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.

Get on your knees and say thank you Education! Qualifications and cultural capital will SAVE your soul

Just catching up on this, thanks for your excellent posts piggy

Was reflecting more on the massive volte face by the Tories here. Previously these people would be written off as "benefit scroungers" and the Conservative government would be pouring scorn on them being lazy.
Clearly they have realised that won't win them votes in their new seats so now they are trying another form of divide and conquer ("woke culture"/ it's reverse racism ) kind of thing. I wonder how this will play with the traditional voters who have had years of "benefit scroungers" messaging.

Also though where are labour going to go here? I feel they've been backed into a corner here...

It might be good in other ways but it has its disadvantages. It can be used to control: its never your personal money so this is who you marry, this is the career to chose. And its can leave others especially women destitute if they married into the family from outside and then they loose their spouse.
Yes I can see how that could happen. But in terms of statistics only the increase in wealth would be recorded, not the social and personal consequences. People from other cultural backgrounds might have less money but more personal freedom and autonomy. Obviously “deprivation” is not as simple as wealth and poverty.

Social Mobility Commission (cited in the report) are not happy at all:

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/22/watchdog-cited-in-education-report-condemns-its-awful-language

Labour have backed themselves into far worse corners that would take more getting out of.

Piggy - just returned to the discussion

Agree that overall it doesn't really help to generalise. It's far far more complex than just racism... My experience is very limited anyway, anecdotal but quite a lot of them over many many years. I do think the UK has a massive problem with classism, accent prejudice and a failure to respect traditionally working class occupations, and I think that very sad. Constant talk of social mobility rather than an acceptance that everyone deserves to make an adequate living doing something they are capable of learning and can get some satisfaction from, without judgement about whether it is good enough.

I mean "good enough" for some hypothetical metropolitan policy wonk analysing GDP!!!

@meadowbreeze - how was the child given an iPad in 2004 when they weren’t released until 2010?
This story whiffs a bit of “all benefit users have massive wide screen TVs and fancy acrylic nails!”

@mayflowermaisie why bother responding without reading my posts? I literally said obv it wasn't a real iPad, just a tablet type.
I grew up on benefits and applied for most of them aged 10! your response is just stupid.

Constant talk of social mobility rather than an acceptance that everyone deserves to make an adequate living doing something they are capable of learning and can get some satisfaction from, without judgement about whether it is good enough

Agree with this. I don’t see not wanting to go to uni as lacking inspiration if you are mediocre academically and don’t enjoy or do well at studying and will get in huge debt without improving your (as opposed to the statistical generic person) chances of earning more. It’s a rational decision. If we’re saying you have to have a degree to have a chance of earning even a tiny bit more than minimum wage then it needs to be state funded. Otherwise our economy is failing if we’re not able to offer work that pays enough to live on to people without the aptitude or inclination or willingness to get in debt required to undertake HE.

A definite start would be bringing back nhs bursaries. Saying we’re short of nurses whilst refusing to pay to train them is ridiculous especially when students have long placements on shifts and realistically not many wealthy kids are queuing up to earn a nurses early salary.

I agree with you OP, every word in your opening post. This is what happens when Tories are in power. Cuts, cuts and more cuts and very little done to boost industry.

I hope the tories get booted off the face of the earth.

I think the issue is less the race of the children but where the working class children live.

Schools in larger cities (especially London) have benefitted from funding and programmes (like Teach First) which aren’t available to schools in smaller cities and towns. Also state schools in cities, have an intake from across class backgrounds and parents have a larger choice of schools to choose. This means children in cities including working class children do better.

As there are more children from ethnic minorities in large cities they do better, especially compared to white working class children from deprived towns without any job opportunities or role models for academic routes.

I think this is due to school funding being based on pupil numbers which means the smaller, more rural schools get less money.

A definite start would be bringing back nhs bursaries. Saying we’re short of nurses whilst refusing to pay to train them is ridiculous especially when students have long placements on shifts and realistically not many wealthy kids are queuing up to earn a nurses early salary.

I fully agree. Furthermore with Dido Harding who might end up leading the NHS in England, going on about how we shouldn't have foreign staff here. In that I partially agree - we should not be poaching staff from other countries whose need is greater than ours, but we need a proper commitment to the NHS which the Tories don't have.

The hypocrisy of them all infuriates me.

As there are more children from ethnic minorities in large cities they do better, especially compared to white working class children from deprived towns without any job opportunities or role models for academic routes.

