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/

Many immigrants are highly aspirational and want better for their children. It’s about expectations OP.
Maybe black and Asian parents are stricter? (Huge generalisation obvs)

Immigrants are strong people who have often fled dangerous situations - they are hard working (if maybe not formally educated) and can see the benefits of education for their kids.

Agreed. Also did GCSE sociology back in the day. But that’s an aside. It’s not a new issue. We have to question a society that allows this to happen. These families know they have a safety net in the welfare state. If you have no backup, you work harder. Look how many immigrants flourished with the great American Dream. But there was a necessity there, no benefits if you were on the bones of your backside. It’s is an issue that is more prevalent in the north, but the north is hardly a barren wasteland. Having grown up in a northern town, the opportunities were still there. Some people just chose not to take them.

The kinds of local industries they would have worked in have gone. Also, working class white males seem to be the only group it’s fine to be absolutely vile about.

This.

It’s not the school’s fault. It’s their families and their wider community.

If everyone around you doesn’t care about education, has superficial values, doesn’t promote hard work then it’s going to impact the effort you make in school. Girls may be more likely to want to please teachers and conform so are less likely to be affected.

We knew a boy who was a pain in the arse and disruptive for different reasons - he had wimpy, drippy parents who didn’t set boundaries. In the end it was his friends who stepped up and told him to stop being annoying.

It's so complex and there are many reasons, partly because the current curriculum only celebrates academic achievement, and as a pp said even traditional vocational routes require passes in maths now.

I think also it's a massive cultural difference. Many white working class areas are areas which experienced industrial decline and subsequent regeneration so, slum clwarance and relocation failed high rise tower blocks, modern regeneration schemes. In all of this traditional communities have been fractured for example church, pubs, sports teams etc. Over time I think this has massively dilited community pride and peer pressure in white working class communities. The days of older ladies washing their front step and scornful comments about the neighbours net curtains and giving the local kids a clip round the ear are long gone and in these communities.

Many more recent migrant groups may still bring that sense of compliance, pride or respect for authority from their home region where culture is very different, perhaps they are used to a more controlling government or prehaps more church / religious involvement. As a teacher I find parents very different even from Eastern Europe who are often much more respectful and whose children are much more respectful of authority.

Parents from all white british backgrounds can quite hostile or entitled towards staff in education now, I don't really blame them, constant government meddling has created a system which is not fit for purpose and they want something which works for their child. For white working class boys there is often just no engagement if they come from a single parent family with a mother, who is often scared of them, or there is a very angry father whose own poor experience with the education system colours his views. It basically results in kids who won't respect authority and therefore just comply and end up with a good outcome and most who also lack the intrinsic motivation that middle class kids have. As someone said earlier girls mature earlier and are generally more aspirational anyway so they often develop that intrinsic motivation in time.

There was a thread recently about DC going on UC automatically after school. The OP thought this was an odd intention, but many felt why should the DC struggle or take a job they don't want. The benefit system gets a lot of bashing, but compared to many countries it's a lovely cushion rather than just a safety net.

does this take the cultural and educational background of immigrants pre-immigration into account?

Somebody may be classed as „working class“ in the UK. But they may have had a prestigious academic or professional background in their country of origin, which would most likely continue to affect their attitude to education and how they’re raising their children.

It's basically that other paths open to them have disappeared. Nobody really succeeds based on school alone, it's what you do afterwards, and apprenticeships etc are hard to come by. They're not following in their dads' footsteps in work because their dads are in the same boat. The gaps have never been filled.

Caribbean families go to mosque, do they? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Frank Field did a big report on this for David Cameron - I’ll try to find the link.

I think a few things. Firstly, immigrants are a self-selecting group. They’ve looked at their situation and decided it is better to seek a new life abroad. That means there is a high degree of motivation and it is likely to be reflected in their aspirations for their children and what they teach their children about life.

For white working families the situation is likely to be complex but I agree with the PP above about pockets of deprivation in former industrialised areas.

The other thing to consider is undiagnosed neurodiversity. We know, for example, ADHD is genetic. We know that diagnosis is very hard without money. I think what you’re likely to see is generations of families which have learned that “school doesn’t suit us” who view it as something to be got through and not something likely to lead to a better life.

Once the whole family is on benefits it becomes entrenched - although Iain Duncan Smith did some interesting work on social justice after losing his seat with a report which suggested it only took one member of a wider family getting a job for that to have an impact on all the children in that family.

When my DD sat out of catchment 11+ for a particular girls school, it was largely South Asian, East Asian, and Black families in the queue waiting to file into the exam hall - yet this town is 70% white British.

Considering that their child would have to commute or the whole family would have to relocate to accept a place if awarded, this may be a barometer of parental academic aspiration and focus within these communities.

The lack of expectation starts early - there was a report very recently, discussed on a thread on here too, about the steep rise in the number of reception kids entering school with no basic life skills. Not eating with utensils, not toilet trained, no idea how to even look at a book. This was over and above SEND issues. It reported that the steepest declines were in the North-east, West-midlands and north-west.
It identifies the problem as starting well before the classroom.

Lots of reasons. Sometimes lack of a strong male role model. People underestimate how vital this can be for boys but boys from single mother households fare worse generally.

A lot of the time it’s family influence- they just don’t value education so raise their children not to either. They don’t grow up with books, they’re not exposed to culture in any way, they’re just left to fend for themselves often with neglectful addicted or even criminal parents.

Also birds of a feather flock together. White working class boys hang out with each other, again they’re not exposed to other cultures or viewpoints.

I went to white wc primary school. It was good. I then went to grammar school, which encouraged aspiration. In those days grammars were for clever white wc kids. Not middle class parents gaming the 11+ with private tutors. People simply don't understand what the grammar system used to be.
I have also taught white wc boys. They were lovely- but drove me insane. They are often let down by the school system- arriving in college with undiagnosed dyslexia etc.
And there is the macho thing. They don't want to be seen as having a learning difficulty. It's considered a weakness. They don't want to be seen as a,swot, taking an active part in lessons. Lots are disruptive in order to mask their difficulty. Some were really well behaved and tried really hard, but lacked the cultural capital.
Their parents were less likely to read to them as children. They were less likely to have been places and done stuff.
White working class girls. Omg. Some of the most vile students I've ever met

Until the destruction of much of industry and things such as coal mining in the 1980s, there was a path to employment for those who were not academic, and there was an element of dads being able to get their sons a job in say their place of work.

I think that ending has a bearing.

Yes this is very true. It’s why coal-mining towns in Yorkshire and Wales are still generally impoverished. It’s also why the North East remains to be the more impoverished pocket of the UK.

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.

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.

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

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.

This makes sense too.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!