White disadvantaged pupils failed for decades - a national scandal

[noblegiraffe]

A group of MPs have produced a report detailing how white pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have been neglected for decades leading to poorer educational outcomes than almost any other ethnic group.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57558746

Given that the Tories have been in power for a decade, have they accepted their part in this? Well they seem to have gone with deciding that the phrase ‘White privilege’ is the real issue here.

Yes, white working class pupils have been neglected, but the implication is that is because other groups have been prioritised.

This is a government who:

1. have systematically underfunded education since they got in
2. have cut Pupil premium funding
3. are the sort to express horror at state school kids getting prioritised for Oxbridge places
4. have done fuck all for any other underachieving groups

And they’re only now concerned about white working class kids because

1. they think it might play well to the red wall
2. they can use it to score points in a tedious fucking culture war

Will we see any more money for schools (particularly early years) as a result? I doubt it.

I actually find it unbearable that the impact of disinvestment in the public sector and communities is being blamed on people in education being 'woke'.

(And, yes, I'm drawing on Sam Freedman there.)

It's such a hideous distortion, it's actually nearly unbearable.

@thecatfromjapan I went to, and worked in, schools across London too and this still exists. There is tons and tons of things put in place for BAME students. I am not saying this is wrong, or shouldn't happen, but it does happen. The minority part is often forgotten too.
All of these incentives are short lived and for the purpose of votes. They make little difference as they're often paid for by the closing of other things.
It's a mess and it's far more complicated than simply having someone say oh look white boys are underachievers.
Giving someone a laptop isn't going to change things. The world is unfair and even if they do go to uni, it's about who, not what you know most of the time. So many of my friends who were poor got great apprenticeships and went to uni. But uni is not a magic pill that gets you a job.

I could have told them this and spared the cost of the research.

Past the age of 14 it was increasingly difficult to get certain demographics (white working class boys) to attend school regularly and the main reason was their parents didn't install in them the importance of education, in fact ive heard with my own ears that school is pointless because there's no jobs for the likes of us (Midlands). Conversely parents from an immigrant background (1st/2nd generation) prioritised education above all else at DD's school, many had taken risks (or the grandparents had) to reach Britain to give their kids the best opportunities. In my experience this effect reduces with each generation

@Tuberoses

Professor Sir Bryan Thwaites offered £1m scholarships to two private schools because he wanted to help disadvantaged white boys like himself. He had benefited from a scholarship in his youth and wanted to pay it forward. Both schools refused because they said it was racist. Nobody could explain why it was ok to have scholarships solely for black boys but not for white boys.

I'd love to know which scholarships are solely provided to black students. Most scholarships are income and talent based, and I believe the scholarship Bryan Thwaites received was also income and talent based

I am glad you started this thread, Noblegiraffe. I thought it was pretty rich coming from a bunch of Tories who have closed Sure Start centres, cut back on youth clubs, public libraries and now with the damage done to children's education by Covid won't even stump up the money to try to begin to make up the deficit.

Then they have the gall to come out with rubbish about 'white privilege'. What are men like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees Mogg if they are not privileged white men?

www.thescholarshiphub.org.uk/ethnic-minority-scholarships/

There’s a whole list of scholarships for BAME people only. And around the same time the rapper Stormzy launched a scholarship to fund two black students at Cambridge. But Prof Thwaites wasn’t allowed to fund a scholarship for white students.

You've linked to 8 post-18 scholarships, Tuberose.

This report is about pre-18 education.

And it's a report which (disingenuously) hides underfunding as a cause for poor outcomes for low-income pupils behind blame of 'woke' ideology.

And (disingenuously) doesn't examine the work many in education have done, over many years, with diminishing resources, to try and tackle the effects of that underfunding for all low-income students.

It's disgraceful.

I do just wonder what the educational circumstances of the committee members which produced this report was.

I’ve been saying this for years. Not everyone is going to be A* student or have the ability to go off to uni and then get this amazing well paid job some where. I worked really hard at school but my grades were not great, it was not because I didn’t appreciate education. 50years ago many more working class jobs that were enough for a family to live in and you could walk into after school.

