A new eye-opening report paints a picture of white, working-class young people disengaged from education with high rates of school absence, writes Jackie Long.
I guess that the headline was meant to be provocative to get you to read the article, but in the end it seems that it is more about financial status than race, as stated in the final paragraph.
The education system is somewhat one dimensional and is not accessible to many. In particular we seem to value academic ability over practical skills which seems wrong to me. Maybe those who work with their hands will have the last laugh once A.I. Has taken all the white collar jobs
It's definitely a question of class in my opinion, and the policies of successive govts starting with Thatcher.
Middle class families are more likely to live in affluent areas, in larger homes with room to study, have disposable income for holidays, trips to art galleries, museums etc., and an expectation that their children will 'achieve ' educationally.
When you're struggling to pay the bills, maybe on a massive waiting list for a decent home and trying to hold it all together on low pay, children don't have the advantages outlined above.
It’s a little obvious from my place to see what it is. As someone who was on free school meals it was such a struggle. A single dad worked all the hours he could get to survive. I had secondhand uniform and none of the tech I needed. Couldn’t afford a tablet or a laptop so doing work at home was harder. Internet was hit and miss so I didn’t always have the ability to get online like others because dad couldn’t afford the bill.
Then there was the mindset. University, what a waste of money. School was treated as a babysitting service. I would come back to an empty home and dad could be working until after I went to bed. Dinner was whatever I could scrape together - often a cold tin of beans.
At 13 I got a job in a burger van for £40 a day. Seems so little but it was much better than going to school. Me working meant I would get help at home and so school became none important. Paying the rent and being able to top up the electric meter was always more important than school. Dad would do manual jobs and sometimes customers wouldn’t pay him. So that would mean no food shop. Often I would only go to school for my free school meal and come home again.
It was so bleak at time. My attendance for year 11 was 36% because I was working. We needed my wage. I only got one GCSE. I didn’t care because I just carried on working. But the trap comes when you have no qualifications and so you are stuck on minimum and low wage jobs. It’s a trap that’s hard to escape out of.
I know I am not alone with this experience. School was a waste of time. I needed functional skills not GCSEs. We needed more financial help and when practical skills are introduced then working class people will start seeing the benefit of it. The amount of rubbish GCSEs require you to learn that is not at all useful in real life is the real reason people see no value in them. They are not giving us what we need and this is why we need a more varied education system. Pushing us all through the same unbending system is only serving some of us. Working class families need something they see value in and they need help to ensure basic bills are covered to stop so many of us being dragged away from school into trying to help make money. I can only imagine how much worse this has gotten since the 2021 cost of living/greed prices.
I was talking to a group of teens in a Kent town some time back. They lived nearby and I knew they were never at school. Their view as they told me was "school is for losers". The more I talked with them the more I could feel their total disengagement with the idea of education. It was if going to school was some kind of surrender and they weren't prepared to give in.
“It remains true that Black Caribbean heritage boys on free school meals barely fare much better than their white peers and Roma children have persistently poor outcomes.
The disadvantage inherent in coming from poorer working-class families is fundamental to all of these children whatever their race”
So the title of this article gives a wrong picture in the first place. It’s *all* poorer/disadvantaged kids that are being failed.
Imo the curriculum is a lot at fault: for example my kid spent 2 whole yrs studying the same book for a GCSE, instead of giving him a mix of short/long stories to install a love of reading & make him more literate. Academy Schools are too big & too Gove. He also got some racial abuse as mixed race. Teaching how to tolerate others’ backgrounds rather than having religion in schools might also help.
This is the story of working class kids in all the industrial towns since Thatcherism decided they were surplus to requirements. The answer isn't in the under invested schools but in a dysfunctional and wasteful labour market. Perhaps New New Labour can train them all up to operate drones from their bedrooms in a newly devolved armed forces. If you're born in poverty and raised in poverty, chances are you'll die prematurely, in poverty. It's the almost inevitable outcome of living in a Weath Fair state. Incidently, the answer to raising defence expenditure is not making welfare recipients pay for it. Try a) taxing those who have most to lose and b) outsourcing it to Ukraine (I think that's already happened and we owe the Ukrainians big time). Just saying.
"The report", "the authors", which report, by whom?
Interesting article but treat us like adults.
