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.