Discussing how poorly paid carers and nursery staff are paid on other threads, these are jobs you need 2y post 16 qualifications in and you are on mim wage. So it’s understandable that at 14 or 16 you think what’s the point when you have 4 more years of working hard in education to get same mim wage pay as someone with no qualifications. Right then and then education doesn’t pay. If you live in poor area where only job you will get are mim wage or you are rare example of high flyer who “gets out” what is average bored 14y going to do?

The college my daughter is going to in September has a scholarship specifically for BAME students. It's a private drama school.

It's quite difficult to find details of independent school scholarships, I don't know the names of enough schools to google them, it would take far too long.

www.savethestudent.org/student-finance/ethnic-minority-scholarships.html

www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/stormzy-scholarship

8 scholarships.

That's not a bloody 'industry'.

Versus the reality of massive funding cuts.

In MH services.

In youth initiatives.

In education.

In communities.

Sure start dismantled.

But, yes, let's blame it on a non-existent 'industry' that discriminates against poor, white boys. And let's all get angry about that.

Rather than being rightfully furious about the conscious creation of massive inequality and depletion of the public sector.

If anyone thinks the Tories care about anyone disadvantaged - white or otherwise - they are deluded. It's another inflammatory report designed to pitch people against people thus deflecting from their own absolutely horrendous track record of cutting youth, education and other public service budgets.

We can start with Halfon - the chair of the committee - privately educated. Admittedly his background of being Jewish is probably not typical of white working class boys.

If anyone thinks the Tories care about anyone disadvantaged - white or otherwise - they are deluded

Only now they have realised that with a few juicy soundbites they can pick up votes in the one time Red Wall. Let's see them put the money in.

Yep that's exactly it @peregrina. It's so transparent it's depressing.

I agree that the government is using this to score points with a particular narrative and this is sadly unlikely to result in anything practical that will benefit children at schools.

It's interesting how it nearly automatically becomes a White working class vs immigrants debate in many spaces -- even though those are overlapping groups. There are White working class immigrants, and there are working class people of other ethnicities who are not 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. This isn't a one vs the other thing that government and many media sources are making it out to be. I agree the immigrant picture needs a lot more nuance than is often put in media, but so does the White working class picture.

I live in an area I've repeatedly called a 'black hole for education', no even good schools until college level, though I - like many other parents - are holding hope for the new secondary that still hasn't had any inspections, but the two previous new schools are both inadequate -- even the Muslim primary that is largely isn't White and has a large immigrant base. The funding and resources to help in this area aren't here, we're the toss away area. It's not really surprising it's hard to get kids to engage when you've got schools with a new headteacher every year, with such high turnover of staff, where those who are there are expected to work miracles with shoe strings until they're dragged into the ground.

Yeah, some is wider social and cultural factors including home life, but the government trying pull that this is the fault of rhetoric around race should be seen as the laughable horseshit it is with how little they've been shown to care about the social institutions in many communities - schools and otherwise rather feeding into their culture war concept that certain demographics of parents care more. It's always going to be more complicated than that and doesn't in any way give the government room for the shredding they've been doing to schools and communities resources.

This is our white privilege don't you know.

Not everyone is middle class. Not everyone is academic. Not everyone wants or benefits from going to university.

What we need to look at is providing different routes and different kinds of jobs (other than carer or shop assistant on minimum wage with no sick pay etc) for people to go into who are not middle class, academic or require you to go into 50K debt to get an entry position in.

We also need to look at why we drag kids who've been failing academically for years to keep on going with the same subjects getting harder each year when they're already years behind. I'm not sure the intention of inclusion was that you could fail in the same classroom and subject as all of your peers and at least you're in the same building so you're included.

