White Working Class Woes

Thursday August 21^st saw GCSE results come out and the sadly predictable headline in the Daily Telegraph: ‘State has failed white working-class pupils.’ Bridget Phillipson, Education Secretary, warned that four fifths of children from white working-class backgrounds were falling short in the English and Maths skills required to get on in life. She added that the demographic had been ‘let down’ and that the UK’s productivity was suffering as a result. She told The Telegraph, “In 2024 only19% of British, working-class children achieved a strong pass in Maths and English GCSE. This data goes back to 2017 and alarmingly, it looks almost identical today to how it did then……. It’s not just the life chances of those children that are being damaged --- it’s the health of our entire society. Swathes of human capability and productivity are being lost.”

This year’s results are expected to show a similar pattern to that of 2024 when almost a fifth, an excellent 21.8%, of all GCSE entries were awarded the top grades. Most jobs require applicants to prove they have achieved at least a standard pass of Grade Four in English and Maths though some require ‘a strong pass’ of Grade Five. Pupils are unable to continue at school until Grade Four in Maths and English have been achieved and are currently required to re-sit the exams until the desired level is achieved. This is a process which needs scrutiny for it undoubtedly reinforces feelings of failure and the wish to discontinue on this academic treadmill.

The white working class is, in fact, shrinking. It accounts for a smaller share of the population every year as Britain becomes more middle class, more ethnically varied and more foreign born. By the early 2000s there were funny, often patronising caricatures of white working-class people in TV programmes and both left wing and right-wing journalists felt free to refer to ‘white trash’ and ‘chavs’, unthinkable in printed journalism today. The lordly Times attacked “gymslip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who’ll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye.”   Since then both language and attitudes have changed. The Brexit referendum in 2016 was won, i.e. achieved the correct result, thanks to the generally agreed working class ‘wot won it’ with their supposed good sense and opposition to ludicrous left-wing nonsense.   Gradually, it has become acknowledged that we can see working-class problems are not caused by individual moral failings but from the effects of the harm wrought by liberals upon society. The mass immigration tolerated by the elite has crushed working-class wages, overburdened public services on which they rely and changed the texture of their neighbourhoods by adding incomers and strangers.   And thus, members of the white working-class are both lionised and victimised.

In the field of education, many commentators have tended to informally agree with Michael Gove in defending and promoting a traditional, knowledge-rich curriculum while the Govt, aka the Department of Education, has been consistently accused of ‘dumbing down.’  However, an opinion poll for The Observer found that only a fifth of the population think that schools prepare children well for life and work while only 15% believe that assessment should rely mainly on exams and employers are desperate for change. A recent survey of 300 businesses by PwC found that only four in ten of employers think the current curriculum and assessment system prepare young people for the workplace and almost half of all companies find they must give young recruits additional training in computer skills, critical thinking or problem-solving while a third of employers are providing basic literacy or numeracy support.

The Sutton Trust recently published research showing white working-class boys from poor neighbourhoods face a double disadvantage of low family income and place poverty linked to their wider community, which significantly reduces their likelihood of academic study after GCSE. Just 29% of this group will continue to take AS, A levels or another qualification after GCSE compared with around half (46%) of white working-class boys living in more affluent areas and two thirds of boys from more advantaged families. This same report finds that boys are significantly less likely to carry on with academic studies than girls. Two thirds of girls take AS, A levels or another qualification compared with 55% of all boys. The attainment gap between poorer girls and their richer peers, while still significant, is also slightly less marked for girls with over half, 55%, of disadvantaged girls going on to further study compared with three quarters, 77%, of the non-disadvantaged. The Sutton Trust is currently urging the Government to consider the ‘double disadvantage’ that poor pupils who live in deprived neighbourhoods face. The Trust would like to see higher levels of resources maintained in these areas as the Government reforms school funding but additionally, wants a strong focus on outcomes by linking those resources to a similar accountability framework as the pupil premium.

