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White working class children

743 replies

NotAnotherScarf · 29/06/2026 08:27

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

OP posts:
Thread gallery
11
Urgentbiscuitrequired · 29/06/2026 12:16

My son has alot of friends from minority groups and they do seem to push their children quite a lot compared to white backgrounds (probably a bit too much, as they seem to be pushing their kids towards careers they aren't suited to, or have an interest in). I do think there are higher expectations in some cultures.

My son has disengaged from primary school because of the learning style. He didn't get help for things he needed help in fast enough (probable dysgraphia), and with what he was good at (Maths), he wasn't challenged enough and very little in the way of science in primary school too.

He is fairly bright, but I'm worried as he really dislikes school and feels what he learns isn't partially useful. It doesn't help that his Dad says university gets you in 50k of debt. This has put him off that route straight away as my son would never want that level of debt, even though it is not like typical debt. I just think the world doesn't look particularly exciting or engaging for kids right now, especially working class ones.

BoredZelda · 29/06/2026 12:19

Lifeomars · 29/06/2026 11:38

I will read the BBC report and also look for other coverage across the media so I can make my own mind up about the findings. I am surprised to read that some burseries are only available to black children, my gut instinct is to query the accuracy of this so i'm off to do some further reading.

It is the case, but under the equality act there are specific reasons which must apply. For example, there won’t be a bursary which states that the only factor which applies is skin colour, that is open to every black child. There will be bursaries which target particular sections of the black community with specific backgrounds. A bit like the bursaries that are only open to the children of ex-services parents. These are usually bursaries which are funded by specific people, charities, foundations etc.

BoredZelda · 29/06/2026 12:20

1dayatatime · 29/06/2026 12:11

Agreed that quotas are illegal but it doesn't stop them in practice just as the Race Relations Act made racial discrimination in employment illegal in law but it was widely continued in practice in the late 70s and 80s.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66060490?app-referrer=deep-link

Can you give an example of somewhere you know has a quota system?

Conundrummum123 · 29/06/2026 12:21

Toveylove · 29/06/2026 12:07

What an absolute shedload of horse shit. The idea that being white got you jobs.. honestly the entitlement of pedalling this absolute lie is toxic. Stop devaluing people to suit a false narrative. People can find it hard to get employment. PEOPLE. Ever has it been so.

not by just being white but white privilege is real. There’s been studies were candidates with ‘foreign’ names were swapped with more English sounding names, guess which candidates got more interviews.

White privilege doesn’t mean white peoples don’t struggle, it just means you do have a relative degree of privilege which is compounded by other variables (money, socioeconomic status).

Conundrummum123 · 29/06/2026 12:23

Honeyhonay · 29/06/2026 11:52

This is exactly the same reasoning why the most disenfranchised group in NI is white Protestant males. They used to benefit from a system which put them at the top, jobs and housing due to living in X or being the son of Y. Those industries don’t exist anymore and they’ve been replaced by more merit based jobs and systems and because education was never the priority within those communities now they are falling behind.

100% nailed it

Paganpentacle · 29/06/2026 12:23

DeafLeppard · 29/06/2026 09:04

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.

Thats the patriarchy for you ....

inkognitha · 29/06/2026 12:23

RhododendronFlowers · 29/06/2026 12:09

I think white male Protestants in N Ireland have had their hegemony. I wouldn't feel bad if they feel unable to vote or can no longer exclude RCs from social and economic progression.

Their hegemony? That's another level of hatred for innocent ppl.

Let's briefly take the time to admire how CRT, "progressive" values and the like actively promote punishing people for the supposed crimes of their forefathers.

Which is the definition of vendetta ... and not exactly fair nor civilised.

TempsPerdu · 29/06/2026 12:24

ClarkeandNewman · 29/06/2026 11:34

CRT is a way of analysing systemic and institutional (rather than individual) racism and of looking at how "race" is socially constructed. White privilege involves looking at the advantage - or lack of disadvantage - experienced by people who don't have additional hurdles, obstacles and discrimination because of their ethnic background. It has nothing to do with white people being dismissed or their cultural experiences reframed as shameful.

OK then, let’s look at how this stuff feeds into schools in practice, regardless of what in their purest sense CRT and ‘white privilege’ ideology set out to achieve

One small anecdote from the school I know most intimately (no longer involved there as we’ve relocated, but my daughter was until recently a pupil, I was a governor and I volunteered there twice weekly so was in class a fair bit). School is about 50% white British and 50% other ethnicities. London suburb, very socially mixed.

