Why poor, white children are left behind
Their under-performance is a national disgrace, but it’s no surprise when you look at their role models
I doubt Sir John Major is a big fan of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, but as someone deeply committed to addressing inequality in Britain, he should give it a glance. In its way, that awful human zoo is part of the problem.
Sir John worries that it is hard and getting harder for others to make a journey like his, from Brixton to No 10. He’s not alone – politicians from David Cameron downwards rightly say that Britain should be more socially mobile, that your socio-economic standing should reflect your talents – not your parents’ status – and that being born poor should not mean you’re fated to die poor.
Ask most politicians for solutions and they talk about education: give poor kids a better school, and they’ll get on in life. Which is true, but also inadequate.
This week the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that poor white children are by a wide margin the group least likely to go to university. Just 13 per cent of the poorest white kids get a degree, compared with 53 per cent of the poorest British Indians and 30 per cent of the poorest Black Caribbeans.
This scandalous under-performance is about more than education in the narrow sense of exam results.
The IFS suggests ethnic minority parents have “higher aspirations” for their children than their white peers. We should celebrate that, shout our admiration for such parents from the rooftops. And then ask why some poor white children don’t dream of Oxbridge or medicine or the City – and why those who do never realise those dreams.
A good school – especially if it offers good careers advice, something not measured by exam results – can kindle the fire of aspiration, but not in isolation. Culture matters at least as much. And what does contemporary British culture tell poor white children they should aspire to?
The odds are that if you see a nonwhite person in a British television drama or comedy, they’re a doctor or a lawyer or businessman, a person of status and achievement. Some people get riled by this, complaining about political correctness. Yet it’s often more reflective of modern Britain than you’d think: 48 per cent of all doctors are non-white, for instance. And role models matter: it’s hard to imagine yourself growing up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a politician or a journalist if you’ve never met or even seen someone who looks and sounds like the people doing those jobs.
And what do we see of the white working class on our screens? The Only
Way is Essex and Geordie Shore, ghastly “reality” shows whose stars are the mainstay of I’m a Celeb. Not only are poor white children shown a standard of behaviour based on drunkenness and stupidity (and mocked for it by the country as a whole), they’re told such behaviour is rewarded with fame and fortune.
Part of the problem here may be visibility. When someone moves from a white working-class upbringing into the educational and professional establishment, they often blend in, adopting the accents and manners that are the default setting of power and authority in Britain. If you watch Justine Greening, a Cabinet minister, on TV, you might not realise she’s the daughter of a Rotherham steel-worker. Yet Sajid Javid’s presence in the Cabinet is a visible signal to British Asian kids that they can grow up to run the country.
Claire Foges, David Cameron’s former speech-writer, has suggested giving poor children elocution lessons to help them climb a ladder dominated by people who speak properly. I can see her point: I’m not sure I’d have ended up writing articles like this for a living if I spoke with the broad Northumbrian accent of my childhood.
But what a message to send to kids who drop their aitches or use glottal stops: people who talk like you don’t belong in good universities and top jobs, so change to fit in. Surely we can do more to help poor children to aim higher than teaching them to act middle class? Who would dream of telling ethnic minority Britons to “sound more white” if they want to get ahead?
Mr Cameron is 49 and said this year he expects to see a British Asian prime minister in his lifetime. Sir John took office 25 years ago and remains Britain’s last working-class prime minister. When will we see another?
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