TRAGEDY OF OUR LOST BOYS
It’s time we rescued the deprive d ethnic g roup that’s st ayed under the radar... poor white lads
THE most surprising thing about last week’s news that white working- class boys are falling behind at school is that we think this is news at all. When Amanda Spielman, the chief schools inspector, made her speech on Thursday, the most accurate thing she said was: ‘This shouldn’t surprise us.’
It has long been the case in this country that white working- class boys fare worse than all their counterparts and yet we seem almost embarrassed to talk about it. Well, it’s time we did.
Shamefully, this mainstream group does worse academically than any other. In 2015/16 fewer than a third of white boys on free school meals (FSMs) attained an A* to C in English and maths. This compared with 44 per cent of black boys on FSMs, 51 per cent of Asian boys, and 76 per cent of Chinese boys. Boys lagged well behind girls in all ethnic groups.
The Centre for Social Justice thinktank, which I set up in 2004, looked into this problem some years ago and found some horrifying realities.
One headteacher told our inquiry: ‘In the past three years we have had to toilet-train children who came to school in nappies at age five. Parents ask me how we managed to do it? Many of them just can’t be bothered; they think it’s our responsibility to do it for them.’
Another head, from a Leeds primary school with a high white workingclass population, said: ‘Sometimes I see children aged four or five unable to string a sentence together, almost completely unable to speak.’
Youngsters are starting school barely able to communicate. Such children then get easily frustrated, explaining why some bite or lash out in the classroom. Others described pupils who failed to even recognise the sound of their own name.
The educational establishment worries about exam results and university entrance. Yet most of these white working- class kids seem to slip unseen into adult life year after year without the ability to improve the quality of their lives.
In a recent study by the Centre for Social Justice – The Great British Breakthrough – we showed that of those in this country who start working life in entry-level jobs, only 15 per cent will rise above that level of work for the rest of their lives.
This only goes to show that the area of greatest concern should be the number of children that leave school without even basic literacy and numeracy. Incredibly, more than a quarter of working-age adults in the UK are not even able to understand the words on a packet of aspirin.
Educational failure can have a catastrophic impact. Not only is it an injustice harming the outcomes of those children affected, it represents an economic and social strain on the whole of society, which creates and perpetuates cycles of disadvantage.
Children leaving school with a lack of meaningful qualifications are less likely to enter work and progress in it and less likely to be able to support the learning of their own children.
They certainly don’t go to university. Instead, too many of these boys will fill far too many of our prison cells and populate the gangs who terrorise communities. Half of the 85,000 people currently incarcerated have a reading age of 11 or lower, with a fifth falling well short of that.
If we are going to get to grips with this injustice, there are three areas in particular we must address.
The first is obviously in our schools. A child from one of our poorest communities is 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school than a child from one of our wealthiest.
We talk a l ot about i nequality ( affecting disadvantaged groups such as ethnic minorities or workingclass girls) but one group we do not focus on is white working-class boys, perhaps because they are from the ethnic majority.
The Department for Education’s decision to target some of our most deprived communities for special help as Opportunity Areas is an enormously welcome step.
The second issue is our pre-schools. However good our school system is, it will count for nothing if children aged five arrive there unable to even recognise their own names.
The expansion of childcare support through this Government’s free 30hour offer is a great start to this, but we must now ensure that the provision itself is of high enough quality.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we must address the home environment.
Michael Wilshaw, Spielman’s predecessor as head of Ofsted, remarked last week: ‘I’m working in parts of England with white British populations where the parents don’t care. Less than 50 per cent turn up to parents’ evening. Now that’s outrageous.’
All the figures show that children who benefit from supportive and engaged parents are far more likely to do well at school. The stability of families from Asian and Chinese backgrounds is a major element of their children’s academic success.
Factors such as parental time and engagement have a positive impact on outcomes at school. Children are only at school for 15 per cent of their waking hours. If parents engage with their child’s education, attainment increases by 15 per cent, regardless of the family’s social background.
If children’s parents do not hold high aspirations for them, it is unlikely that their youngsters will.
Where parents have had a poor experience of education and employment, it is understandably less likely they will believe education is worthwhile. White British pupils on free school meals are thought to be particularly affected by low aspiration.
We must now think beyond the school gate. With the UK having one of the worst levels of family breakdown, we now need to recognise that we must engage mothers and fathers from day one of a child’s life. White working-class boys have the most to gain from such an intervention.
‘Children of five barely know their own names’