In Year 1 my daughter did a topic on space discoveries from their new, freshly decolonised, curriculum. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were mentioned in passing; Yuri Gagarin not at all. Tim Peake and Helen Sherman - actual British astronauts - completely glossed over. The main focus - PowerPoint presentations, online research, work in books, homework task set- was on Mae Jemison. Year 5 did a similar unit the same year, and their focus was on the film Hidden Figures - watched the film in class, set homework task etc.

Later the same year came a unit on famous aviators: Bessie Coleman discussed at length (another follow-up homework research task set on black aviators); the Wright Brothers mentioned in passing; Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson (again, British) completely omitted.

The space topic was actually raised in a governors’ meeting, as the school was very proud of their new curriculum and used it as an exemplar. It was explicitly stated by the SLT that the expectation was that children would learn about the more obviously famous pioneer astronauts either via parental input or by some kind of ‘cultural osmosis’ because they lived in a majority white culture. Of course, we filled in the gaps with DD through books and museum visits etc, but this doesn’t work for the working class white kids, who don’t have access to these things and don’t have parental expertise to draw on, so many of them would have remained none the wiser.

The school library was also decolonised - I volunteered there too. Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling and The Secret Garden were thrown out (problematic), as were Shirley Hughes, Judith Kerr and Jill Murphy (twee and old hat). Most of the old picture books were replaced by new issues-based ones, all bought from the same ‘diverse books’ website. Many of these were extremely didactic and lacked any kind of story or humour. When I volunteered with KS1 they spent most of the time asking where the animal/dinosaur/funny books had gone. Eventually some of them stopped coming to the library entirely.

Whether it’s well-intentioned or driven by political ideology this stuff has real-world impacts. The white working class issue aside, a particular issue for me is that, because they are lifted directly from American political ideology, these decolonised curriculums heavily feature black role models at the expense of other groups, and often actually fail to reflect the minority groups within the school (our main ones where Turkish/Kurdish, Albanian and South Asian, not Black).

RhododendronFlowers · 29/06/2026 12:27

inkognitha · 29/06/2026 12:23

Their hegemony? That's another level of hatred for innocent ppl.

Let's briefly take the time to admire how CRT, "progressive" values and the like actively promote punishing people for the supposed crimes of their forefathers.

Which is the definition of vendetta ... and not exactly fair nor civilised.

Yes, it was a level of hatred. The sectarianism in N Ireland was horrific. That's why my RC family migrated to England, to have a fair chance in the job market.
Fortunately, the hatred has diminished and RCs are equally employed now.

Thank goodness for the Good Friday Agreement. 🙏

DeafLeppard · 29/06/2026 12:27

inkognitha · 29/06/2026 12:23

Their hegemony? That's another level of hatred for innocent ppl.

Let's briefly take the time to admire how CRT, "progressive" values and the like actively promote punishing people for the supposed crimes of their forefathers.

Which is the definition of vendetta ... and not exactly fair nor civilised.

Quite. And let's remember that the successful Catholic schools in NI have Catholicism as an entry requirement (I couldn't attend my local primary school there because I wasn't a catholic).

Religious selection in other areas of the UK can also be problematic, but it has a particular relevance in NI, where it's so starkly Protestant vs Catholic.

WilfredsPies · 29/06/2026 12:29

I think the reason girls out perform boys is down to how education is structured. It rewards study. Not activity. Boys learn more through doing. I think sedentary study suits girls better. So they test better. So they "do better" I don’t think that this is all there is to it. There’s a myriad of factors, and class plays a huge part in it.

I think that when you begin to engage with different social classes, you have to very quickly learn a different set of rules. I think that girls are naturally better at this than boys. They also establish friendships with middle class girls in school which are far more likely to be accepted by the middle class families of those girls than if they’d been boys, simply because girls often seem less scary to mc parents than the stereotypical wwc boy. You don’t want your sons walking around council estates or sitting in the park with their working class mates so the boys don’t get as much exposure to kids with different paths being mapped out for them as girls do. Girls learn those rules and apply them in the workplace.

I also think the middle classes often express fear and disgust at wwc men, albeit subconsciously, and boys see this and grow up thinking that that world is not for them. I think some of you go to great lengths to hide those feelings from young men of colour in case someone accuses you of racism, which seems to be the thing that terrifies you more than anything else, but there’s no need to even pretend to hide it with white boys and men.

Obviously completely my own personal opinion, based on what I observed growing up and what I see now working with a solidly middle class workforce. These social mobility schemes may help with getting promotions but the prejudices are still there.

DeafLeppard · 29/06/2026 12:32

I don't think there's any evidence that sedentary learning is bad for boys, is there? The sitting in rows facing the teacher was always seen as the default and I suspect it's more that the lifestyles of boys have become increasingly sendentary to the point where the 5 hours a day they spend in the classroom has become challenging.