And such towns can be exceedingly narrow - with the better educated or just those with a bit of get up and go making their escape, leaving the community more left behind and more insular.

@Piggywaspushed

twitter.com/AllyFogg/status/1407275189163921410

Interesting outline.

Really interesting discussion on this thread.

I've got a very cynical thought about data coming out that voting lines are now becoming far more obviously split along education lines than wealth. It used to be that Labour were the party of the working class, and Conservatives for the better off. Now it is more likely that degree-educated people will vote Labour, and those without a degree Conservative.

So who do the Conservatives need to start appealing to? Those who haven't done very well at school. So...tell them that they were failed by the system (true) but also it was the fault of those damn, woke, Lefties (false) who insist that because they were white and privileged, they didn't deserve a hand-up (ignoring that the Tories have done fuck-all for a decade to help them). Despite, as the twitter thread piggy linked to pointing out that they provided no evidence that 'white privilege' is a phrase used at all in education.

Also interesting from that thread is "It acknowledges too that gender is a far bigger factor than race - that there are far more extreme attainment gaps between boys & girls across all ethnicities & among both FSM & Non-FSM kids than there are between white FSM kids & others (then proceeds to just ignore that.)"

So why is the report about race then? We know that there was a recent report that dismissed institutional racism in education. And now there's one saying that white pupils have been neglected? From the BBC article in the OP "Mr Halfon warned against using the term "white privilege" in education, saying it was divisive and likely to "promote disharmony" and "pits one group against another". - but these two reports released in quick succession do exactly that.

In terms of gender - what do we know the biggest issue is facing boys in terms of underachievement? Literacy. Is that a bigger factor than race or gender? I'd like to see more energy put into that.

Why is it that selective grammar schools are disproportionately full of ethnic minority kids ? Because their parents value education and sacrifice all else to ensure their children get the best education (tutoring, support and nurturing at home to ensure the right environment for learning etc). White kids also have this too but the proportion of ethnic kids is higher than the proportion of white kids. Class and wealth are also big factors

I know many Eastern Europeans who live in our community, they are so driven for their kids... My dds best friend is Moldovan, she speaks perfect English despite coming from a home which speaks only Romanian... Is also fluent in Russian & German as her grandmother lives there!
Her mother works in the local Eastern European shop & dad is a truck driver... Both are very determined their dc's will achieve great things... I am blown away by them, during the lockdown their dd did so much more extra work (set by parents) than most... Also as well as being fluent in Romanian, Russian & German she is also a very accomplished pianist & violinist... However English society determines due to parents not speaking much English & also by their occupation that this family is working class but they are aspiring for so much for their dc... The mother often says the Eastern European community all have similar values especially when it comes to education, languages & music.

On the subject of grammars : Kent is one of the counties where white working class children have been let down for decades says
BBCWorldatOne
. Nothing to do with it being a county where children are sorted into so called clever and not-so clever (but largely, poor and affluent) at10 yrs old by any chance?

noblegiraffe - I think you are spot on again.

As for selective grammars being full of BAME children - this may be the case of the superselectives in London, I wouldn't know. But there are not enough of them to drive the educational system.

Where the White privilege most definitely does exist, like Eton, I don't think anyone can pretend that such schools are full of mixed race kids. OK so Johnson managed to appoint a Chancellor of Indian descent, who is a product of Winchester - but this doesn't prove that the school is full of ethnic minority children.

Ditto Oxbridge.

Northern Ireland has an almost wholly selective school system and also has a significantly higher proportion of 17-24 year olds without qualifications than other UK countries

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-51227014

NI is also the least racially diverse region in the UK…

@Piggywaspushed

On the subject of grammars : Kent is one of the counties where white working class children have been let down for decades says BBCWorldatOne . Nothing to do with it being a county where children are sorted into so called clever and not-so clever (but largely, poor and affluent) at10 yrs old by any chance?

But then in places like Stoke there are no grammar schools (apart from the Catholic one that isn't a proper grammar as all you need is a score of 105 then the criteria is whether you are Catholic, go to church or attend a feeder Catholic primary school).

A FOI request actually revealed , didn't it, that there were 8 first year students who were black and British (state or otherwise) educated at Oxford last year? I think more than half of those were from Black African backgrounds.

There are no grammar schools in most places come but Kent was specifically picked out as an an area of concern for white working class underachievement.

Chesham and Amersham is another place lacking social mobility : more grammar schools! If the government is using this as a back door way of reintroducing grammar schools to areas, they'd better check their data.