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It is much easier to raise strong children than fix broken men.
I wrote that line in this newsletter four years ago when I first warned about one of the biggest scandals in Britain today: the neglect of white working-class children, especially boys, in our education system.
And this week, once again, we've been reminded about just how bad things really are for white working-class British kids.
For the first time on record, according to brand new analysis by the Department for Education, white British children are now more likely than any other ethnic group to reach the end of secondary school without a single GCSE or equivalent qualification.
Last year, more than 5,000 disadvantaged white British boys reached the end of Year 11 without entering a single exam. I’m not talking about failing their exams - I’m talking about not even taking their exams.
One in 10 white working-class boys did not register for any GCSEs or their equivalent, compared to one in 42 black students and one in 51 Asian students.
This didn’t just happen. It’s been visible for years. Four years ago, I showed that among boys on free school meals, 65% of Chinese boys progressed onto university, alongside 53% of Bangladeshi and Black African boys and 41% of Pakistani boys. For white British boys? It was just 14%.
Here’s what I wrote about those lost boys:
“… they are not only the worst performers at GCSE-level and A-level but their rate of progression into university and into one the most selective universities now lags well behind every other ethnic group. Often, only children from Traveller, Roma, and Gypsy families do worse.
In fact, in some years, kids from the white working-class have even fallen behind those who are ‘looked after’ in council care and who speak English as a second language. They are also among the least likely to progress into prestigious universities, which only 2% of them do, compared to 11% of Indian boys and 22% of Chinese boys”.
And yet while white working-class kids are neglected at almost every level of our education system — and in other areas of our national life — they still barely register in our national conversation.
Compare the response to this issue, and the level of attention given to these children, with another story that has dominated the headlines in Britain this week.
Following the tragic death of the black Cambridge university professor Jason Arday, thousands of people including political party leaders, academics, and lawyers gathered in Trafalgar Square.
There were speeches about “racism”, “whiteness”, “white privilege”, “discrimination” in our education system, and “structural disadvantage”.
And in the wider national debate, our newspapers and podcasts have been filled with demands for national inquiries, for more black academics to be appointed to elite universities, for “truth and justice”.
People are perfectly entitled to mourn Jason Arday. His death is a tragedy for his family and those who loved him. I genuinely feel sorry for him, and his family.
As somebody who worked in universities for twenty years, it’s clear to me that Jason Arday was badly let down by academics and bureaucrats at Cambridge.
They were clearly so desperate to tick the Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) box that they hired somebody who was neither sufficiently qualified nor suitable for the role and the pressures that come with it.
But here’s an uncomfortable question that’s been thrown up in the same week as the intense debate over Jason Arday, by the release of those shocking new figures on white working-class children.
Where’s the debate about them?
Where’s the debate about an education system in Britain that now appears systematically biased against white British working-class kids?
Where are the newspaper columns asking why, each year, like clockwork, thousands of disadvantaged white British kids leave school with … absolutely nothing?
Or why only roughly 2% of them progress into an elite university, like Cambridge?
Where’s the discussion about why, among 16-24-year-olds in Britain today, it is white working-class kids who are the most likely of all to not be in education or training?
Where are the urgent demands for major inquiries into why these kids are falling behind everybody else?
The Netflix documentary on white British kids from Clacton or Sunderland, that’s not portraying them as the source of gang violence but as what they are — forgotten, ignored, left behind, cut adrift.
And where are the people asking why so many universities in Britain are now offering studentships and scholarships to children from minority backgrounds that are not available to their white British counterparts, despite the latter being the most overlooked?
Take Cambridge, for example. Why is Cambridge running a ‘Target Oxbridge’ scheme for black and mixed race students that is not open to white British kids? Isn’t that, um, you know, a bit racist?
As this week has reminded us, many of the people who dominate our taxpayer-funded public institutions talk a great deal about diversity, equality, inclusion, “white privilege”, and “structural disadvantage”.
But time and time again, these debates ignore the very children who are the most likely of all to experience disadvantage and discrimination in our education system.
We might get one or two newspaper columns when exam results come out but then, strangely, everybody just moves on and forgets about them. They are simply not on the radar.
Why? Because white British boys from the working-class don’t fit into the fashionable hierarchy of victimhood that has emerged in our post-woke era and which, as we have seen this week, still dominates a large swathe of our media and culture.
Their presence, their “lived experience”, blows apart the simplistic story we are told, and which we heard again in Trafalgar Square this week — that inequality can only ever be understood through the prism of black suffering and white privilege.
And because these kids don’t fit into the narrative they are pushed out of the narrative and the wider debate altogether.
So, perhaps the question we should be asking is not just why white working-class kids are being left behind but why we as a society are allowing ourselves to fail them.
And why our debate about discrimination and disadvantage in the education system routinely ignores the very children who are the most likely of all to experience this discrimination and disadvantage.
But as usual it appears nobody in Britain wants to ask these questions …
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Great interview with Katherine Birbalsingh on Liam Halligan’s When the facts change podcast, it is available to non subscribers.
Everything you mention Matt is solvable if the educational establishment could absorb the lessons from her astonishing success.. do not hold your breath.
An interesting alternative view of the state of our education system. Some of the problems for white working class boys stem from the extremely poor parenting they receive and also because of their family background where there are likely several generations who have not worked or who have only worked occasionally and who are now deeply entrenched in the benefits system - either by choice or circumstances which have now trapped them there. These role models do not help the children. There is also too much focus on academic success - yet we need skilled trades like never before - these kids are instead pushed through an education system that labels them a failure and which fails to inspire them. I have a friend whose son is very bright but who is turned off by academic subjects. Give him an old car engine to strip and repair and he's in his element. He has done so much better since he began vocational studies to become an electrician.
Positive discrimination has been present for too long. The reality is that it is still discrimination and should be called out as such.