‘We are failing working class children. We can change that’

Educational inequality is not new — but it is still failing working-class children. The Independent Inquiry into White Working-Class Educational Outcomes, chaired by Baroness Estelle Morris and Sir Hamid Patel, sets out how entrenched disadvantage continues to shape life chances. Its stark headline: in 2025 only 36% of White British pupils eligible for free school meals achieved a grade 4 or above in GCSE English and maths, compared with 72% of non-FSM pupils.

The inquiry confirms what decades of research, including my own, have long shown: the English education system is organised around middle-class norms. Schools reward particular forms of cultural and social capital — literacy, language, behaviour, and aspiration — that many working-class children simply do not bring with them through no fault of their own. As Pierre Bourdieu argued, this mismatch means that potential is too often misread as deficit. Working-class parents overwhelmingly want their children to do well, but their definition of success tends to be broader and more pragmatic: secure work, independence and happiness, rather than a narrow route to elite university and high-status professions.

Market reforms of the 1980s worsened those structural problems. The Education Reform Act 1988 and subsequent accountability regimes turned school attainment into the principal measure of success and fuelled competition. League tables and published results encouraged more affluent families to cluster in schools that already performed well, while poorer areas saw rolls fall, staffing become more precarious, and intakes become more disadvantaged. My research in the early 2000s found that apparent improvements in some schools owed as much to intake changes as to school-led improvement. The result has been a system in which improving individual schools without addressing the wider social context produces only limited progress for the most disadvantaged children.

READ MORE: ‘Burnham has the vision for technical education, here is how he can support schools to deliver it’

Narrow measures of success have other damaging consequences. They drive a narrowing of the curriculum, prioritising terminal examinations and academic subjects over personal development, vocational routes and enrichment. The inquiry notes that many working-class pupils would benefit from high-quality vocational and applied courses tailored to local labour markets, but recent policy trends have pushed the system back towards an academically dominated Key Stage 4, an issue that was noted by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in his July announcement that he will broaden the curriculum at KS4 to enable pupils to study technical and vocational course alongside core academic subjects. 

That narrowing not only reduces opportunities but also harms pupil well-being: research from the Gregson Family Foundation and the #BeeWell programme, echoed by the inquiry, finds many children unhappy at school and anxious about exams.

Resource pressures compound the problem. Schools serving white working-class communities are more likely to be under-resourced, face higher proportions of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and struggle to recruit and retain experienced staff. The inquiry reports that eight out of ten teachers believe working in disadvantaged communities is more demanding and requires higher skill. Yet pay and funding rarely reflect that extra workload. Without targeted capacity, incentives for teachers to work in challenging schools, higher pay, and additional support staff, these schools are left to manage disproportionate burdens.

The inquiry makes 16 recommendations that together form a practical blueprint: expand early-years provision and family hubs; prioritise reading fluency across schooling; strengthen transitions between phases; restore enrichment, sport and arts; and redesign Key Stage 4 to include rigorous vocational pathways alongside academic options. It also calls for Ofsted and public reporting to move beyond narrow attainment tables. League tables should be replaced by balanced reporting that weights attainment alongside inclusion, pupil well-being, personal development, attendance, exclusions and destinations, whether into sustained employment, training, apprenticeships or higher education.Become a friend of LabourList and join our community. Our friends support our vital non-factional work and get access to exclusive content and events. 

This is not about moving pupils into more affluent schools, which can hollow out struggling communities and do little for systemic equity. Instead, policy must build capacity in schools serving working-class areas: expand initiatives that place talented teachers in challenging contexts, reintroduce hardship payments for staff in deprived areas, and invest in counselling, mental-health services and other kinds of enrichment that make school relevant and supportive.

Labour and policymakers should take three priorities from the inquiry. First, rebalance accountability so that schools are judged on the whole child, not just exam results. Second, invest in people, with better recruitment, retention and pay for those working in the toughest schools. Third, broaden the curriculum to re-value vocational and applied pathways, careers education and local labour-market relevance alongside academic rigour, akin to the education curriculum changes proposed in July by Andy Burnham.

Without these shifts, the system will continue to privilege a narrow notion of success and leave too many children behind. Education should prepare young people not only to pass exams but to lead secure, fulfilling lives in their communities. Replacing league tables with meaningful, broad measures of school effectiveness, boosting early-years and vocational provision, and properly supporting staff on the frontline would be a start, and a clear Labour agenda for those who want schools to be engines of social mobility, not amplifiers of inequality.

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