So, white working class children are being failed by schools and society in general.

[mrsruffallo]

Held in contempt by the middle classes (much evidence of that on here)
Industry no longer provides these people with a job for a life, dismissed as chavs, it seems that these are the the people that it is okay to ignore.....

That sounds like a great scheme. By rights, everyone should be 'respectful and supportive' of their school, wherever they are, whatever their background. Being educated is a ticket out of poverty and it's a pity so many don't seem to realise that.

someone mentioned aspirations.

a lot of people have mentioned parenting and parental support for schools.

I think these are two key points. I also think that to change this, there needs to be a cultural shift.

To bring about such a shift means that there should be universal parenting classes, obligatory upon receipt of child benefit.

It is only when we educate parents and invest in parents on a wider scale can there be a cultural shift towards education and aspirations.

don't like obligatory parenting classes. State socialists have been defeated, the coalition is restoring liberties, we don't need more obligatory socialist schemes.

"My mum says in parenting the difference between the working class and the middle class was always considered to be a difference between those who say 'because I told you so' and those who use reason and communication with their children. Maybe the so called working classes are mostly being failed by their parents."

ahh - I must be working class then - I don't reason with my boys - it's "because I said so - now stop arguing with me"

I'm not keen on obligatory parenting classes either but I think that sharing skills informally, like in the school example above, and getting community support is a good one. I also don't think that investing in parents necessarily results in higher aspirations. Some people live in very miserable environments where opportunities are dire.... but what kind of investment makes one kid think 'I'm going to work hard at school so I can get out of here' and the next think 'there's no point working hard at school because I'm stuck here'?

"but what kind of investment makes one kid think 'I'm going to work hard at school so I can get out of here' and the next think 'there's no point working hard at school because I'm stuck here'?"

I think parental attitudes has a lot to do with it. A child's parents could be in a dire situation with no opportunity to get our of the environment, but still be hopeful and optimistic that one day they will find a way out, and will be determined to keep looking for it no matter how long it takes. Another's may just give up and resign themselves to it.

But I think it's more complex than that, there are so many variables that influence the way that a child responds to situations, external influences (and even wit 2 children from the same family brought up in the same home there can be differing external influences and factors) - then there's also internal ones - that child's personality

To a certain extent, there will always be one ethnic group which underachieves- the chance of them all performing the same is slim.

However, I think what it shows is the impact economic well-being has on children; after all, it's white middle and upper class children who have the highest achievement.

Interestingly, 82% of children in care are white.

"what kind of investment makes one kid think 'I'm going to work hard at school so I can get out of here' and the next think 'there's no point working hard at school because I'm stuck here'?"

I think that at the early age when the problems begin to take route the child isn't thinking clearly enough about getting out of anywhere and their future.

At a very young age children are being shown, by some parents, that they don't have to do work, that there's no value to doing work, that teachers can be ignored and that the school cannot discipline them.

By the time a child is able to make decisions about their future the "damage" in terms of attitudes and education is already done.

voluntary schemes are good, obligatory bad. I think the investment should be in schools and teachers, not in parents. Some parents don't give a damn and may have problems such as alcoholism, hopefully the teachers are different.

"I think that at the early age when the problems begin to take route the child isn't thinking clearly enough about getting out of anywhere and their future."

Badgers, this begs the question why children should have to think about getting out of where they are.

I heard this on teh radio this morning as "schools failing white working class boys" and I felt a bit annoyed that they were laying the blame for any problems at the door of schools.

I am also not sure what "working class" means in teh context, whether it is a euphamism for something.

Anyway, as others have highlighted, the problems stem from the childrens families and problems in their wider local community re poverty, lack of jobs, lots of people on benefits long term and so on. These are not problems for the schools, they are problems for society. Improve the lives of the communitites and families and you automatically improve outcomes for the children. You cannot expect schools to shoulder the responsility for overcoming the problems of the wider community.

Thinking about the "a few years ago it was black boys" thing - the largest concentrations of people in ethnic minorities are in London, which has areas with very severe problems surrounding poverty, underachievement and worse. Money has certainly been channelled into these areas - maybe because London has money to channel. I wonder if the areas where white boys are getting into difficulties are more spread across teh country and so more difficult to "target" as they are more spread out across different regions and so on. So it would need a national inititive, rather than the more discrete targetting that can be done more successfully with other tranches of the population. Just a thought.

ISNT, the study was initially by a London primary school- it just reflects a national trend.

Could you give a bit more detail about the money which has been channelled into London? Genuinely interested, not trying to argue.

I work in this area, and we don't use terms such as working class... we analyse performance according to gender, age, ethnicity and FSM eligibility- white uk boys on FSM do perform the lowest of all groups.

