White working-class pupils ‘written off' by society, admits Phillipson

Telegraph

3 days ago

White working-class children in Britain are being 'written off' by society, the Education Secretary has admitted.
Speaking ahead of A-level results day on Thursday, Bridget Phillipson said it was a 'national disgrace' that so many white working-class pupils were unable to get the marks needed for university.
The Government is preparing a series of interventions to tackle the issue in a white paper to be unveiled in the autumn.
Plans include publishing more data on how white pupils are performing, as well as harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to identify schools falling short.
It comes as Labour seeks to tackle claims by Nigel Farage's Reform UK party that it has abandoned its traditional working-class voters.
Ms Phillipson said: 'It is a national disgrace that so many young people are written off and don't get what they need to achieve and thrive.
'Far too many young people, particularly white working-class British students, don't get the exam results that they need at GCSE or A-level to allow them to continue onto university.'
Under the Education Secretary's reforms, ministers will for the first time publish data showing soaring school suspension and exclusion levels among white working-class pupils, The Telegraph understands.
Attendance comparison tool
The Government is also considering expanding its AI-powered attendance tool, showing schools how they fare against those with similar demographic make-ups.
The wider rollout will inform schools with high levels of white working-class pupils about how they compare in areas such as school readiness and exam results.
Just 18.6 per cent of white British pupils eligible for free school meals achieved at least a grade 5 – equivalent to a high C under the former marking system – in their English and Maths GCSEs last year.
This compares to 45.9 per cent of all state school pupils in England, according to Department for Education (DfE) data.
A Whitehall source said there was a 'chicken and egg' debate among officials over whether white-working class pupils were doing badly because they were frequently absent from school, or vice versa.
The Government is understood to want to use data to highlight the scale of underperformance among these children as it draws up measures to tackle the issue.
Writing for The Telegraph, Ms Phillipson said failure to get to grips with wider school absence levels risked stoking a worklessness crisis as children left school.
She warned that a pupil who frequently missed classes 'might grow into an adult who sees no issue with skipping work or breaking commitments', adding: 'If children see school as optional, that mindset will continue throughout their life.'
Earlier this year, Mr Farage claimed Reform had replaced Labour as ' the party of the working class ' and accused Sir Keir Starmer of imitating his policies on issues such as immigration, for fear of a voter swing to the Right.
Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, told Sir Keir last month that the UK risked a repeat of last summer's riots unless 'the Government shows it can address people's concerns'. She said anger over high levels of illegal immigration was threatening social cohesion in the poorest communities.
The Government is concerned that stubbornly high school absence levels following the pandemic may be a symptom of wider disengagement from society among young people, The Telegraph understands.
Figures published by the DfE last week showed that the rate of severe absence in schools continues to worsen, with experts now warning the ongoing attendance crisis has become 'deeply entrenched'.
More than 147,600 pupils were classed as severely absent in the autumn term last year, meaning they missed at least half their classes.
This was a slight increase on the year before and the highest severe absence rate for an autumn term since comparable data began in 2016-17.
The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a think tank, warned that without urgent action, the absences would drive up the number of young people missing out on future education, employment or training by nearly 180,000.
This would result in an estimated lifetime cost to the taxpayer of £14bn in lost earnings and from young people going on benefits, it added.
The DfE currently publishes data showing school absence levels among minority ethnic groups, but is understood to be alarmed at figures for white working-class pupils.
The Government also holds statistics highlighting increasing suspension rates and low attainment rates among poor white children, and hopes to publish them from next term.
Speaking to the Press Association, Ms Phillipson said: 'The schools white paper we will be publishing in the autumn will set out an ambitious vision for how we can tackle this generational challenge of what many young people experience.'
Students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their A-level results on Thursday and will decide whether to study in higher education, do an apprenticeship or go straight into work.
This year's A-level results are expected to show a continuing trend of boys performing worse overall than their female peers. The CSJ has previously highlighted figures showing boys are now 1.5 grades behind girls on average at A-level.
Dame Miriam Cates, a former Conservative MP and senior fellow at the CSJ, said Ms Phillipson was 'absolutely right' in her focus on white working-class children, but suggested under-performance among the cohort was also the result of high rates of family breakdown.
