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.

I know parents who don't have any GCSEs themselves, are on benefits, and lo and behold the kid doesn't have motivation and/or doesn't go to school.

I'm white, working class and failed. Well, underclass really... My family were drug running, machete wielding scum.

Failed in that my household has a high benefits income (serious disability) and I'm in an entry level job that requires no qualifications or prior training with no possible progression. And I have absolutely no intention of changing any of it.

I got the best SATs results in my secondary, I did bloody well in my GCSES. I got a first in my very academic degree with little effort. I do my shit job because it allows me to earn and be an unpaid carer and because I see huge value in supporting the kids like I was when I was a wee carnage kid. I get them calm and safe enough that the teacher can teach them. I live like this because I want to help the people I care about both personally and professionally.

My life is hard. I work non stop. I am constantly worrying about others. If I talk about my background, I still get treated like scum by most well to do people. My kids are acing school though and I know I'm not failure - I'm just judged as one by middle class people because I get far more in benefits than I earn. I'm morally more upstanding than the UC cunts I used to skivvy for before I couldn't take their bragging about getting rich dicks of rape and SA charges any more.

Lots of WC kids are failed. But some, like me, did just fine and are just perceived as useless later. Make sure you don't wind us up in the middle class hand wringing about failure of the plebs.

They did not use free school meals as a definition of working class, but as a proxy for it. I'm not going to get into what a proxy indicator is here because you can look it up yourself.

Also, how does me reading the report and reporting the authors' reasoning make me 'out of touch'? I haven't even said whether or not I agree with the authors' use of FSM as a proxy.

What is there for working class immigrant kids? As a child immigrant, I had the added challenge of not having English as my first language. The only thing we had is the traditional family structure and the unspoken idea that you keep going and trying to get to the next stage.

I think the issue does need to be tackled but I’m wary of this view that minority kids are given opportunities. We are not.

Also, these are the kids I work directly with. And I see the effort my colleagues put in to and I have seen all this in many schools.

The white, WC and failed aren't being failed by school as such. They're being failed by government policy; by their housing providers; by social services; by police; by their own families. And all that is shown in education and entry to work. Most of academic ability is related to family support and genetics after all.

There's a whole lot of people failing who would all rather it was the fault of schools. My schools looked after me well and my kids schools went above and beyond for them when life got tough. Every school I have worked in has desperately tried to support ALL the kids struggling and certainly didn't ignore white WC kids. I've only ever lived and worked in very working class places though - maybe the middle class schools are all willfully failing kids for being WC. It wouldn't suprise me hugely - my mam did always say MC people hated us 😉.

It would be nice for journalists to use a bit of critical thinking in their reporting.

Stating that the report suggests that children in households explicitly earning less than £7400 a year (or whatever it currently is) have lower outcomes would be more informative to their readers and not incorrect.

Many moons ago there was research into factors that lead to academic success.

The only factor that was consistent - whether the family ate their meals together.

Presumably because it enabled children to hear adult conversation, discussions abut day today problems, politics, opportunities for parents to talk to their children, ask about their life, schooling, interests etc. Perhaps groups where children, especially boys, do well academically also have a culture where the family meals are valued and routine ie Jewish, Chinese, Indian families? Many UK families allow or are forced to allow children to eat in front of the TV and separately from the adults.

50, 80, 100 years ago it was common for boys to be turfed outside when they became noisy whereas girls were not. You could see bands of young boys (under 11) roaming the streets at 10 pm plus. Girls would not have been allowed to do this. So girls would be hearing whatever adult conversation there was and the boys wouldn't.

It was rare for fathers in my inner city school to attend parent evenings. The only boy whose father did consistently attend was streets ahead of the other boys academically. Usually it was mothers and grandmothers who came to school informally to ask for help to fill in forms eg or for events such as plays, orchestras, parents' evenings, fetes.

Anecdotally in the family and outside it was the mothers who tried to insist that their sons stayed on at school to take exams etc. The fathers wanted them to leave school at 15 and get a job, join the family business etc.

I have 2 girls both with totally different learning styles and what would suit one would be terrible for the other so agree that more options need to be found. I personally was very able at school but terrible when it came to exams - one size does not fit all

I think it’s important to distinguish between reporting and commentary. This was very much a piece of reportage rather than commentary on the report and so while it quoted heavily from the report, it didn’t offer any interpretation beyond that provided in the report summary.

@Sunnyyetnotsunny what are you on about? As an ethnic minority (please see my previous post) I’m the child of barely literate immigrants! I got no extra support at school. My parents could barely ever make a parents evening, we suffered immense prejudice and had to work and study harder for everything. I can’t feel sorry for white working class boys - this country is full of opportunity my parents came with literally nothing. We just knew education was our only way out. I remember still in 1991 when I was about ten my dad had saved up to buy me a set of encyclopaedias - they were published 30 odd years before and were out of date but he didn’t know that. God rest his soul.

And poverty, don’t get me started. It’s all about values.

Been teaching for 15 years and white working class boys has been a focus group every single year. But every single year these groups are offered interventions/focus groups/targeted activities outside of school time and regularly refuse or fail to show up. We have tried start of year workshops, termly parent workshops in early years for phonics and maths and these parents simply don't attend.

