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/

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

@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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Definite tie to geography, the closures of heavy industry impacted more on men than women. The jobs, where there were any, which replaced them were likely to be admin, call centre, service industry which might have been more suited to skills traditionally regarded as female. STEM programs helped girls in to traditionally male academics fields where they generally succeeded and often overtook boys. Even school starting age is a factor, girls mature faster than boys in some aspects but they start at the same age and sit exams at the same age. Our education system seems to work better for girls. We have concentrated resources on upping the numbers going to university so have prioritised academic over practical skills, technical education has been neglected.

It’s striking seeing this on a thread which is literally about wwc lagging behind. If this is part of the reason, then it does rather suggest that nursing a grievance can be useful even when it’s clearly nonsense.

I feel like we often talk about working class when we mean lower socio-economic class. And there are different issues with those.

Remember the documentary Swap Schools? It is now over 10 years old but private school students and teachers swap with state school students and teachers. The doc could be inproved quite a but but i do I remember the teachers saying that the main difference was parents involvement.

Its interesting when it's white males that are underachieving our go to is to think how the environment could be better shaped around their needs, rather than how they might be supported to succeed within an existing environment, that is clearly working for other groups, isn't it?
There is nothing about being white or male that should predispose a child to greater challenges than other students. Obviously being socio economically disadvantaged will be a factor, but again, no reason being white and male should compound that, given neither are disadvantages.
We'd perhaps do better to examine the reasons other groups are succeeding and what is different about them, so we can encourage similar behaviours.
That said, I think a lack of perceived relevance in the curriculum doesn't help. When I was at school less academically inclined students were able to start practical and vocational courses at a young age and by 16 were typically the 'lad' in some sort of paid role.

@CinnamonJellyBeansforgive me if I’ve misread your post but so much of what you have written is bonkers. Was it meant to be tongue in cheek?

White heroes on the school curriculum being replaced? Shakespeare is on the GCSE English Literature curriculum. The World Wars are heavily taught in schools and both my dc learnt about Churchill. One even wrote a long biography piece about Churchill in Year 6 as his main homework project that term.

My dd is currently doing RE GCSE, half of which is Christianity. So heaps on Jesus and his teachings. Kids at primary school still learn about the birth of baby Jesus and the Easter story.

The curriculum you describe @CinnamonJellyBeansis not one I recognise after teaching for 20 years and raising my own dc.

@PotolKimchi

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

This is a good summary. These kids and their attitudes are being manipulated by both right and left in the most cynical way.

@FairKoala

Your child might get to “read” a few pages of a book with a TA for 10 minutes per day but there is no concessions in the classrooms

Compare that with those of immigrant children and children whose parents don’t have English as a first language and these children get much more concessions and proper lessons separately to get them up to the level they need to be

What this analysis fails to see is that those new immigrants kids aren't hanging out after school. They go home, have to sweep the floors, clean the bathroom, wash and iron the clothes.

Then they have to sit down with their parents and translate any letters for them that have come through in the post, and help them with any banking/utilities tasks that need to be actioned.

Finally after that they have to do their homework - and do it well, as it is made clear that they carry the expectations of the family on their shoulders, as well as perhaps the financial longevity of the family.

They often live in a parallel universe to the white British WC children they sit next to at school - whose parents often complain to teachers that 5 minutes of maths homework per day is excessive. Parallel universes.

Exactly

Parental involvement in an encouraging and supportive way. Not battling with the school and claiming that the reason for behaviour or lack of engagement is due to “pick a reason”.

Also African countries tend to have strict and religious cultures, respect for elders etc. This would have been imported to the UK from Ghana, Nigeria etc. (This culture is declining from South Africa upwards as communities breakdown owing to urbanisation.)
British culture would have been similar before the industrial revolution - Very restrictive but more structured and kids more likely to do what they were told (in short). Then the communities were based around mines or factories or ports. As these communities then broke down, the problem worsened.
Removing structure, security and routine from entire communities does not end well.

Absolutely
Children from immigrant families are told that they have to work twice as hard to achieve because of the possible racism they may encounter
When I was at university I used to tutor on the side . Many of my students were of West African or South Asian descent ( Indian and Pakistani heritage) .
A number of the Pakistani parents could not speak English but they would ensure that their children had tutoring in English, Maths and the sciences
When these self same students end up having high flying careers the working class white boys who didn’t even bother to turn up at school will claim that all the’ illegals’ have taken all the jobs and that the white working class are being ignored.

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