England has climbed up the international league tables such as P.I.S.A. [Programme for International Assessment] to the delight of many, but this overall ranking, masks deepening inequalities as the disadvantage gap between rich and poor is once again growing. According to the Education Policy Institute, poorer pupils average more than 19 months in level of educational attainment, behind their wealthier peers at age 16 and there are enormous regional variations. In Blackpool, the gap is 28 months; in Knowsley, 27 and in Portsmouth, 26. There are long-standing regional differences in the GCSE results too with the Education Secretary warning this week that the results would “expose the inequalities that are entrenched in our education system.” Last year, London had the highest pass rate of 72.45% and the West Midlands had the lowest at 63.1%. 

Working-class families are often concentrated in certain areas and regions and simply want their children to be happy at school, but they do not scrutinise the values and organisation of the same schools, something many parents assume that they are unable to do. The areas where the white working-class communities live are often in rural or semi-rural areas that lack successful big cities and are often therefore some distance from the most dynamic, job-creating areas. They live where they live because their ancestors were born in farming areas or small villages and towns and successive generations have, overall, remained there. Working class minority ethnic Britons are luckier in that their families were attracted to go originally where jobs existed, or employment opportunities were being created in cities or large towns, and they have stayed there in succeeding generations.  The 2024 elections showed that many working-class people care deeply about economic stability, inflation and especially, the NHS, in tune with the bulk of the population.  Politicians and commentators avoid using the word ‘class ‘, nowadays, although Keir Starmer often mentions that his father was a toolmaker but prefers to use the anodyne phrase, ‘working people’. And working people are now ethnically diverse, encompassing those with white, black and Asian backgrounds: the white working class must contend with a heavy class disadvantage but not with the additional racism routinely endured by the black and Asian groups. They are, for example, much less likely to be insulted by politicians or journalists compared with, say, Romanians for example, or Albanians or Somalians.

Despite occasional grumbles, there is no conspiracy against the white working class nor is there a concerted effort to favour non-white people over them, as some rumours suppose. In fact, white working-class people are relatively well-favoured compared to those from ethnic working-class backgrounds.  Granted, they face the heavy disadvantages of their social class, but they are less likely to live in overcrowded housing, and indeed, many working-class suburbs are pleasant with wide roads, gardens and plenty of car parking space. However, there are clearly defined limitations on all working-class young people, and it is incumbent upon the Government to find ways to reduce, or eradicate, these obstacles. Below is a list of suggested strategies to help close the attainment gap:

1.Understand the social barriers to learning.

2. Use the Pupil Premium effectively.

3. Employ outstanding teachers through

4. CPD for school staff.    (Continuing Professional Development)

5. Display high expectations of students.  

        6. Make high-quality interventions.

        7. Encourage/ reward regular attendance.                                 

        8, Change the curriculum from an exclusively academic system, to give

             equal weight to ‘practical/ technical skills’ which together provide a route into higher

            education, good apprenticeships and secure jobs.

                    

 NOTES.

The Sutton Trust is a foundation set up in 1997 dedicated to improving social mobility through education. It has published over 160 research studies and funded and evaluated programmes that have helped hundreds of thousands of young people of all ages.

Pupil Premium is additional funding for state-funded schools in England to help raise the educational outcomes of disadvantaged 5-16-year-olds from early years through to access to the professions. It supports the aim of narrowing the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and their peers through high-quality teaching, targeted academic support and wider strategies to help pupils attend, belong and succeed. Evidence such as that from the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) shows that high-quality teaching can be particularly effective at accelerating the progress of disadvantaged children, helping to break the link between children’s life outcomes and those of their parents. Prioritising early education is critical to this. Roughly 40% of the overall gap between disadvantaged 16-year-olds and their peers has already emerged by age five, and these differences continue to widen as children move up the education system.

Attendance In the UK, the overall absence rate in state-funded schools during the 2024/25 academic year was 6.9%, a slight decrease from the previous year. However, persistent absence, defined as missing 10% or more of possible school sessions, remains a significant concern, with figures for Autumn 2024 term showing 17.79% of pupils as persistent absentees. It is well-known that missing school for any reason can cause a child to fall behind in his academic learning and adversely affect his grades but prolonged periods outside school when friends are at school, can also make children vulnerable to crime and other unhealthy influences.

