White working class children

[NotAnotherScarf]

The bbc has a report about a review of the academic system failing white working class children. The bulk of the population.

It's brilliant that this has been looked at but the recommendations are appalling.

Basically its saying that wcc's are only fit for manual jobs. That schools should push towards offering for vocational courses.

That's where my education went 40 years ago. One child from my year group of 242 went to university at 18. We had at most 6 kids from non white backgrounds. Many went subsequently. I have always maintained the school saw us as shop assistants, factory hands and dockers.

The other recommendations will help children of all races...free travel under 22. Promoting reading etc.

One of the reasons why kids from other backgrounds are doing better has been the push to get them into university...ie black boys being actively recruited and bursarys being given solely to them. Places sponsored etc etc.

Whilst I welcome the move to vocational training. And for many people thats a brilliant move, ts disappointing that the report thinks that that's the main option for wcc's. Basically its says "we don't think your good enough for anything else " .

BBC News - White working-class children 'failed by schools system' - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq51j10q601o

Sadly merely pointing out this study will be seen by some posters as a racist and far right view.

Did you actually read the article?

Have only skim read it but for me two major flaws (may be more the reporting than the study) are that a lot is based on talking to people rather than numerical data (ideally you have both) and that it looked at white working class children, previous studies have separated boys and girls. There is also not a definition of white working class, do they mean almost all white children as we are all working class now or do they mean certain groups within white?
The education system is too much a single path with evaluation of schools and success judged on academic success and numbers going to university. It is hard to get it right, your take on offering vocational courses is that it is a message that it is all we are good for, mine might be that it is good to offer young people a range of options.

There absolutely should be more vocational courses and apprenticeships for all. The current focus on uni and little else is broken and I think in some way contributing to the high levels of poor MH health and school refusal we have.

I have a theory on this and it’s privilege and entitlement because white working class girls from the same backgrounds far out perform boys and it’s not due to any positive discrimination. We’ve all seen it at work, in our families, mediocre white men rising to positions of relative power by dint of them being a white man, I think its become an expectation that as a white man you’ll ’do well’ no matter how mundane you are

we’ve also have or had a very linear understanding of what success means with university held up as the only means to succeed and vocational qualifications pushed to the side, and if you maybe aren’t that academic and then don’t have the support or means to gain support (via tuition) at home well what then. But there is a mentality piece because why would girls of the same background ‘do better’

But we do need skilled, manual workers in this country.

I’m sceptical. Is the report defining WWC as families who are on free school meals? So, low income families, possibly families with low employment?
I think there is a cultural problem with attitudes towards education. These children are the ones who don’t have high levels of family support in their education- they’re not supported in learning to read or in valuing that skill; they’re not supported in full attendance at school; they’re not supported in extending themselves in terms of intellectual ability. In my experience, it’s more likely I’ll encounter an oppositional attitude towards school work, attendance and behavioural expectations from families with low rates of income and employment. I’m less certain of the influence of race than culture on this.

There is a number of things at play here, and of course the current level of education is poor, and there is a lack of other routes after school than university.

but, in my experience this is more of a cultural thing. very broadly speaking the parents who are immigrants, 1st or 2nd generation have seen the uk education offering as a huge opportunity and have wanted to utilise it and push for the best possible outcome for their children.
You do not see the same percentage wise in white working class families, especially the more deprived you go.
in fact, the majority of those kids are told / shown ‘this is it’ and will perpetuate their parents lives. They aren’t shown there is opportunity, a different way of life, that they can dream and want for more.
I read an article years ago that looked at groups of children and found by 8 mist children had formed a view (which was the same outcome for them at 18) of wether they thought they could go to uni or not. This is ingrained in primary.

I say this as a white, working class woman, who was a single parent for many years, with two kids at uni. One that has just achieved a first masters in a stem subject from a top 5% uni in the world.

Hard agree with this. DD is white British (middle class) and does tutoring for 11+. Her entire tutoring company tutors about 100 children - of whom one other is white British. The rest are Asian or Eastern European.

I understand working class families across the board are less likely to pay for tutoring, but the ambition gap for white families is real.

And yes to another poster who comments on the mediocrity of white men. As an education professional I wonder why we spend so much time worrying about the attainment gap between boys and girls when boys go on to out-earn girls so much in the future.

I am to the right politically, actually so far to the right I've gone right round and I can see that in some things the left have some great ideas.