Current primary schools are full of movement breaks and activity sessions and they don't seem to be working for these boys either.

HelenaWaiting · 29/06/2026 12:33

NotAnotherScarf · 29/06/2026 08:27

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

One of my sons is at Oxford now. He is on a bursary. They seemed completely uninterested in his ethnicity. The bursary is because he went to state school.

TwelvePiecesOfFlair · 29/06/2026 12:38

Backedoffhackedoff · 29/06/2026 10:40

But what’s missing? You can do apprenticeships manual training at college and more academic vocational courses like social care, Midwifery, computer science at teaching universities

I don’t know too much about higher education now, but back in the day places like Bradford poly did really specific courses in things like industrial chemistry - things linked to the local industries.

Polytechnics weren’t necessarily places where you would train to do the lower paid jobs, but they were rooted in manufacturing, technical, business and industry.
Many polytechnics had very competitive courses, they were not just a slightly shit university.

ClarkeandNewman · 29/06/2026 12:39

1dayatatime · 29/06/2026 11:50

Critical Race Theory is a disgusting and shameful ideology that has no place in modern society.

I'll give you an example DS (white) and his friend (mixed black / white) both graduated 2 years ago.

Trying to get a graduate job was hell for both of them, both were sending out applications almost daily often with no reply and both getting more and more depressed. DS friend became convinced that his failure to get a graduate job was because of systemic racism at interviews etc. As a result he basically gave up hope because he believed everything was stacked against him with no chance of success no matter what he did. He couldn't see that my DS was in exactly the same position.

Eventually DS got a graduate job (albeit not in the field he wanted). His friend hasn't, he stopped applying for graduate jobs and is simply bitter and angry.

Critical Race Theory destroys hope and ambition amongst ethnic minorities especially amongst black boys. It keeps them as "victims" and "failures" in society in the same way as outright racist policies such as apartheid or Jim Crow but it does so by destroying hope and ambition which in my mind is far more cruel.

You're not talking about CRT here. It's an analytical framework, not an ideology.

Do you mean to imply that your son's friends end is playing the victim because of CRT? That minority ethnic people are prone to that and encouraged to do so by the same theories that identify and challenge systemic white prejudice embedded within the institutions with our society?

ClarkeandNewman · 29/06/2026 12:41

DeafLeppard · 29/06/2026 12:06

And the corollary can also be true. You can belong to a marginalised group and also have advantages over the less marginalised community.

Could you expand?

Geewhatshappenedtome · 29/06/2026 12:42

NotAnotherScarf · 29/06/2026 08:59

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

You've mentioned black boys a few times. Please tell me more about the reasons this comes up for you when talking about white working class boys. Is there a reason you aren't talking about Asian boys. Or girls of another race at all.

I'm very curious as to what makes black boys of interest to you.

Also, can you tell me about the many schemes for black boys only? I would be very keen to hear about those.

ClarkeandNewman · 29/06/2026 12:43

Toveylove · 29/06/2026 12:07

What an absolute shedload of horse shit. The idea that being white got you jobs.. honestly the entitlement of pedalling this absolute lie is toxic. Stop devaluing people to suit a false narrative. People can find it hard to get employment. PEOPLE. Ever has it been so.

The point of white privilege isn't necessarily that being white gets you a job. It's that being minority ethnic stops you getting one.

Honeyhonay · 29/06/2026 12:44

DeafLeppard · 29/06/2026 12:27

Quite. And let's remember that the successful Catholic schools in NI have Catholicism as an entry requirement (I couldn't attend my local primary school there because I wasn't a catholic).

Religious selection in other areas of the UK can also be problematic, but it has a particular relevance in NI, where it's so starkly Protestant vs Catholic.

This is generally not the case these days, the religious element of the criteria is often “seeks a catholic education” not “must be catholic”.

ClarkeandNewman · 29/06/2026 12:47

inkognitha · 29/06/2026 12:23

Their hegemony? That's another level of hatred for innocent ppl.

Let's briefly take the time to admire how CRT, "progressive" values and the like actively promote punishing people for the supposed crimes of their forefathers.

Which is the definition of vendetta ... and not exactly fair nor civilised.

How exactly is recognition of historic systemic bias and prejudice and the normalisation of a particular world view synonymous with punishment?