CPD or Continuing Professional Development is the ongoing process of intentionally tracking, documenting and reflecting on the learning activities which professionals undertake to improve their skills, knowledge and overall competence throughout their careers. It encompasses both formal and informal learning including training courses, work experience, reading, reflection and other activities.   

 

A Brief History of Shorthand

                                                        Definitions of Shorthand

Shorthand is a method of rapid writing by means of abbreviations and symbols, used especially for taking dictation. The major systems of shorthand currently in use, are those devised in 1837 by Sir Isaac Pitman and (in the U.S.) in 1888 by John Gregg (1867-1948)

Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphein. Source: Wikipedia

Kate Loveman

 I am currently reading a most fascinating book, The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’ Diary by Kate Loveman whom I discover to be something of a Pepys’ expert. In fact, she is thoroughly and completely immersed in Pepysiana and any reader uncovers a cornucopia of facts about Samuel, his diary and his life.  One of the amazing discoveries for me was that Pepys wrote the entire diary, over a period of nine years, [Jan.1, 1660, to May 31,1666], finishing due to failing eyesight] in a shorthand , using a system of symbols of his own devising to ensure the secrecy of its contents. His current biographer, Kate Loveman, worked on his diary for years before she tackled the formidable task of actually deciphering his shorthand and she feels the considerable effort to do so, added new layers of meaning and intention to her appreciation of the diary. Many others have tried, with varying degrees of comprehension, generally as part of the idea of future publication. Pepys died in 1703 leaving his famous library including the secret diary, to his nephew, John Jackson, but it was not until Jackson’s death in 1722 that his widow donated the entire library to Magdalene College, Cambridge. It took almost a further century to see the first publication of Pepys’ diary by Lord Braybrooke, based on an assumed mastery of Pepys’ shorthand.

Pepys' Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge

And this is how I have discovered the urge to learn much more about shorthand, previously lightly dismissed by me as being of low-level expertise and importance. In fact, shorthand is as old as literature! Anyone who has had to make hasty notes on a talk, of a meeting, of a discussion, has probably invented his own shorthand as being of temporary but urgent necessity. Witness Tiro, the freed slave, who took down Cicero’s orations using a stylus on wax tablets, and was possibly the first to use initial letters to stand as words in his own shorthand record of the great man’s speeches.  Boswell, while commenting on his own attempts to preserve the text of Johnson’s 
conversations said, “I had a method of my own, of writing half-words and leaving out some altogether so as to keep the substance and language of any discourse.” Real (i.e. formal, published) shorthand appeared only when writing master Peter Bales, and Dr Timothy Bright printed their system in 1588, the year of the Armada. Bales’s learned opinion was, 

Cicero, the greatest orator in Rome
whose words were recorded in shorthand
on wax tablets by Tiro, a freed slave.

James Boswell 1740-1795

“to write as a man speaketh ….. may in appearance seem difficult, but it is in effect very easy, containing many commodities under a few principles, the shortness whereof is attained by memory and swiftness by practice and sweetness by industry.” His explanation does not suggest to the
                                                  shorthand pupil that he is in for an                                                    easy ride!                                                        

Between 1588 and 1837, perhaps two hundred different methods of shorthand were marketed! Dickens alluded, in his David Copperfield, to the troubles of learning shorthand. He wrote, “a perfect and entire command of the mystery of shorthand writing and reading was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages.”  Isaac Pitman rode to the rescue in 1837! Before the 1870s, shorthand was used more for jotting down one's thoughts or discreetly recording the conversation of others. But Pitman's system, imposingly named, “Stenographic Soundhand” was for professionals and it became the most widely used in the world, adapted to no fewer than fourteen European and Oriental languages. It was so famous that people assumed erroneously that Pitman had invented shorthand but what he did was to regularise and popularise his system, still in use today. Pitmans was used by wordsmiths such as court reporters and secretaries though he grandly suggested, “When people correspond by shorthand, friendships grow six times as fast as under the withering, blighting influence of the moon of longhand.” He originally intended his system to be a sort of written, diagrammatic Esperanto. Internationalists were enthusiastic about this idea and something of a shorthand craze developed in mid-nineteenth Britain but emphasis was increasingly placed on speed and with that came greater complexity. As a result, the shorthand world experienced a slightly chaotic period and this made it easier for Gregg to introduce his system, based on different principles a few years later.