If you want to help the working class make sure there are industries, jobs and training schemes for them to access that pay enough for a viable quality of life. Make sure that education isn't one size fits all and pretending if we just try hard enough we can make everyone academic and middle class. Class diversity is needed. Getting rid of the sneering condescension and drive for assimilation and listen to what these people actually want. Most people will tell you working class boys without massive academic ability or interest want decent apprenticeships that lead to skilled decently paid trades and that they don't have to get into debt to access. For those who have academic ability and interest the opportunities are all there already if they want to take them but you can force feed them to those who don't want them.

It reminds me of missionaries forcing bibles on people because they will be saved by religion - we do the same with Higher Education.

@thecatfromjapan But would that argument fly if those 8 scholarships were for white working class and none for BAME kids? Let not forget that BAME stands for black, Asian and minority ethnic. In a lot of city schools white working class kids are a minority. So the whole school is BAME!
I agree with you though that this is just another tactic to hide away the years of massive underfunding for everything and cause yet more division. There is nothing in that article that would unite people.

And those blaming the parents or praising the parents of more successful groups would the same be said for crime statistics when other groups are disproportionately affected specifically around knife and gun crime? It seems very easy to blame working class white groups and if the same blame was placed on other groups Mumsnet would delete the threads and they have on the past.

For what is worth I don't believe in white privilege I believe in under achieving by all groups due to economic situation and in some cases lack of aspiration. My father came from a rough area of Stoke one of 9 the rest all have a similar lifestyle of underachievement he on the other hand joined the army and worked hard so his daughter could attend Oxbridge. The reasons for underachievement are significant and diverse and certainly not helped by the closing of the grammar school system.

@Whoarethewho

For what is worth I don't believe in white privilege I believe in under achieving by all groups due to economic situation and in some cases lack of aspiration. My father came from a rough area of Stoke one of 9 the rest all have a similar lifestyle of underachievement he on the other hand joined the army and worked hard so his daughter could attend Oxbridge. The reasons for underachievement are significant and diverse and certainly not helped by the closing of the grammar school system.

Then you will understand what I'm talking about in local schools and colleges.

Regardless of ethnicity there are huge areas of the country that are forgotten about, large numbers of children that are forgotten about.

If you want to help the working class make sure there are industries, jobs and training schemes for them to access that pay enough for a viable quality of life. Make sure that education isn't one size fits all and pretending if we just try hard enough we can make everyone academic and middle class

And can a white working class boy not be academic too. I came from that background and I'm academic (but then again I'm a girl). Equally I saw loads of pakistani/bangladeshi girls at my school disappear from education as education for girls was often not prioritised.

These kids don't know how to access a good quality education.

I'm wondering if the interview I've heard have given me a misleading impression of the report.

I heard London had managed to turn things around - mainly due to funding and part of the issue may be that white working class populations predominate in towns which have missed out on funding compared to some cities.

It has been worrying as a parent to experienced how much support we’ve had to provide our children in addition to primary school – once they fell behind either we intervene with time money and knowledge they’d still be behind which obvious some sections of the population will struggle to do. Some of that is clearly funding – though I’d also say expectations of the children play a part.

I agree with BiBabbles it’s not a white working-class vs immigrant population thing – is often funding and wider issues and yes I agree the Toris have played a huge part in the underfunding.

Though when ever this issue in raise on MN it's always seems to be blaming and othering the working-class parents.

DH and I are both working class and made it to university and while our families supported us best they could and nurtured our ambitions I can't say that was always true of our schools - while DC teachers have been better than ours lack of ambition and poor careers advice for our children has been something we've had to counter.

@Hoopa

I think this has much more to do with the good parenting and high expectations of ethnic minorities in this country. Leave the teachers alone they are doing an amazing job with vastly reduced funds. Look to helping parents of white working class children so that they learn how to support their children and encourage a good work ethic.

This is racist. You are claiming that an entire ethnicity is underachieving due to bad parenting and no work ethic.

Please don't come extolling the grammar schools as havens of progress for working class children. They weren't, it was only a lucky few who managed to get to one. A lot of parents of the older generation were fobbed off with a second best education at the age of 11 but as the woman in quoted in the BBC article said - there were secure factory jobs available, so education didn't matter as much.