Recent research by the CSJ found that, among the wealthiest fifth of white families, 84 per cent of parents were married and 12 per cent were cohabiting, and in the poorest fifth this dropped to 12 per cent married, with nine per cent cohabiting.
Dame Miriam said: 'There's a close link between male marriageability and jobs for men. They're all linked factors. and it just is the case that a huge, huge number of poor white children are growing up without a dad, and that's the biggest factor behind educational under-achievement.'
Scandal of school absence risks weakening the bonds of society
By Bridget Phillipson
One thing was non-negotiable in my mam's house when I was little – when Monday morning rolled around, off to school I went. No ifs, no buts, no excuses.
My mam knew the value of education. She knew how important every day in the classroom was to my future life chances, and she was damned if she was going to let me throw away a brighter future by skipping school.
What my family knew then instinctively, we now know statistically. The strong foundations for children to achieve and thrive are rooted in the classroom – every school day counts.
Children with good attendance have twice the odds of achieving strong GCSE results compared to their peers who miss just 10 more school days.
And those early differences cascade into later life. By age 28, children who consistently went to school are earning £10,000 more per year than their classmates with poor attendance records during their GCSEs.
But it's not just about grades or earnings – it's about habits and how children grow into adults.
Laying the building blocks
School isn't just where children learn facts, figures, to read and to write. It's where they learn habits that will shape them in life beyond the classroom, in the workplace, and in their relationships. It's where the building blocks of a healthy society are laid.
If children see school as optional, that mindset will continue throughout their life. They might grow into an adult who sees no issue with skipping work or breaking commitments, weakening not only the relationships they form but also the bonds of obligation that tie us together as a society.
It's why, 18 months ago, I said that attendance would be a top priority for me as Secretary of State.
The urgency of that priority was laid bare when I took office last July – in the school year that was then coming to an end, 1.5 million children had been persistently absent, missing a day a fortnight or more. That's double the pre-Covid figure – 1.5 million life chances needlessly blunted.
Since then, thanks to the hard work of the Government, schools and parents, we've begun to turn the tide through our Plan for Change.
Now, the latest data shows that the approach is working with persistently absent children – almost 10 per cent of those children, over 140,000, are now regularly back in school.
Overall, children have spent more than five million more days in the classroom this year than last. It's the biggest improvement in a decade, a huge achievement for government, schools and families.
Behind that statistic lies the crucial extra learning that will translate into more than £2bn in higher earnings throughout children's lifetimes. And it is reaching the whole country – we're seeing improved attendance among children on free school meals, and the rates of attendance in the North-East and South-West are starting to catch up with better-performing regions.
Nipping problems in the bud
Our response to the absence crisis has been rooted in what works, harnessing the power of data to deliver promising results.
We're helping schools to spot the early warning signs. Backed by AI-powered reports, school leaders can now nip problems in the bud before they escalate. Where more intensive help is needed, we are piloting mentoring and expanding whole family support to benefit the most vulnerable pupils.
But I am not complacent. There's much more to do to get attendance where it needs to be, particularly for those who are severely absent.
The latest data shows clear attendance challenges for children with Send, in particular when it comes to the children missing large chunks of school. It's one of the key reasons why our plans to transform the Send system are so important.
We are also expanding school mental health support to cover almost one million more pupils by March next year, with access for all pupils by 2029/30.
And from September, we're rolling out our new attendance and behaviour hubs, led by the nation's highest-performing schools that will, in time, see two million children benefit. More than 500 schools facing the biggest challenges will get intensive, personalised support. 4,500 more will benefit from practical resources as well as visits, so that staff can learn from great practice elsewhere.
Time to redouble our efforts
Be in no doubt – reversing the harmful attitudes towards school attendance that set in before, and were supercharged by, the pandemic will not happen overnight. But we are beginning to make progress.
Now is the time to redouble our efforts; for the Government, parents and schools alike to take our share of responsibility to get more children back through the school gates, every single day.
We will only continue to drive absence down and attendance up if we discharge our shared responsibility: that of parents, like my mam, to send their children to school, that of schools to create warm and welcoming classrooms, and that of government to provide support and accountability throughout the system. That's how we build a brighter future for our children, and for our country too.