The thing is the parents are generally lovely and want the best for their kids but they don't seem to know how to engage in education. I have been quite shocked by the spelling, grammar and handwriting parents themselves have. Early intervention has the biggest impact, so it is actually things like baby and toddler groups that have the best potential. But my mum was a health visitor for years and ran sure start groups but said the exact same thing, they simply struggled to get the parents they were targeting to engage and partake in the groups.

All I can think is research into what will get these types of parents to engage early on is the starting point. It needs to be an early support, school age is too late to close the gap. It needs to be well funded and supported by the government which has been more than lacking for decades.

This is difficult but I wonder if part of the issue is brain drain. The people who were more academically inclined may have mainly taken advantage of opportunities in earlier generations like the ones you describe & left.

That said , the conflation of FSM with working class is fraught with issues.

History is respected if you want to go into Law, for one.

Geography is well respected as well

While they certainly are underachieving it’s not the education system that’s failing them, it’s the system that puts their families into poverty in the first place that’s failing them. The school system can’t make up for what happens at home and in my experience as a teacher kids from immigrant families have far more respect for education, read to their kids more etc.

Can you really not see the benefits you had that others don’t.

I wonder if they’ve tested the links to absentee fathers. I would think the children of ‘baby daddies’ who never engaged will be horrific if studied.

We instill the value of education from a very young age. When my ds was in primary he could already do some a level maths concepts.

In my experience it’s usually the parents that fail them rather than the schools or the system. Children of engaged parents tend to do better. I have worked with many families where history just repeats itself time and time again. They get a lot more input from the system than many families. People do need to take responsibility for raising the children they chose to create.

I would say this largely applies to ethnic minorities - except for parental expectations/low expectations.

Often there are expectations to work hard, study hard, marry, not let the family name down etc. Not that this is all good and can hold back girls/women. But the expectations are there.

You can take a horse to water… it’s just that these families from ethnic minorities (working class, on low wages, in poverty, no family support, working long hours etc) make their kids drink that water

It would be amazing for the individuals and society if the cycle was broken for the majority not the just the one or two that have the drive or natural ability. There are so many ways to be successful.

I think it would be helpful if the Matthew Effect was better known and understood in education. Unless we think that children of richer parents will always mysteriously cleverer than children of poorer parents?

Many of the schools I've worked in have been in deprived communities characterised by pit towns, inner city, and (originally council) estates with high levels of social housing.

It is common to have multi-generational lack of engagement and valuing of education and not seeing it as a way to broaden potential opportunities. Pride can manifest as an inverse snobbery and fear of change. There can also be mistrust of authority and public authorities.

Family histories of struggling with undiagnosed learning difficulties are common. Families with poor awareness of them are less likely to recognise them and seek early interventions and diagnosis. If they do seek diagnosis, they're more likely to get stuck in lengthy waiting lists and unable to short cut a few years by going private or travelling for RTC options. In many areas, dyslexia diagnosis is only avaliable to those with spare £££ for private assessments.

Traditionally a reasonable living could be made with practical skills rather than academic qualifications, but that's become harder in the last 50 years, and some communities haven't shifted their mindset to adapt to changes in the wider world.

The current education system policy doesn't serve communities with significant proportions of these traits well. Focus on dry, abstract academia and unattainable assessment targets (SATs, GCSEs, re-sits) sucks joy out from learning. Access to functional skills and vocational courses has been dimimished by curriculum reform and funding cuts. Schools and their staff do their best, but they are curtailed by funding, resources and engagement.

We're struggling with a significant minority of students who do not engage with basic expectations and are enabled by parents until issues hit a crisis point and they are completely beyond control. Their social skills are poor, baseline knowledge and skills are weak and then fall into cycles of falling further and further behind. They thrive on petty drama after petty drama and escalate minor issues because they struggle with conforming to the expectations that keep schools functioning safely to the benefit of 1000+ people.
By 16, they lack the foundations they need to continue education or be employable. Sometimes maturity can kick in later, but it creates a very vulnerable situation.

It's certainly not all students from this kind of background, most of our young people are fabulous, and they deserve better than constant disruption from 10-20% of their peers.

Unless we think that children of richer parents will always mysteriously cleverer than children of poorer parents?

Exactly, we know that’s not true. It’s not very complicated to understand wealthier or otherwise supported children are cushioned by a raft of means that relatively deprived children lack. To include money, time, transport, access, cultural richness, support, opportunity and high expectation. This can all affect outcomes regardless of innate intelligence. It’s bloody hard keeping up with advantaged peers if you are born into a family who struggle through life for whatever reason. It’s not even that difficult to work out what the answers are. What is difficult is persuading the voting public to fund the right interventions to correct the imbalance.

White working class boys are being failed by their parents and culture
When I was at university I used to tutor to get some extra money
I was hired by Nigerian woman who was a single mother with three kids . She took on extra cleaning jobs to pay for tuition for her children . She told me that in Nigerian culture education was regarded as being very important .
I still keep in touch with the family and all her children have great professional careers .
Stop blaming the system for the fact that white working class boys are not achieving .
There are many other reasons but the main reason is lack of parental interest and input