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

Were they targeted purely because they were white? I was under the impression that it was because they were seen as vulnerable, largely through being in the care system, and therefore nobody would be looking out for them. Obviously in a white majority country, white people make up the majority of those in the care system.

@Jane379

It is exceptionally hard for teachers and staff to bridge the gap and get kids to value education when their family doesn’t value it. Why? It’s pretty simple. When you’re a kid, your parents are THE WORLD. You are more likely to listen and inhabit the values you are taught from the home environment far more than outside of the home. And I speak as a white, working class woman. My mum valued it. My dad didn’t.

I always remember a teacher shouting at my twin brother in the assembly hall “what do your parents think of all these letters we send home about your behaviour?” To which he replied “well my dad thinks schools a load of shit sir, and he thinks it’s a waste of the trees”.

Well, my god, did we all laugh about that over dinner. 😂

And those teachers TRIED. Believe me.

The men perpetrating the awful crimes would often refer to them as “white slags” etc. and they definitely deemed them as worthless based purely on them being white and not Muslim.

I agree to disagree, I have an 8 year who knows what it is only because his uncles currently there and moved away to live near it.
I was 8 16 years ago and was busy climbing trees and playing with my cuddly toys. Wasn’t thinking further than year 4 being next year.

I can’t imagine many 8 year olds knowing about university and thinking about whether they would be able to go or not, let alone 8 year olds living in poor neighbourhoods with unengaged parents like what’s being described on here.

so I sort of question the accuracy of these sorts of studies

It starts in the home.

My cousin (black, working-class) moved to the US decades ago and has taught in schools serving mainly Black, lower income children for 25 years. During that time billions of dollars have spent on dozens of programmes, projects and initiatives to improve literacy and maths scores for children in her state. The education department and experts have devoted decades to studying the underachievement of Black students and trying to conjure up the answer to it.

My cousin’s answer is simple: many or the children who are failing school come from homes where education is just not valued. When she speaks to parents from these households they will deflect and blame every single societal ill for their child’s failings but not the fact they routinely tell their DC not to bother studying, it’s a waste of time, racism
means they’ll never get anywhere etc. These are children who cannot hold a book up the right way when they start school, who miss the equivalent of several weeks of school every year because their parents don’t prioritise their attendance. She is accused of victim blaming when she points all this out🤷🏽‍♀️

There isn’t a crisis of white working class boys generally in this country. Plenty of them do very well. There is a cultural issue within some households where education is just not valued and unless that is addressed there is literally no point pumping money and resources in trying to level up attainment.

People keep saying this but this isn’t an answer - it’s a reason.

we all recognise some parents don’t value education. You don’t just shrug and say it’s their problem then. How does generational change happen if you don’t start today?

And being female and poor and vulnerable.

noone really knows why grooming gangs predominately choose white girls. In my city they targeted girls in care who didn’t have parent keeping an eye on them and obviously those girls were 99.9% white. I imagine there was an element of white slag’s, an element of community and an element of vulnerability and availability. Also the use of alcohol as a bribe.

Yes, I think you see similar in the USA in some ways.

Amy Chua's book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a bit dramatic in places but it was successful (and controversial) in the US and UK partly because it was getting at something real. She appeara to support the politician Vivek Ramaswamy who recently caused controversy by saying US culture elevates the jock over the math Olympiad champion and can't continue to do that if it's to compete in a global world with cultures which value academic success first.

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/ramaswamy-nailed-education-challenge

Yeah. They’re misogynistic too. It doesn’t mean they aren’t also racist.

I need to mention that although I wrote my previous post about this in the past tense, I am aware it is still happening right now on the exact same scale.

I think you are misunderstanding the point
I don’t think they are saying that 8/9/10 years olds are sitting around giving thought to what they are planning to do at 18, or worrying about their future. They are saying that they have a pre conceived notion of what they are capable of, and this young formation of self worth is connected to / leads to their later belief in whether they can attend.

posted a link to a more recent study below.

I think there are lots of subjects that kids don’t actually think about day to day, but have been exposed to in life / parents / school and have formed a core opinion / self belief on.

nextstepsstudy.org.uk/self-belief-helps-young-people-be-the-first-in-their-family-to-go-to-university/

Yes, John McWhorter did a book on it in the early 2000s- clearly some aspects of the situation are different but so much of the book, I felt, could also apply to underachieving white kids here

https://archive.org/details/losingraceselfsa00mcwh/page/n11/mode/1up

London gets more funding due to higher numbers of pupil premium.