Racist. No. I dislike everyone equally.

If we cannot discuss the problems surrounding white children. Then we can't tackle why, when the go to university, black boys do decidedly worse than everyone else

I completely agree OP. Until people are prancing around private schools advocating plumbing apprenticeships I think the focus on wwc is misguided.

unless you’ve actually grown up on this background and seen the gulf between the half of your friends who became plumbers and hairdressers vs the ones who went to university you’re not speaking from experience.

Everyone deserves aspiration and until the same expectations are in place for both academically limited rich and poor kids I can’t see the use in this constant call for vocational training as a solution for the wwc only.

This wasn't about white working class, not as I know it or define it.

This was about pupils on free school meals, with white boys separated out.

Threshold for free school meals has changed this year but up until then, it was earning below £7,400 (not including benefits)

So mostly, it was people not working significantly and benefit dependent.

This is not 'working class' as i know it - working class people are people who work, those who do trades, factory work, cleaning, shop work, manual and physical labour.

This is a non working class issue - and it is the 'non working' part of it, the benefit dependency that causes the issue, likely multi generational and also likely to be linked to geography, to places that don't actually have working opportunities available and haven't for some time.

That said, some of the suggestions would actually be helpful to all children - and that is where I think we should be going. We need more opportunities for all our children at the moment, not constantly separating out different groups for preferential treatment.

I don't disagree. It's the focus on that being the complete solution that annoys.

Plus it doesn't recommend pushing universities to actively recruit from that demographic as has been the case in the past

What's your view?

I worked on a project in my county about 12 years ago called narrowing the gap and it was based around white working class boys. The biggest issue that separates them from other ethnic groups is the fact their parents do not value education and the work ethic is very lacking. Not encouraging homework, not backing school discipline etc. It has a huge impact and I’m not sure schools can fix it. There are groups of parents in society who cannot imagine their dc achieving and would be unhappy if their dc did better than them (eg went to uni). I’ve seen it.

This is nothing new. I trained to teach in the 70s and had a placement in the most deprived area of the city.

The staff were very concerned then about white working class boys who were (in general) at the bottom of a list containing Asian (both sexes), White working class girls and Afro Caribbean (both sexes).

They were trying very hard to involve the parents to no avail. sadly.

This makes no sense - you say working class girls far out perform boys and then go on to say that mediocre men then wind up doing better.

My cousin is, to put it politely, not academically bright. I am, I went to university, and have a professional job, one of those professional jobs that are viewed as aspirational. My cousin became, largely by accident, a roofer.

I earn but it’s just short of six figures gross. In most years, my cousin, easily out earns me. Yet when I was at school, I wasn’t told to go into roofing, or setting up my own business doing it, or anything even remotely like that.

There do need to be balanced options for everyone and a lot of the brighter more academic kids might not choose university if they realise you can have a well paid, secure job without doing so.

In my experience it’s mediocre middle-class men who do better.

Yes I do agree- this is about poverty, not being working class

This is an unbelievable generalisation. You surely can’t be talking about working class when you say this- you’re talking about a small group of people who share some other demographic?

There is absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with encouraging and creating more apprenticeships. So if that is the outcome of this study then I’m all for it.

My dad went to grammar school but did an engineering apprenticeship and worked in a factory for nearly four decades. He had a very happy life.

I would definitely NOT be in favour of all children benefiting from 30 free hours of childcare regardless of the working status of the parents, which is another recommendation of this report. Putting kids in the hands of probably dubious quality cheap childcare settings is not goi NY to help parents to be better parents, which is what is needed. The withdrawal of investment in Sure Start is a crying shame and I wish that was called out more because if they had increased Sure Start instead of cutting it that would have had a real impact.

It’s incredibly unusual for a roofer to earn six figures and their career is likely to be decades shorter than yours due to injury/ age.

its also dangerous, dirty and far harder than the job you earn 6 figures at

Where's your evidence for the huge amount of bursaries exclusively for black boys? The vast majority of widening participation schemes target socioeconomic disadvantage. There are extremely few that are race specific.

The gulf here comes from family support and input, as well as families expecting schools to take ALL responsibility for every ounce of their child's education.

I went to university and wouldn’t recommend it in most cases. I would absolutely do an apprenticeship or similar if I had my time again. I think university is great for some things but these days they seem to want to get everyone there and then the jobs are few and far between.