White working class children failed by the system?

[Vintlet]

Big news story this morning showing that white working class children have been failed by the education system in the UK.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq51j10q601o
I cannot remember a time in the last fifty years when national data did not show this. White working class boys particularly are the bottom achieving group in educational terms. There have been very few initiatives aimed at supporting this group. Wes Streeting has done his best to highlight this issue but compared to other traditionally disadvantaged groups little has been done to support them.
I have had intense discussions on MN with people who refuse to believe that white children from poor backgrounds are not privileged. I am impressed that Baroness Morris recognises the need for recognition that the state is failing this group and that steps have to be taken to remedy this and to support children from this background of deprivation.

To receive FSM (currently) don’t you have to have a household income of something minuscule like 7k?

The criteria for FSM is changing to everyone on UC, isn’t it? So this problem will probably disappear.

At the end of the day it just boils down to parental responsibility and nothing else. I don’t know how you would go about changing it.

When dc1 started at primary in a deprived area the EYFS teacher started a reward scheme for reading daily and posted the kids who got a reward for eg ten days in a row on Tapestry

And it was nearly always the middle class kids and first gen immigrants, all of whom were probably reading daily anyway

what baffles me about this article is the measure of working class white people are those who receive free school meals. The amount of earnings to receive free school meals is so low it’s more likely parents of these children don’t work at all. Clearly the BBC have no idea what working class actually means!

I don't agree with some of the comments saying everyone sends their kids to schools to learn and that people who arent working have time to support their kids.

It shows a fundamentally narrow view of the world.

My parents were white working class. Never turned up to parents evening or enforced homework. They never even asked about it. It was enough that I was out of the house for 8 hours a day. Followed by making my own tea and going back out with friends. As long as I wasn't home, they weren't bothered.

Thankfully I somehow scraped 5 Cs, despite barely attending school and misbehaving while I was there, and now I'm in a good job, living a naice, middle class life. Thank goodness for reading is all I can say. It meant I was literate and able to get my own life on track as an adult.

Being away from home and living independently was the making of me. Not that I didn't have to put up with my family mocking me for "shuffling papers in an office in stead of doing real work".

My daughter is firmly middle class. We send her to school to learn, we go to every school event and do her homework with her, she goes to clubs and is hugely encouraged and supported. She doesn't have us whispering in her ear that she's wasting her time studying because she doesn't need that for a job in the local shop.

And I'll make the extra point, my parents raised me better than they were.

So school is vital for breaking cycles, even if kids look like they are failing at the time, it broadens their horizons to see that some friends have different home lives and not everyone is doing their own cooking and laundry and coming home at 10pm on a school night, every night, at 12 years old.

How are the parents failed by the system? This country offers free education and has done for a long time, if someone is too stupid not to realise how lucky they are to get this and not take advantage then they have not been failed by the system, they have failed themselves. It doesn't take an idiot to realise the benefits of education. It's the same as healthy eating, not everyone wants to help themselves. People need to stop blaming the system and take accountability for themselves, and if they don't then face the consequences. Some people in this country don't know how lucky they are.

Perfect example

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-50947271

Children need engaged parents to help them access what an available to them, to find what works for their child.

How many of the threads on here about not thinking their children should do homework are started by non-white patents? I’d wager very few. I don’t particularly think it’s a class thing.

engaged parents help their children see that learning isn’t just in school, help them form habits that will see them through into senior school. This is one thing throwing money at education isn’t likely to fix.

there are very few people who automatically have a work ethic from nowhere, it’s probably more often than not nurtured rather than nature.

we would be better off supporting parents to see the value of education.

Yep agree.

Often different threats but boys are certainly a huge target, families threatened, gangs sometimes offer the ‘family’ they never had to boys until too late.

Ok … I’m from an immigrant background. We are not white, my parents worked in basic unskilled jobs as they could not speak the best English. Night shifts in factories and foundries. My sibling and I were encouraged to work hard at school, these are our family values. We worked hard and have professional careers now, although my brother is now self employed. My parents never claimed benefits. Around my family members are lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, bankers, pharmacists … we grew up in poor Northern towns, why have our white working class contemporaries not achieved what we have? Because their parents had more education than ours, they’re also white and in England. We couldn’t even speak English until we started school. It’s values, these families don’t value education in the same way.

