White, Poor, Male - And Doomed To Failure (UK)

White working-class boys have become the new "underclass", a report by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, warns today.

Boys from low-income white families are bottom of the heap in school performance, trailing behind every other major ethnic group.

A teenage boy on an estate in Glasgow. Duncan Smith says we risk creating a class of unemployable young white males

The report argues that family breakdown, parental breakdown and peer pressure that it is not "cool to study" are the key factors in the collapse in educational achievements. It also cites drug and alcohol abuse by parents.

The report also highlights international research which shows that simply throwing more money at the problem will not provide a solution.

The bleak findings are spelt out in a study published by the Social Justice Policy Group that Mr Duncan Smith was asked to lead by David Cameron, the Conservative leader. The report stresses that only 17 per cent of white working-class boys managed to gain five or more A to C grades at GCSE.

This contrasts with the 19 per cent recorded by black Caribbean boys from poor backgrounds, who are traditionally seen as the ethnic group with the worst educational achievement.

Other groups have significantly better results. Around seven out of 10 boys from working-class Chinese families get at least five A to C grades at GCSE, while the figure for Indian boys is around 40 per cent.

Mr Duncan Smith said there was a danger that the problem has been disguised because results for white boys were boosted by the performance of boys from middle-class backgrounds.

"If you strip out the results of white middle-class boys, the position really is extraordinarily bad," he said.

"The fact that poor children from Chinese and Indian backgrounds, where family structures are strong and learning is highly valued, outscore so dramatically children from homes where these values are often missing suggests that culture, not ethnicity or cash, is the key to educational achievement.

"The policy-making implications are clear. To prevent the growth of an uneducated and unemployable underclass of forgotten children, we have to get their parents to engage in their learning and schooling from an early age."

The report stresses that the under-performance of white working-class boys would have profound implications. "Almost every symptom of social breakdown — crime, drugs, alcohol and unemployment — is rooted in educational failure," it warns.

Three out of four young offenders have no educational attainments, while 37 per cent of adult prisoners have reading skills below those of the average 11-year-old. It also argues that the only way to tackle the problem is to address the collapse of the traditional family in the worst sink estates.

While ministers repeatedly emphasise the increase in spending on schools under Labour, the report warns that there is little evidence that more spending will deal with under-achieving white boys.

The education budget has increased by around 50 per cent over the past decade while academic standards among the poorest pupils have barely risen.

"There is no direct international correlation between high spending on education and better outcomes. . . the problem is deep-rooted and social in character," the report argues.

A lack of parental involvement during pre-school years creates an "attainment gap" which widens once the children reach school.

The report says that around 26,000 children a year, around five per cent of the year group, leave school without a GCSE pass. Around 75,000 15-year-olds enter their final year "barely able to read and write". Social mobility is also declining, with a child from a low income family now less likely to get a well-paid job than in the 1970s.

Another issue is the lack of permanent head teachers in inner-city schools. Around 500,000 children are in schools without a full-time head, the report estimates.

Mr Duncan Smith hopes to produce a final report containing recommendations next summer.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1521756/posts

Minorities break 'class barrier'

Young people from working class ethnic minorities tend to out-perform their white counterparts, says a report.
Research into 140,000 children over 30 years found immigrant families breaking through class barriers, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said.

Half of children from Indian working class families went into professional or managerial posts, compared with 43% of white children, it found.

But Pakistani and Bangladeshi children did worse than some white children.

Some 45% of those from Caribbean backgrounds also obtained professional or managerial posts, the study found.

The study into the success of ethnic minority children, many the sons and daughters of immigrants or born overseas themselves, looked at their lives over three decades, with the help of official statistics.

It suggested parents encouraging their children to get educated was one of the factors playing a key role in their success.

Academics at the University of Essex used national statistics to track what happened to 140,000 people born in England and Wales since the 1960s.

The study found proportionally more ethnic minority children appeared able to do better than their parents.

The report attributed this to their parents encouraging them to stick at education.

'Under-performance'

However, those from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities were found to under-perform compared with white children from working class families.

"The Pakistanis [tracked in the figures] were less likely to end up in professional/managerial families even when taking their backgrounds and their own educational level into account," said the report.

While there appeared to be clear educational and social reasons for the poor performance of some Bangladeshi children, said the report, it was harder to explain the lack of social mobility in Pakistani children.

The report suggested two factors played a key role in explaining success.

Firstly, children of working class immigrants tended to be motivated by their parents, a phenomenon reported in other studies.

While some immigrants initially do economically worse on arrival in a country, because only the poorest paid jobs are available, many of those who stay see their children do a lot better because of encouragement to work hard at school.

Secondly, the report suggested the upward mobility had been helped by the expansion of Britain's service industry at the expense of manual jobs - meaning there was "more room at the top" for those who aspired to reach it.

Lucinda Platt, of Essex University, the report's author, found Jews and Hindus had more chance of upward mobility than Christians.

In contrast, Muslims and Sikhs had less chance of breaking through class barriers. Children born into professional and managerial families, regardless of their ethnicity, were less likely to find themselves in less qualified work than their parents.

"Britain is still a long way from being a meritocracy where social class no longer plays a part in determining children's chances of well-paid careers," said Dr Platt.

"There is good news to the extent that a disproportionate number of the young people who are upwardly mobile are the children of parents who came to this country as migrants.

"But their welcome progress is no cause for complacency, especially when it appears to be so much harder for young people from Pakistani or Bangladeshi families to get ahead."

Indians breaking class barriers in the UK

The Times of India ^ | Monday, November 14, 2005 09:07:16

LONDON: Second-generation Indian immigrants are breaking their adopted country's class barriers with consistent ease and steaming ahead of much of white, black and brown Britain, new research has found.

The research, which tracked 140,000 children born in England and Wales over a 30-year period, found that a massive 56 per cent second-generation Indians sailed over class barriers and went into professional or managerial posts, compared with just per cent of white children.

In a further breakdown of what it called the "Indian success story", the study added that Being Hindu or Jewish enhanced the probability of a professional/managerial class outcome, other things being equal, while being Muslim, Sikh or from a religious group other than the main religions made such a destination less likely".

However, the study admitted that today's immigrant successes could not discount the reality and dreadful toll of the so-called "ethnic penalty" levied on newer, foreign-origin claimants for jobs and positions.

The research said two-thirds of British Pakistani and Bangladeshi children remained static and at the same working class levels of their parents, thus languishing at the bottom of the UK's social and economic mobility ladder.

The study, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and conducted by Essex University sociologist Dr Lucinda Platt, is considered one of the most comprehensive attempts to track ethnic minority "life chances" in the world of Western opportunity. Platt concluded that the differing levels of South Asian success makes for caution "in what we claim for 'ethnicity' and what we attribute to it".

Platt said it was indisputable that British Indians were taking full advantage of the fact that an expansion in professional and managerial occupations over the past 30 years had created more "room at the top". But she cautioned that the "welcome progress" of Indians and Afro-Caribbeans was "no cause for complacency (because) Britain is still a long way from being a meritocracy where social class plays no part in determining children's chances of well-paid careers".

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.