Gregg's shorthand demonstrating
its complexity

A Manchester Guardian article of 20^th July 1901 was reprinted in July 2011 and included the later readers’ responses to the article. An interesting letter from Trudy Christopher in August 2009, said she had enjoyed learning Gregg’s shorthand in the 1940s, up to130 words per minute, but had been nonplussed in the 1980s to be asked about her shorthand at a job interview at a law firm. She was told that the firm’s lawyers felt shorthand expertise indicated a good background in grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. though perhaps editors were also impressed because they saw in it a reflection of other desirable qualities such as intellectual dedication. She got the job though rarely used her shorthand subsequently but always emphasised that using it ‘made for beautiful calligraphy.’

One other letter in 2009, contained a grandmother’s response: “To my grandchildren, the most interesting thing about me is my ability to write ‘a secret language’. I still use it to make my Christmas lists, which they try and try to figure out. Since it seems to be disappearing, I shall begin to teach it to them for their own use. It did lead me to a successful career – back in the olden days.”       

Leah Price wrote an essay on the history of shorthand, published in 2008 in the London Review of Books and towards the end of her article, she writes: ‘the most poignant postings ask for help in decoding a grandmother’s or aunt's diary.'                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Balkans Bliss

 

Evening view from my room

Church interiors are ornate and gilded

We have been home for almost a week from our gorgeous holiday villa near Omis in Croatia. My lovely room was on the ground floor, lucky me, so that I had merely to slide back the glass wall, step over the threshold on to the deck, with its slender swimming pool and the sea just behind and below. One could see across the water to the far shore, often hazy in the morning; lit by the sunset in the early evening and sparkling at night with a myriad small lights in the several small communities clinging to the coastline. If one looked away to the right of our deck, there were towering granite cliffs, apparently tree-less, though there were a few trees below in the foreground. It was all timeless, and peace personified

I had never realised that Croatia was so beautiful. My generation tends to recall the Balkan wars in the mid-Nineties, when the siege of Sarajevo broke the heart and one read poignant diaries of children, uprooted and longing to return home. Religion is very important in Croatia, rather more meaningfully interwoven into everyday life than it generally is in Britain. The religion is Roman Catholic and there are ancient monasteries still standing and many old churches testifying to centuries of faith while religious festivals still play a particular and important part in life. It is salient to mention that Croatia was part of the Soviet Union for almost seventy years when religion was banned and communism ruled. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, the continuing, but covertly practised, religion was released into a joyful legitimacy. 83% of the population claim to be Roman Catholic while freedom of worship for any religion is enshrined in law.

Looking out towards the deck, swimming pool and sea

The architecture of the country obviously echoes the varied history of Croatia, an historical meeting point of civilisations with a mixture of Mediterranean, central European and Baltic influences. One can see Roman ruins, Venetian palazzi, Austro-Hungarian facades, Ottoman remains, scattered among the many distinguished modern buildings all of which induce a pleasing cosmopolitan kaleidoscope.

Music, dance and folklore are an integral part of Croatian identity and everyday life. The Dalmatian ‘klapa’ singing, evoking the spirit of the sea and the longing of sailors for home, is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. The traditional ‘kolo’ dance performed in swirling circles, individualistic and so unlike most European cultural traditions, though reminiscent of 'the whirling Dervishes', represents community and most strongly, a pride in continuity. A visitor does almost feel the closeness of aspects of contemporary life to generations past.

This cultural diversity is naturally reflected in the cuisine known for its regional variations but strongly influenced by its location on the Adriatic coast. The fresh seafood is wonderful but there is a variety of hearty beef stews, surely staples of peasant life long ago; ‘peka’, a slow-cooked meat and vegetable dish baked under a bell-shaped lid; black risotto, its distinctive dark colour and flavour, courtesy of squid ink, and the irresistible ‘cevapi’, grilled, minced meat sausages. It is entertaining and instructive to routinely see menus in a variety of restaurants and cafes reflecting this traditional range of dishes alongside those of the modern cuisine.

'Our' ever popular swimming pool on deck with superb sea views

Our stylish holiday home

 

 

Granite cliffs to our right