Toc- you said that previously it was black boys- yes some time back African-Caribbean boys were the lowest performing group, followed closely by children of Bangladeshi heritage, but a lot of focus on raising their attainment has happened since. Nowadays we analyse Black-Caribbean and Black-African groups separately, partly because there are increased numbers of Black-African children in English schools and partly because our data recording is better now, and schools are distinguishing ethnicities into smaller sub-groups.

In our authority (extremely large, inner-city, high levels of deprivation, large population of mixed heritage pupils) we also break down performance of children of multiple heritages, as there are great differences between the performance of White and Black-Caribbean mixed heritage children and children of mixed White and Black-African heritage.

"white uk boys on FSM do perform the lowest of all groups"

hasn't this been the case for years and years? What has been done to address this? Are there any schemes or initiatives that target extra help to white boys such as the schemes that you mentioned which focus on raising the attainment of other groups?

"Badgers, this begs the question why children should have to think about getting out of where they are."

They shouldn't have to, but that's not the point I was making.

Someone asked "what kind of investment makes one kid think 'I'm going to work hard at school so I can get out of here' and the next think 'there's no point working hard at school because I'm stuck here'?"

I was saying that that kind of investment, if indeed one could be found, would take effect far too late in the child's education. It might work, but you're facing a big uphill battle and many children will have fallen through the net already.

So no they shouldn't have to, but whatever is to be done has to be done before they could possibly make such a decision anyway so it's pretty irrelevant.

claig- I can only discuss what we do in our authority obviously but we target extra funding, advisor support, focus initiatives according to FSM levels, and ethnic make-up of the pupils in a school.

BTW- performance is highly linked to familial wealth- those on FSM of any ethnic background will perform in general below their peers who are not eligible for FSM.

"hasn't this been the case for years and years? What has been done to address this? Are there any schemes or initiatives that target extra help to white boys such as the schemes that you mentioned which focus on raising the attainment of other groups?"

Well there have been all sorts of schemes that target low achievers in general. However the schemes keep on missing white working class low achievers because of the issue of parental disconnection with the whole education process.

Throwing money at schools and teachers won't help this.

As other posters have said this is something to do with society in general.

I don't know how it works. I did like Labour's recent one-to-one scheme. Can you describe what extra help under achievers get? Do they get extra one-to-one tuition? Do they get extra home tutoring after school? What is provided for them? Also how successful has it been?

"BTW- performance is highly linked to familial wealth- those on FSM of any ethnic background will perform in general below their peers who are not eligible for FSM."

This is of huge importance.

Anecdotally, I have noticed in my field that underachieving (white) w/c boys are more likely to express their inability to achieve their potential by disengaging from education and/or displaying challenging behaviours (which can lead to exclusion), making them that bit harder for any scheme to target.

Maybe I should have rad the article first

tethers London has its own mayor who has a huge budget, and has a lot of money for things like regeneration and local initiatives and setting up various things to help communities. Like the schemes muminbeds talks about - and all sorts of other assistance. Plus it is very densely populated and transport links are very good so help can be targetted and delivered with a minumum of overheads. I know that there is a group called "London Councils" who dish out funding for various initiatives and things. I guess London just has more money sloshing around as well. Maybe.

On the points in the article, I found it made me feel a bit uncomfortable. In the one school the problem seems to be ( as they acknowledged) that being poor/living in a deprived area is conflated with having low aspitations etc. The difference here is that people who have recently come to the UK through asylum etc are poor because they have arrived with nothing - many are well educated and have different expectations for their children, than people who have lived in the same place dependent on benefits for a few generations. Obviously there is cross-over, but to assume that everyone living in a certain area will be the same sort of person is an error - there are many different reasons for being poor IYSWIM.

My personal view is that poverty is the issue, tackle that and you start to get somewhere.

pressed post too early- I wanted to agree with Alien about the importance of economic well-being, and then go on to ask if anyone had any evidence to back up or disprove my hypothesis about challenging behaviour.

Tsk.

"My personal view is that poverty is the issue, tackle that and you start to get somewhere."

Exactly.

The DCSF one-to-one tuition scheme is pretty flexible- children can have tuition in school time, or out of hours, in school or at home. It is 10 hours tutoring with a qualified teacher. So far, initial evaluations have been very positive, and certainly schools are desperate to get their hands on more places.
The number of places for our authority has doubled for next academic year (ie 10/11) however, as the bill was abandoned, that is likely to be the final year of the scheme.

but there are already schemes in place that help underachieveing children. I don't think that they target poverty to solve the problem, or do they?

In my experience as a teacher in a deprived area it is the parents from the ethnic minorities - Black, asian, eatern european who come to parents evenings, are concerned and interested, respond to phone calls and letters home. Often the white working class parents do not turn up to parents evening and communications home have no effect.
At the last parents evening i was actually thanked by a number of parents all of whom were of black African descent. Of course there are exceptions but it does show which parents value education and pass on this attitude to their children.