White, British, poor…and underachieving at school

The Oli De Botton Education Column

It made for uncomfortable reading. GCSE results, analysed in detail by the DCSF this week, confirmed what many teachers have been feeling for ages. Children who are white, British and poor are falling behind. This despite the fact that all other groups appear to be improving.

The problem this poses for progressives is two fold: first, there is the damage that an achievement gap determined by wealth can do to social mobility, but second – and perhaps more urgently – there is the potential that these poor outcomes could feed into a broad and corrosive narrative about Britishness and class.

Teachers in tough schools come into contact with this narrative quite often. When I was in the classroom it came up when discussing pupil progress with parents. The conversations would often turn into a debate about entitlement (and sometimes race). I was told, on more than one occasion, that behaviour and achievement would be better if I had spent less time with ‘immigrants’ and more time with their son. Now this may be simply anecdotal, but it was not surprising that the BNP were actively recruiting in the area and exploiting these feelings.

The stakes in this are high and there are no easy answers. We have tried stricter discipline, personalised learning, better training for heads and community engagement – all with varying degrees of success. And of course some schools do better than others with white British boys.

But one potential (and perhaps obvious) answer might come from the power of the role model. A study last year from the University of Manchester highlighted that where achievement for white working class boys was best, headteachers shared that background or had a deep commitment to the issues of white working class communities.

This is not to say that middle-class teachers can’t make a difference, but rather that the values of solidarity that hold together the Labour movement may be the same ones that can improve achievement for white working class boys in school.