women. School is viewed as a waste of time and teachers are part of the 'agenda'. Nothing will change until these boys are taken out of their areas.
Edited: the unemployed status seems to be some sort of badge of honour, it's not the case that they are actively job seeking. It's proof that immigrants (who are all rapists and paedophiles btw) are stealing their jobs and therefore they shouldn't try as it's the governments plan to replace them with foreign men. There is no point trying to bring in any sort of factual argument such as the roles these immigrants have in the NHS, because that's just "part of the plan".

Many immigrants are already from more well educated backgrounds and better economic situations. That is how they were able to come here to study and work in the first place.

Surely its also partly a legacy of an industrial era: a generation/two generations ago a white working class man could leave school at 16 and get a reasonably good blue collar job which he could support his family on.

Which would explain why the parents wouldn’t value education. From their perspective its an expensive waste of time.

That mindset may have served white working class boys fine during a period of more or less full employment. But in a hyper competitive environment where everyone needs an edge it doesn’t help.

This is why it worries me that people are obsessed with funnelling everyone into apprenticeships all the time on here. Its true that they are often a better option for many kids than university. But the assumption that everyone is going to get an apprenticeship to become a plumber and therefore there’s no need to sweat getting good GCSEs is surprisingly prevalent.

It fosters an environment of general apathy and distrust of education and higher education in particular which is definitely more noticeable among white working class boys than in the general population.

Im not sure this is reasonable. Boys are no less capable of reading well than girls. Learning disabilities aside what gets most children reading well is parental input - its not really true that you learn at school. School provide the bricks - parents teach the child to build the wall. Children who aren't read to from infancy, who's parents don't have access to many books, are the ones which tend to make slow progress.

You see the effect of this in "naice" schools in middle class areas. In my children's school the only children who weren't reading fluently by the end of year two were those with learning difficulties eg dyslexia. A high proportion could read quite well even by the end of year 1. This is a school where parents make their children read to them every single day, who supplement the school books with extra books they've bought or got in the local library. Parents who listen carefully to the phonics information presented by school, find out more about it, and reinforce it at home. Who read lots of good quality literature aloud to their children & continue reading to them all the way through primary school.

Do you think there’s an element of that thing where kids are sweethearts when they go to a friend’s house but complete lazy shits to their own parents?

This is absolutely it, obviously the media is doing its best to portray migrants as feckless scroungers, but reality is these are the families who had the determination to try for a better life.

The theory also applies to other situations. When I lived in London I knew lots of Aussies, they were all in professional roles, liked to travel, outgoing etc. When I visited Australia I quickly realised this was a very narrow snapshot of the population!

I’m from a council estate, went to council estate schools and also work in them. The difference from when I went in the 80’s/90’s is unbelievable. There is just so much violence, threatening language, racism and misogyny. One school I was in had over 70% PP. There was a lot of supply teachers and TA’s. Most would do a day and then never come back even if they’d originally committed to longer.

There was roughly 5-10 children moving to other schools each week and the equivalent starting, so lots of classroom disruption. The difference between the parents was astounding. The local white (I can’t call them working class as the majority have never worked) parents didn’t give much of a shit about education. They weren’t bothered about getting their children there on time, attendance, homework and didn’t see the point. I was local to this school and would sometimes be on the bus listening to the parents conversations.

I’ve seen fights break out between parents on buses. Full on arguments that have carried on onto the street. 3 mums after dropping their children off, got on the bus and were getting each other riled up about one of the other mums as she’d not let her daughter stay at one of their houses due to them having their recently released from prison and on the paedo register brother staying there. They were saying she was stuck up and were off to her house to teach her a lesson. There wasn’t many good examples of parenting around. My mum went to this school and it was nothing like it back then. There just seems to be this expectation that the world owes them everything.

I will just add that not all of the white local parents were unemployed and like the above. There were just so many that they are the ones that stand out.

I don't think people say it to avoid the importance of academic exams.

They say it because:

• they can't get a plumber for love nor money
• they have to pay £400 to a plumber for a days work because the lack of plumbers means they can charge the earth
• they can see that plumbers are useful, necessary and won't be replaced by AI
• they themselves struggle with corporates/professional jobs demanding longer and longer hours and less flexibility, while self employed people set their own hours (loads i use start early but finish at 4 or so & go to collect their kids).

In my area it is white with boys and when you drill down in to black as a group the black carribbean subset can have similar outcomes . There was a great project that targeted the at risk groups with mentors and tutoring but its expensive to run and it eventually lost funding so had to fight for charitable donations making it much harder for the staff sadly.

I’m a music tutor I visit schools and people’s homes. I see all sorts of families. For nearly all my students the white parents are far far less engaged with their children than non-white parents.

I think you’re a bit behind as to what apprenticeships are like now. Many are harder to get in than into uni, entrance requirements are high and they can be for all sorts of things- engineering, IT etc. The beauty of them is you get on the job skills and a full cv as opposed to a degree the same as everybody else, debt and nothing to go on your cv. There is a reason people push them, they’re highly desirable.

This really isn’t a new issue at all. We studied it in sociology in my gcse and a levels so over 20 years ago! Literally talked about white boys in education. One reason that came straight to my mind was the theory white families have less emphasis on the importance of education than other cultures /races. If you think I was studying this 20 years ago many of the boys back then will now be dads, these boys were let down by the education system then so they may not promote the idea of education as it didn’t serve them and the cycle continues. There’s a multitude of theories as to why

You can throw as many tools as you like at people, but they have to be willing to receive them and do their part. Often the victimisation complex is so deeply entrenched that it's a lost cause from day 1.
I live in the heart of a very white working class area. Very high levels of social housing, the sort of area where people's grandparents also lived in the street when they were young and siblings are neighbours. Until you see it for yourself, it's very hard to fathom that the mentality of the parents is not always set up to strive for their DC. Priorities can be very different. There are women's centres here that offer a lot of free courses, from functional skills right up to foundation degree. Uptake is low from locals and women (predominantly immigrant) then come in from outside the locality to avail of these services. The centres are delighted about this as they have to have numbers to justify their funding, but locals are furious and say their DC will never get the same chances the "illegals" get. It's a never ending circuit really.

Or maybe the determination and drive to progress and improve themselves evident in first generation immigrants gets diluted the more generations are born here.

There is probably also something in the explanation of how hard it was for the first generation to emmigrate and how poor they were.

I know my dad came in 50s as part of a drive to get more steel workers. My dad worked hard all his life and contributed to society but he did not really value education and thought university a waste of time. He came from real deprivation and dire poverty, lots of unimaginable trauma before he was 10.

My mothers family was poor but not the same levrl, she did not go to school past 14 but she had wanted to, but they could not afford it.

My mother was the one who supported me and my siblings in going to university if we wanted to . She had to actively fight my dad in it, especially as we were all girl. My dad saw educating us as a waste of time

Maybe many of the the white working class boys come from backgrounds where noone thinks education is worthwhile for them.

I