Is this the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes commissioned by the multi-academy trust Star Academies and supported by the Department for Education?
This is the logical outcome of successive UK governments pursuing neoliberal policies. All young people are being abandoned by the system. We need to develop a place-based economic model that anchors and promotes economic and wellbeing in the place you live. M. Thatcher and N.Tebbitt started this and it has not finished yet. Expect more disillusion, more loneliness, less hope and less trust. Burnham has the political wind in his sails - time for him to demonstrate he is not just another 'mouth and no trouser' northern English Labour MP
I came from a poor family of 8 kids with a useless alcoholic, constantly cheating dad who returned home when he wanted. He was an utterly selfish dad who made us all fell like shite for the rest of our lives. My mum worked all the hours she could to raise us alone. Dad didn't give a shite or cash & he knew to never approach or mention my 3 brothers names. My mums motto was "... get a job, any job, but just get a job." I felt like a slave and only understood when I had my own children about managing a house & working together to manage the home. I too became a single parent of 2 boys, with 1 having serious behaviour issues and the youngest constantly being in hospital. My average working hours were 66.5 hours, so that ensured my eldest did the opposite of what was requested, asked, begged or demanded, which left my youngest alone and stuck into his books, with simmering anger towards me for always working. I decided to go back to college & became a manager but the pay wasn't much better as I rarely got help from the useless dad. Eventually my eldest with the mentality of some of these kids ended up in & out of jail & now doing a life sentence. Whereas my youngest became a chemical engineer. I saw these differences at school too with some flourishing and moving out or abroad, and others like my son just never getting with the programme or even trying anything legal. But I know 1 of the issues is to do with the learning style of each individual, which i didnt know about until i went to university in my late 40's & was informed I was dyslexic. Its also what our kids see, the loneliness and the struggle of the parents & others in the community. Its how the evil ferral criminals know which vulnerable kids to utilise & threaten. By the time I realised, it was too late as there was no talking to my son by me, family members, friends, neighbours, etc. My son told me they were his family, not me and his brother & certainly not the other family members. The trainers I got him & his brother, as well as the few bits of clothing he said were not enough, as he wanted really expensive stuff. He still thinks that way too, at almost 20 years later.
I guess that the headline was meant to be provocative to get you to read the article, but in the end it seems that it is more about financial status than race, as stated in the final paragraph.
The education system is somewhat one dimensional and is not accessible to many. In particular we seem to value academic ability over practical skills which seems wrong to me. Maybe those who work with their hands will have the last laugh once A.I. Has taken all the white collar jobs
It's definitely a question of class in my opinion, and the policies of successive govts starting with Thatcher.
Middle class families are more likely to live in affluent areas, in larger homes with room to study, have disposable income for holidays, trips to art galleries, museums etc., and an expectation that their children will 'achieve ' educationally.
When you're struggling to pay the bills, maybe on a massive waiting list for a decent home and trying to hold it all together on low pay, children don't have the advantages outlined above.
It’s a little obvious from my place to see what it is. As someone who was on free school meals it was such a struggle. A single dad worked all the hours he could get to survive. I had secondhand uniform and none of the tech I needed. Couldn’t afford a tablet or a laptop so doing work at home was harder. Internet was hit and miss so I didn’t always have the ability to get online like others because dad couldn’t afford the bill.
Then there was the mindset. University, what a waste of money. School was treated as a babysitting service. I would come back to an empty home and dad could be working until after I went to bed. Dinner was whatever I could scrape together - often a cold tin of beans.
At 13 I got a job in a burger van for £40 a day. Seems so little but it was much better than going to school. Me working meant I would get help at home and so school became none important. Paying the rent and being able to top up the electric meter was always more important than school. Dad would do manual jobs and sometimes customers wouldn’t pay him. So that would mean no food shop. Often I would only go to school for my free school meal and come home again.
It was so bleak at time. My attendance for year 11 was 36% because I was working. We needed my wage. I only got one GCSE. I didn’t care because I just carried on working. But the trap comes when you have no qualifications and so you are stuck on minimum and low wage jobs. It’s a trap that’s hard to escape out of.