Schools with high % of pp get extra funding per pp child so can make seismic change. Schools with very low % pp find the non pp dc pull up the pp dc. Schools with average significant pp but around 20% or over find they don’t have the funding to make a real difference but there’s too many for role modelling to pull them up. They are generally the class disrupters.

I was responding to this:

“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 just don’t think many children at that age know what university is. Let alone know the admissions criteria or the cost to come to a conclusion about whether they can go or not.
Even at 12/14/16 I personally didn’t know maybe I’m unusual in that for 14 and 16 but I definitely don’t think many 8 or even 12 year olds are thinking about it.

"Ever just been "

No grants are specifically and only for white children.

Plenty for black children or Bangladeshi specifically.

These were the statistical findings and all evidence based. I’m sorry that makes you uncomfortable. I sat in many meetings where all the evidence was presented by highly qualified education leaders. It’s really important for us to understand patterns so we can put in place steps to support behaviour change.

Dismissing the evidence based data may make you feel happier but it doesn’t bring necessary change and is probably part of the reason it’s hard to discuss.

There's a lot of evidence that working class white girls are not doing much better than working class white boys.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002tzqm

There's also the fact that women tend to be the ones to cut hours or stop paid work entirely. This is probably why men pull ahead careers wise even if they do worse in school.

But are the men pulling ahead the underachieving white ones we're discussing? I'm less convinced of that - men aren't a monolith.

So says your book

Throughout my childhood it was assumed I’d go to uni. This was my mum’s family influence. My dad (working class background but moved into mc job so a bit conflicted in views) couldn’t understand why on earth I’d get a post grad qualification at a Russell group uni over 2 years in my 40s. “What do you need that for?!” Was his question.

Exactly. There were other factors such as class, and white and non Muslim girls were not the only ones targeted, but we can't ignore the role of race.

It's an exteme version of the perception in many countries that white woken are sexually immoral and fair game for unwanted attention, harassment or worse.

@Jane379

Plenty of white WC males in my family who did better than the women financially. My brother left school at the end of year 10, illegally, but started working as a plasterer labourer at 15 cash in hand. Zero GCSEs. Two houses owned by 35. Females initially started off slow… child care, hair and beauty. Many retrained even with children into careers like nursing and social work, but always after some life experience.

I knew what university was at age 8 because I had an immigrant mother who made it normal- going to uni was a given and it was up to me to go to a top one. She went to uni and encouraged my dad to do an OU degree so that he could increase his earnings dramatically. He was from a poor WC background where working behind the counter at the local bank was considered a very fancy job. University was school for adults and I didn’t really think about not being able to go. I knew from mum that the most difficult and prestigious subject was medicine (which I didn’t study)

I’m pretty sure that films and tv I watched by that age involved people at uni (or college if you’re American) I can only think of things like Indiana Jones but smart Professors as well as “older sibling in college” characters aren’t unusual?

Are you thinking of the scholarship type grants in universities? My understanding is they can be as esoteric as you want. E.g. if some 18th century son of a cheesemonger made good wanted to he could bequest some money to fund the education of one cheese makers son a year at Oxford. (Made up scenario but you know what I mean). That's a bit different to government policy but if you know of specific grants let me know I could be wrong. I think that while scholarships for talented children at Oxbridge/other universities are a good worthwhile thing they don't really fix the problem this thread started on. It's not so much about a few kids every educational year making good and reaching the heights of a scholarship at a redbrick. It's more about a much larger number of children who are being underserved. Helping the high achievers achieve matters, but it's not enough in itself

Yes, I mean boys in the 1500s were hardly 'learning through doing', and disruption would have been physically punished, unlike today.

The difference was that only a few boys were given the opportunity then, it's only far more recently that there's been attempts to engage boys for whom the sitting-down etc method doesn't work as well for.

It's worth noting also though that high achieving countries like China & Singapore don't prioritise learning through doing, either, and many boys there do well.

Exactly, most black children will not be using these scholarships and if they are, they will have already been doing very well, presumably. The difference in achievement must come earlier, during school.