Primary school pupils in white working-class regions ‘among worst performing'

Telegraph

2 days ago

Primary school pupils in white working-class regions are among the worst performing in the country, a report has suggested.
The Institute for Government (IfG) think tank said disadvantaged white pupils in England have 'particularly poor educational outcomes' compared to their peers.
In a report published on Wednesday, it found that councils in the bottom fifth for performance of disadvantaged pupils were 'disproportionately likely' to have large shares of pupils from white working-class backgrounds.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, last week sounded the alarm over the 'national disgrace' of under-performance among the demographic.
She warned that 'far too many' white working-class children were failing to get the exam results they needed to move on in life and risked being 'written off' by society.
Pupils across England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their GCSE results on Thursday, a week after A-level results were handed out.
This year's cohort were mostly aged 11 when schools were first closed during the Covid pandemic. The IfG report analysed pupil performance at Key Stage 2 – when children are around the same age, in their final year of primary school.
It claimed that educational inequalities across England have 'grown wider and more pronounced' since the pandemic, with only 10 local authorities recording the same or better attainment levels last year than before the first Covid lockdown.
Disparities have grown especially among the poorest children, in part because they were less likely to have access to laptops or quiet office spaces during the pandemic, the think tank said.
It meant fewer than half of disadvantaged pupils – or around 46 per cent – met the expected standards in reading, writing and maths for Year Six last year.
The results were particularly stark among regions with high rates of white working-class children, with only 41 per cent meeting the required standards for 11-year-olds last year.
It included areas such as Knowsley and Blackpool, while almost all of the top performing regions in Key Stage 2 attainment were in London.
Along with pupils from mixed white or black Caribbean backgrounds, white working-class children were the only pupils with attainment rates lower than the national average last year, the IfG said.
By contrast, close to half of disadvantaged children from mixed backgrounds met that benchmark, with the figure rising to nearly 60 per cent for both disadvantaged black pupils and disadvantaged Asian pupils.
The IfG cited previous research by the Commons education committee, which suggested that white British children's performance may be particularly vulnerable to disadvantage.
It said this was because they were more clustered in rural or coastal areas with 'lower funding ... higher teacher vacancies, longer travel times and worse digital infrastructure'.
The think tank suggested tackling high absence rates would help to improve performance among disadvantaged pupils.
The Telegraph revealed last week that the Government was preparing a series of interventions to address low attainment measures among certain demographics in a white paper to be unveiled in the autumn.
Measures being considered by ministers include plans to expand an AI-powered attendance tool, showing schools how they fare against those with similar demographic make-ups.
The Department for Education currently publishes data showing school absence levels among minority ethnic groups, but is understood to be alarmed at figures for white working-class pupils.