I know I am not alone with this experience. School was a waste of time. I needed functional skills not GCSEs. We needed more financial help and when practical skills are introduced then working class people will start seeing the benefit of it. The amount of rubbish GCSEs require you to learn that is not at all useful in real life is the real reason people see no value in them. They are not giving us what we need and this is why we need a more varied education system. Pushing us all through the same unbending system is only serving some of us. Working class families need something they see value in and they need help to ensure basic bills are covered to stop so many of us being dragged away from school into trying to help make money. I can only imagine how much worse this has gotten since the 2021 cost of living/greed prices.
Hardly new- been like this for decades but curriculum change never invested in these kids.
I was talking to a group of teens in a Kent town some time back. They lived nearby and I knew they were never at school. Their view as they told me was "school is for losers". The more I talked with them the more I could feel their total disengagement with the idea of education. It was if going to school was some kind of surrender and they weren't prepared to give in.
“It remains true that Black Caribbean heritage boys on free school meals barely fare much better than their white peers and Roma children have persistently poor outcomes.
The disadvantage inherent in coming from poorer working-class families is fundamental to all of these children whatever their race”
So the title of this article gives a wrong picture in the first place. It’s *all* poorer/disadvantaged kids that are being failed.
Imo the curriculum is a lot at fault: for example my kid spent 2 whole yrs studying the same book for a GCSE, instead of giving him a mix of short/long stories to install a love of reading & make him more literate. Academy Schools are too big & too Gove. He also got some racial abuse as mixed race. Teaching how to tolerate others’ backgrounds rather than having religion in schools might also help.
This is the story of working class kids in all the industrial towns since Thatcherism decided they were surplus to requirements. The answer isn't in the under invested schools but in a dysfunctional and wasteful labour market. Perhaps New New Labour can train them all up to operate drones from their bedrooms in a newly devolved armed forces. If you're born in poverty and raised in poverty, chances are you'll die prematurely, in poverty. It's the almost inevitable outcome of living in a Weath Fair state. Incidently, the answer to raising defence expenditure is not making welfare recipients pay for it. Try a) taxing those who have most to lose and b) outsourcing it to Ukraine (I think that's already happened and we owe the Ukrainians big time). Just saying.
I'm very sad reading this!!!!
"The report", "the authors", which report, by whom?
Interesting article but treat us like adults.
Is this the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes commissioned by the multi-academy trust Star Academies and supported by the Department for Education?
This is the logical outcome of successive UK governments pursuing neoliberal policies. All young people are being abandoned by the system. We need to develop a place-based economic model that anchors and promotes economic and wellbeing in the place you live. M. Thatcher and N.Tebbitt started this and it has not finished yet. Expect more disillusion, more loneliness, less hope and less trust. Burnham has the political wind in his sails - time for him to demonstrate he is not just another 'mouth and no trouser' northern English Labour MP
I came from a poor family of 8 kids with a useless alcoholic, constantly cheating dad who returned home when he wanted. He was an utterly selfish dad who made us all fell like shite for the rest of our lives. My mum worked all the hours she could to raise us alone. Dad didn't give a shite or cash & he knew to never approach or mention my 3 brothers names. My mums motto was "... get a job, any job, but just get a job." I felt like a slave and only understood when I had my own children about managing a house & working together to manage the home. I too became a single parent of 2 boys, with 1 having serious behaviour issues and the youngest constantly being in hospital. My average working hours were 66.5 hours, so that ensured my eldest did the opposite of what was requested, asked, begged or demanded, which left my youngest alone and stuck into his books, with simmering anger towards me for always working. I decided to go back to college & became a manager but the pay wasn't much better as I rarely got help from the useless dad. Eventually my eldest with the mentality of some of these kids ended up in & out of jail & now doing a life sentence. Whereas my youngest became a chemical engineer. I saw these differences at school too with some flourishing and moving out or abroad, and others like my son just never getting with the programme or even trying anything legal. But I know 1 of the issues is to do with the learning style of each individual, which i didnt know about until i went to university in my late 40's & was informed I was dyslexic. Its also what our kids see, the loneliness and the struggle of the parents & others in the community. Its how the evil ferral criminals know which vulnerable kids to utilise & threaten. By the time I realised, it was too late as there was no talking to my son by me, family members, friends, neighbours, etc. My son told me they were his family, not me and his brother & certainly not the other family members. The trainers I got him & his brother, as well as the few bits of clothing he said were not enough, as he wanted really expensive stuff. He still thinks that way too, at almost 20 years later.