Guardian link here
now on the one hand, given that there is no ethical issue with bursary funds earmarked for ethnic minorities and given that statistically poor white boys do significantly underperform academically compared with other ethnic and socioeconomic groups, it seems perverse that the donor isn't being allowed to make this gift to help redress this imbalance. this isn't about donating to future Boris Johnson types coming from a cradle of privilege but about finding those highly disadvantaged kids from a social sink hole council estate and giving them access to an education that is unavailable to them except by charitable donations like this.
however, thinking about it more I am coming down on the side that the school is right that this is inappropriate. this is because the statistics showing that poor white boys underperform compared to other groups is an overall average which will obviously cover a very wide range of ability effort and circumstances. among the cohort of poor white boys living close enough to Dulwich College that they might consider applying if there was a 100% funded option, there will always be a small number of highly motivated, high achieving boys with supportive parents who know that getting the best education possible is the path out of poverty. Those kids are going to do well even at a state comprehensive and picking out one or two of them too enjoy the privileges of private education would have zero effect on the underperformance of the socioeconomic cohort because they are not where the issue lies.
if a cohort's average outcomes are unacceptably low, it doesn't help to take one or two individuals from the highest performing end of the cohort to boost their outcomes yet higher - that will have a negligible effect on the average.
where you need to spend the money is on the lowest performing quartile of the cohort, and do so in ways that give a boost to the motivations and opportunities of a larger number of individuals not just hand picking a single individual to be handed a golden ticket to escape the fate of the rest of their contemporaries.
my idea for how to spend this money would be : establishing a project at a target underperforming deprived-area comprehensive school that engages and enthuses large numbers of kids. there are numerous national and international science and engineering project inter-school competitions to design, build and race vehicles of various kinds, which private schools dominate because they have the funding, equipment and staff energy to make it happen - and most comps simply can't do it. A gift to make something like that possible at an underperforming comp would have a huge impact and uplifting effect on the outcomes for dozens of youngsters.
how would you spend a million pounds to tackle the underperformance of poor white boys?