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.

The local paper reported that children in Stoke make less academic progress than their peers nationally, but it didn't categorise by race.

Kent and Bucks are the two main Grammar school counties. Both only manage (now) one none Tory MP apiece. Both affluent areas but with real pockets of deprivation.

I think Lincolnshire is also a full grammar county, but that is not an affluent area.

The Tories have to be careful with this one - those with more education don't vote Tory, so what do they do? They make it a battle about ethnicity - a nice bit of 'immigrant' bashing. Forgive me for being cynical here, but this is the party which closed down most Sure Start centres, and early years investment pays off, so IMO they have shown what they really think about education for the majority.

From the perspective of having a son with learning difficulties and being one of the white British pupils who were struggling in school I found that those who had English as a second language were taught differently to those who were born here in all the schools Ds attended. In the end I had to pull him out of school to teach him myself I doubt he would have been able to read and write if he had been left in the system.
I was able to home school him. For those that didn’t have a parent who could I could see that it was a problem that was coming.

Ds would have benefitted hugely from being tested and taught in the English as a foreign language group but because of the geography of his birth he couldn’t join that group.

For example everyone was given 5 spellings to learn. Eg Park, Car, Mark, Talk and Ball
In his class group the spelling test would be the teacher telling them to write the sentence

Jane went to play in the street with her ball.

Ds had learned all his spellings and knew them and knew how to write them but then couldn’t spell or write Jane, went, to, play, in, the, street, with, her

He lost confidence. Refused to learn anything because he wasn’t going to be tested on what he had learned and it was an uphill battle especially when he saw his friend being tested on the spellings they had been given and getting 5/5

Ds has dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD. Going through the assessment for ADHD as an adult and wasn’t tested for dyslexia and dysgraphia until he was in college.

Why is it so hard for pupils to be tested in primary school.
Ultimately it would save money in the long run.

If what Ds experienced is the same up and down the country then I can see why a lot of white British boys do much worse than those who come to this country.

Should add this was when Labour were in power.

Should add this was when Labour were in power.

Which helps to illustrate that this has been a known problem for at least 30 or more years. It's absolutely nothing to do with 'white privilege'.

Blame the gov? FGS they are not going to come out and say it's due to disinterested and lack of support from lazy parents are they! Their voters. Or we made loads of cuts surestsrt etc so we are to blame - - - get real.
But every child gets 13 years of free education - if they choose not to use it while others around them do I don't think you can entirely blame the gov.
But with decades of money and attention going to London where the majority of immigrants are the rest have been left to fail - this should have been acknowledged years ago but only London mattered.

So, funding went to London because many, many children there met the criteria for extreme need.

The whole 'our money goes to London' thing was stoked up and amplified during the Brexit culture wars.

The Conservatives re-jigged the funding criteria.

Funding now goes to quite a lot of leafy Tory shires.

That's what falling for culture wars tripe gets you.

Funding now goes to quite a lot of leafy Tory shires.

Like Chesham and Amersham ?

But every child gets 13 years of free education - if they choose not to use it

From what I have seen, if you hadn’t managed to grasp how to read and write by the time you were 7years old. then your education stopped in year 2.

Yes education is there but not if you are British and have any sort of learning difficulties or just are a late bloomer.

Peregrina

The term “white privilege” isn’t something that has just come about. It was there 15 years ago when I was trying to help Ds.

Here: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2019/nov/09/most-schools-england-worse-off-next-year-than-2015-study-says

Key point being the anti-London culture war masked a real-terms cut for the majority of schools.

And that's basically what right-wing populism does: gets everyone arguing about a non-existent thing, so they don't look at huge, real existing ideologically-drive, choice-created inequality.

Inequality which is real and a choice.

They haven't included EAL students in this. That isn't what this is about. It specifically says white disadvantaged. this group could (and does) include eg Eastern European EAL students. Interesting how many people are willingly extrapolating WBRI from this and pitting people against each other (exactly what the Labour tabled question on the minutes express concern about). The report very specifically sets out its parameters for disadvantage at the beginning.

Come and meet the four Syrian asylum seekers at my school and tell me they are somehow advantaged just because they get a few remedial reading lessons.

SEN funding is a separate debate. but the least likely group to be diagnosed with ADHD and autism are black males

And this report plays into that.

Get everyone frothing about a non-existent 'industry', that is supposedly advancing the interests of BAME children above poor, white boys; get everyone thinking that there are powerful people in education telling poor, white boys they have 'white privilege' - when in fact there is no such thing.

There is a reality of massive underfunding (in education, communities, MH provision, youth services, caps on benefits that impact on children).

Most people in education talk about this - not 'white privilege'.

Most people in education are painfully aware that the data - and the problem - is complex.

As can be witnessed on this thread.