Persephonia1966 · 29/06/2026 12:47

Conundrummum123 · 29/06/2026 08:52

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’

The education system was designed by men, for boys but girls do better at it, on the whole, than boys when allowed to. They also seem to cope better with adversity in terms of underfunded schools etc... it's not because of any bias I don't think. But none the less it does seem that WWC boys do worse so they deserve to get attention paid as to why

I think framing the report as saying WWC boys are only good for apprenticeships not university is unfair. The lack of vocational alternatives to Uni has been brought up before and it seems that it was the parents and students saying they were missing this. So the report is taking their opinions into account. University costs money and leads to debt. While I'm glad I went I don't think everyone has to and there are many non uni jobs that pay as well. So it's not in itself lack of ambition. Removing some of the barriers to higher education would also be good. But it doesn't have to be one or the other.

NotSure222 · 29/06/2026 12:48

AI is going to take over a lot of roles - but it won't be taking over trades. Other countries have more support for kids to go into vocational jobs after school. uni seems to be a holy grail but lots of kids just end up with debt and no change in job prospects.

ClarkeandNewman · 29/06/2026 12:49

TempsPerdu · 29/06/2026 12:24

OK then, let’s look at how this stuff feeds into schools in practice, regardless of what in their purest sense CRT and ‘white privilege’ ideology set out to achieve

One small anecdote from the school I know most intimately (no longer involved there as we’ve relocated, but my daughter was until recently a pupil, I was a governor and I volunteered there twice weekly so was in class a fair bit). School is about 50% white British and 50% other ethnicities. London suburb, very socially mixed.

In Year 1 my daughter did a topic on space discoveries from their new, freshly decolonised, curriculum. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were mentioned in passing; Yuri Gagarin not at all. Tim Peake and Helen Sherman - actual British astronauts - completely glossed over. The main focus - PowerPoint presentations, online research, work in books, homework task set- was on Mae Jemison. Year 5 did a similar unit the same year, and their focus was on the film Hidden Figures - watched the film in class, set homework task etc.

Later the same year came a unit on famous aviators: Bessie Coleman discussed at length (another follow-up homework research task set on black aviators); the Wright Brothers mentioned in passing; Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson (again, British) completely omitted.

The space topic was actually raised in a governors’ meeting, as the school was very proud of their new curriculum and used it as an exemplar. It was explicitly stated by the SLT that the expectation was that children would learn about the more obviously famous pioneer astronauts either via parental input or by some kind of ‘cultural osmosis’ because they lived in a majority white culture. Of course, we filled in the gaps with DD through books and museum visits etc, but this doesn’t work for the working class white kids, who don’t have access to these things and don’t have parental expertise to draw on, so many of them would have remained none the wiser.

The school library was also decolonised - I volunteered there too. Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling and The Secret Garden were thrown out (problematic), as were Shirley Hughes, Judith Kerr and Jill Murphy (twee and old hat). Most of the old picture books were replaced by new issues-based ones, all bought from the same ‘diverse books’ website. Many of these were extremely didactic and lacked any kind of story or humour. When I volunteered with KS1 they spent most of the time asking where the animal/dinosaur/funny books had gone. Eventually some of them stopped coming to the library entirely.

Whether it’s well-intentioned or driven by political ideology this stuff has real-world impacts. The white working class issue aside, a particular issue for me is that, because they are lifted directly from American political ideology, these decolonised curriculums heavily feature black role models at the expense of other groups, and often actually fail to reflect the minority groups within the school (our main ones where Turkish/Kurdish, Albanian and South Asian, not Black).

I don't know why but this post is very redolent of Sarah Pochin.

Lordofthebantams · 29/06/2026 12:50

The problem is it's not really a school issue. These are the kids from unstable backgrounds. Multiple kids by multiple men, parents with their own chaos.

At the weekend instead of visiting places and seeing and learning and developing interests, they are at home on the Xbox.

Instead of holidays that contain some sort of cultural experience it's going to Haven and staying up late in the disco with a blue slushie.

Parents often don't work or only one does. Stay home Mum on benefits who still has a comfortable life in a council provided property, nails done, caravan holidays and an Xbox. They see parents that don't achieve much but benefits pays their lifestyle,so why bother working hard.

They don't have a routine so they go to bed late and are tired and hyperactive the next day. Diet is poor which means they are lethargic. Cheerios before school so they can't concentrate. It goes on and on....

Tonissister · 29/06/2026 12:52

OP, I agree it is sensible to be wary. But too many people have been peddled a myth that university is a guarantee of a better life. Many of them not academically inclined.

I feel uncomfortable at your suggestion that vocational work implies they are not capable of anything else. To me, it's more important that we don't venerate academic prowess over practical prowess. Who would you rather be stuck on a desert island with - a builder or a philosopher? The trades earn way better money than many academia-based careers.