They only have themselves to blame as people who came here with a lot less, have made so much more.

We know why this happened. Labour introduced Sure Start, it was proven to work. The Conservatives scrapped it in 2010. https://theconversation.com/how-englands-scrapped-sure-start-centres-boosted-the-health-and-education-of-disadvantaged-children-227712

I vividly remember seeing a sure start worker crying at a meeting because the children she minded had no toys or support at home. As she said, she could easily get another minimum wage job but they were being left behind.

100% this. The number one predictor of a child's success is at school is parental involvement. If parents aren't invested in their children's education and supporting them then they're on a hiding to nothing regardless of state intervention. This is an area where people need to take some responsibility for their own children instead of blaming the state. Generations of white working class families have chosen not to value education, support their children and respect teachers and then seem surprised that their children are failing. If the parents respected teachers, valued education, supported their children and instilled discipline then their children may have a better chance. The state cannot fix this.

The system or their own lack of work ethic?

I'm Indian. I'm very involved in their education. None of this hands off approach so many on Mumsnet take.

There is a balance to be struck. I take what others might describe as a “hands off” approach. I engage when I need to engage, but also allow her to make her own decisions, her own choices and she understands work in = results. I don’t have to be on at her to study, or insist she does it a certain way, I encourage her by supporting her choices. She wants to do medicine but has chosen a different path in to it that doesn’t mean her entire school life has to be about studying. She is a more rounded person because of it. Her best friend is from an Indian family. She is applying for medicine even though she doesn’t want to do it. She is studying all the time and is stressed to the maximum. Her parents think her exam results are the be-all, end all of her school career but still take her out of school for a month, twice a year to visit family in India. She returned the day before her first exam. They will be very harsh on her if she misses an A. These are two anecdotal situations and by no means show any general pattern across cultures, I mention them more because there isn’t always a correlation between “success” and “engagement” it’s more nuanced than that.

What @Bringemout and @Firetreev said.

I taught children who had no experience of their parents and wider family showing an interest in their education. If you don’t show interest, neither will the children. School becomes somewhere you have to go (or not if you can’t be bothered)

The phrase ‘ white privelege’ is manipulative hate speech. Anyone who ever got gaslit by it needs to wake up

This report bothers me. Not because of the research, I think it’s important, but because it doesn’t make clear that the issue is worse for working class boys, and it will be used by many to point towards a disparity being caused by immigration. The absence of the report stating this failure isn’t because resources are being spent on immigrant children, means many will make the argument that’s the problem. Just wait for Reform’s take on it. It also doesn’t say the research was specific to this group and isn’t a comparison. The research into black or brown working class children may well show problems too.

We need to make sure nobody is disadvantaged but in the current climate the reporting of this will serve only to divide the nation further.

The framing of this is so fascinating to me.

White working class children underperform at school = society / the system fails them.

Black working class boys underperform at school = their “culture” / family structure is the cause.

That's case for many immigrants in many countries. Their kids usually outpreform locals. While you outpreform here, I would bet same would be said for poorer immigrants coming to the country your family is from. I saw this in my native country too.
People generally move countries to improve their lives and that usually includes bigger emphasis on study as well as work ethic.

Really? Then perhaps you can explain why, despite this research saying they do less well in school, white working class boys on average out-earn their black and brown peers when they get in to work. Perhaps you can explain why white boys out earn every other group? Perhaps you can explain why white working class young people are more likely to be hired? Why the research has shown if you replace “Mohammed” with “John” on a CV, you are more likely to be called for interview?

If you don’t believe there is an inherent privilege from being white in this country, you need to actually educate yourself.

Spot on.

You can be working class and NOT on benefits though. 2 different things

I can understand why but do find that sad. Love the scouse accent personally. An academic I worked with for a while randomly told me one day she was a geordie and I couldn’t believe it, she sounded so RP. I’m happy with my Yorkshire accent, just unhappy to be judged for it still when I have equal credentials to everyone else in the room.

Do you really think that the BBC decided on the criteria for inclusion and definitions in a study run by the Department of Education and an academy trust?

That's bizarre.