James Kirkup:
Earlier this year, before Europe consumed his every waking moment, David Cameron caused a fuss by talking about universities and race. Top universities don’t admit enough people from minority groups, he said. Something Must Be Done.
He was right in all but one detail: he picked the wrong racial group. Mr Cameron should have been talking about white children, and poor ones in particular.
Last year, 34 per cent of British Asian girls poor enough to qualify for free school meals went to university, and 19 per cent of black boys of similar poverty. For poor white boys, it was 9 per cent; their sisters did little better. That 9 per cent figure is horrific, a mark of shame for a society that likes to think itself free and open and at least somewhat meritocratic.
Yet by and large politicians don’t act accordingly and treat this as a matter of urgent national priority. Grimly, I suspect that’s because few have relevant personal experience. The honourable exceptions who recognise this scandal for what it is, Tory ministers such as Justine Greening and Stephen Crabb and Labour’s Gloria De Piero, grew up poor and white.
What’s to be done? Most politicians assume this is about education policy: make the schools attended by poor white children better and they’ll do better in life. That’s true, but consider again those poor Asian girls. They go to schools that are no better (and sometimes worse) than the poor white boys.
Universities can do more, working harder to tell poor white children that people like them go to places like that. Schools, too: round them up and bus them to your nearest Russell Group college for visits and open days if need be.
Still, an education system that does more to raise ambition is necessary but not sufficient. We need to talk about parents.
This is delicate stuff. We’re shy of telling other people they should do better for their children, and you can see why a silver spoon Prime Minister is wary of telling poor people that they should be urging their kids to aim higher. But someone has to grasp the nettle and talk about parental responsibility and aspiration here.
Mr Cameron could learn from Paul Phillips, head of Weston College in Westonsuper-Mare, the sort of town that turns poor white children into poor white adults. He’s brave enough to say that family and community are often the biggest obstacles to poor white kids getting ahead. Some adults with no experience of higher education naturally struggle to explain its merits to their children – especially when it comes with a five-figure price tag. Others just can’t bear the thought of their kids moving away from the place their family has called home for generations.
There are wider social questions, too, about the role models we offer the young. Many Asian children, poor and rich alike, want to be like the Asian doctors and lawyers and business people they see on the screen and in real life.
If you see a successful white working-class man on your television, the odds are he’s a footballer.
Mr Cameron says he wants to spread opportunity more widely, to allow everyone to rise as far as their talents and efforts will take them. If you really mean that, Prime Minister, start talking about the tragedy of poor white children in Britain today. Please.