But, sure, let's all accept the invitation to get angry about something that doesn't exist (this imaginary canal of 'woke' educators, who are secretly responsible for children failing), rather than being furious about inequality.

Inequality which is produced by government choices to cut the public sector and introduce punitive benefit caps.

Sorry, my last post was carrying on from a previous post. Not a reply to Piggy.

Who is a good example of the fact that most educators - rather than being part of a secret, 'woke' cabal - realise the issue is complex.

The sensationalist headlines are designed to cause exactly this sort of 'he's got more than me' in-fighting...

Poor pupils are disadvantaged, regardless of ethnicity. That is a failing of the Tory government. Lets not deflect attention from that.

Some schools have better resources, funding, training for teachers etc, which helps disadvantaged pupils.
One theory is that London schools are disproportionately advantaged and as London has a far higher proportion of ethnic minorities then this may be one of the causes of the stats.

BAME is bandied around as though its a single group but break down the stats and different ethnicities have very different outcomes. Be assured, for some their likely outcome is as bleak as their white counterparts.

Great post dame : only want to change one phrase to more bleak.

From what I have seen, if you hadn’t managed to grasp how to read and write by the time you were 7years old. then your education stopped in year 2.

I agree. This then holds you back in other subjects like maths, because you can't fully read the questions.

Piggy - agree.

The sensationalist headlines are designed to cause exactly this sort of 'he's got more than me' in-fighting...

Yes, when you read the BBC article linked in the OP and it says 'At GCSE, in 2019, 18% of white British pupils on free meals achieved grade 5 in English and maths, compared with 23% for the average for pupils on free meals' the response should be 'bloody hell, that's awful, 23% is dire' not 'why are white pupils being abandoned while other kids on FSM have it sooo good'.

I lived in Bucks and the problem there is that the best schools serve the smallest communities. Places like Milton Keynes and the outskirts of Buckingham need more schools due to the new builds being built there. Those who can afford to move or ferry their kids to the various private / grammar schools around; but those who can’t often have to settle for some shocking schools. For example several MK schools have gang and drug problems related to London gangs - the kids affected are mostly white or mixed race / black kids living in white families.

I'm old enough to remember the last culture war, which was about London being over-funded.

So much anger.

And a few quiet voices pointing out the massive issue was austerity and underfunding across the board.

So the Conservatives promised 're-organisation'.

Cue lots of Head Teachers on the news, welcoming the 're-organisation' and saying they expected more funding for their school.

And what happened?

Yes. Real-term cuts masked as 're-organisation'.

Only 18 constituencies saw a slight increase in funding, of which 15 were Conservative-held constituencies.

Honestly. We have to learn what falling for right-wing, populist culture-wars does.

It does not end well for us.

schoolsweek.co.uk/data-reveals-scale-of-national-tutoring-programmes-northern-challenge/

This isn't good. The regions that most need covid catch-up due to being disproportionately hit with absences are the ones least likely to be accessing it.

What's going on?

Real-term cuts masked as 're-organisation'

That's how they just cut pupil premium funding - by 'reorganising the date on which the numbers are collected'. Oh look, that means millions of pounds of funding lost. How convenient.

@dameofdilemma

The sensationalist headlines are designed to cause exactly this sort of 'he's got more than me' in-fighting...

Poor pupils are disadvantaged, regardless of ethnicity. That is a failing of the Tory government. Lets not deflect attention from that.

Some schools have better resources, funding, training for teachers etc, which helps disadvantaged pupils.
One theory is that London schools are disproportionately advantaged and as London has a far higher proportion of ethnic minorities then this may be one of the causes of the stats.

BAME is bandied around as though its a single group but break down the stats and different ethnicities have very different outcomes. Be assured, for some their likely outcome is as bleak as their white counterparts.

Yes this is seen in Bucks. MK is where a lot of Indian IT companies are headquartered and the kids of the staff tend to do well regardless of the ofsted ratings of the schools they attend. For example I know dozens and dozens of kids who went to grammar from Needs Improvement primaries. But it’s commonplace for professional Indian families (ie both parents are educated at similar levels) to be very involved in their kids’ educations - they tend to stop everything (even funeral attendance) during term time; and where a term time absence is needed a parent (usually Mum) will ask for homework and sit over the kids until they do it everyday.

That doesn’t always happen in Pakistani or Bangladeshi or even Romany families (all of which are large in number in Bucks) where arranged marriages are more commonplace and ‘unequal’ in terms of education so one parent (usually the husband) has to work and provide education too. Many kids might not see their Dad’s until late in the evening and might have been conditioned not to bother him by a mum who doesn’t understand that education is important & so suffer massively as a result. But as parents are ‘blamed’ any blame for failure often goes back to the child for being stupid and the children eventually internalise this.