Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said “higher education and elite higher education in particular has a white working-class problem”. He said: “Disentangling the factors that lead to this underachievement is difficult, but poverty, instability at home and where you happen to live are all just as important to white working-class students as any other students.” He said it was important to challenge “the assumption that the white working class is a homogenous cultural group” and “it is not clear how much white pupils with free school meals in Sunderland, Southwark, Scarborough or Southampton have in common”. He added: “A particular vulnerability for white working-class students appears to be poor reading levels at the start of secondary school which hinders their later learning. This is a special challenge for the boys.”
Ask for a targeted approach
Last year, MPs on the education select committee warned that disadvantaged white British pupils were persistently underperforming compared to peers from other ethnic groups, from early years to higher education. They called for a “targeted approach” to “reverse the educational threshold of this forgotten disadvantaged group”. Statistics released by the Department for Education also showed a record overall proportion of the most disadvantaged pupils progressing to higher education, including 28 per cent of teenagers who were eligible for free school meals.
