Posted on 06/18/2008 10:14:43 AM PDT by blam
White working-class boys becoming an underclass
By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Last Updated: 4:11PM BST 18/06/2008
White teenagers are less likely to go to university than school-leavers from other ethnic groups - even with the same A-level results, according to official figures.
The gap is widest among male teenagers from poor backgrounds, raising fresh fears that working class boys are becoming the education "underclass" in England.
According to a Government report, just over one-in-20 white boys from poor homes goes on to university.
This compares to 66 per cent of Indian girls and 65 per cent of young women from Chinese families.
An analysis published by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills said the rise in the number of women going to university over the last 10 or 20 years "had made the performance of males look relatively dismal".
The report said many working class white boys dropped out of education at the earliest opportunity, aged 16.
Bill Rammell, the higher education minister, said schools needed to intervene at an earlier age to get white boys interested in college and university.
"I think that culture plays a very important role," he said. "Part of what we have to do is to look across society and look among the ethnic minority groups where there is a very strong attachment to education and try to learn from that."
An analysis carried out by the DIUS looked at the number of teenagers going on to university, broken down by gender, ethnicity, social class and achievement at school.
It found that women were in the minority at university up to 1992, but over the last 15 years the balance had shifted.
Last year the proportion of young men studying for a degree fell to 35 per cent, compared to 47 per cent of women.
Despite fears that women are much more likely to go to university, the report said ethnicity and social class had a "larger" bearing on staying on rates.
The gaps "did not disappear entirely" even when comparing students with the same A-level results, researchers said.
"In fact, in the case of ethnicity, it was overwhelmingly clear the young people from non-white backgrounds were much more likely to participate in higher education than their white peers with similar prior attainment," said the study.
Just six per cent of white boys eligible for free school meals went to university compared to 26 per cent of working class young men from ethnic minority backgrounds. Some 34 per cent of girls from deprived ethnic minority families went to university, according to researchers.
Young white men from poor homes were eight and a half times less likely to go to university than ethnic minority women from middle-class families.
Among some ethnic groups, university participation rates were even higher.
Overall, 58 per cent of men from Indian backgrounds and 66 per cent of women go on to university. Among Chinese families, 60 per cent of boys and 65 per cent of women go to university.
Black Caribbean boys were the only group less likely to go to university than white boys.
The Conservatives said the disclosure proved that Labour was failing pupils from poor homes.
But the Government insisted a series of programmes had been launched to break down the barriers, including sending successful male role models into state schools.
In Leicester, undergraduates hold a football competition for schoolboys to give them a taste of student life.
It is also hoped the Government's new-style diploma qualifications - combining work-based training and classroom study - will prove more popular than traditional A-levels among many young men.
Reading articles about the UK has become watching a train wreck in super slow motion. The train has hit something and the cars are starting to oh so slowly fly off the track in all directions.
When I received free school dinners, there were no ethnic minorities.
Nevertheless, this remains a strange comparison.
I would have thought fewer than 5% of kids who received free school dinners, (and for my part, school uniform), went to university even 35 years ago.
The population of all those (Belize, Barbados, Bermuda, Turks and Caicos) combined, have a population of less than 700,000. They are technically countries, but from the perspective of an American they would be Mayors of 2nd and 3rd tier (populated) cities.
“Much like my workplace. It’s dominated by women now. But in crunch time, when something absolutely has to be done, they look around for some man to get it done. Sorry if my observation sounds sexist.”
Not sexist, but the truth. WSHTF, they look to the “risk taker’s” to forge a head and clear the under brush.
I have seen a lot of this over here in the U.S. too. I have been hearing about the “angry White male” for almost 15 years now. Because of this, I can’t blame them, or generally Whites, for being angry because of being bashed all the time. Trouble is that if you object to this treatment, you’ll end up sounding like somebody from Stormfront which isn’t true. All I can add is the old saying from Yoda is true, “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to more suffering.” In the 1990’s and early 200x, we had the fear stage where some or many people kept their mouths shut and true feeling hidden but I think we are at the anger stage now.
(1) When 300,000 people are a country and not a city they have a whole host of concerns and responsibilities that cities do not have to deal with.
(2) I'd rather live in Belize than Baltimore.
From the UK - what you say is pretty well correct.
After Uncle Sam gets his 54%.
You are right on the money. I told my kid I will send to any school you want to go to and can get into. He told me Dad I am not a scholar, he has all ways loved Big Scary Trucks, he fixes them and loves it, he is very good, magic hands.
You will be amazed how many opportunities there are, particularly if you want to be an expatriate for awhile.
Right on! You nailed it! I’m so fed up that every election I keep hoping for the fed-up bashed RWM backlash.
I’ve temped all over the place and I’ve seen some female-dominated workplaces where the only males that didn’t get run out were the fey, gay, persuasion.
These environments were mismanaged by any standards, however.
Dr. Dalrymple (”Life at the Bottom,” “Our Culture, What’s Left of It”) was all over that phenomena in one of his columns for City-Journal.com.
It’s the muslim factor. The Pakis and Bangaladeshis are muslim and (in glaring contrast to the Hindus and Sikhs) they refuse to adapt. They refuse to go to school with, work with, or live amongst, infidels. So ghettoization and welfare be their lot.
WSJ had an interesting article a few months back on how thoroughly India’s muslims have excluded themselves from the recent tech-prosperity. They won’t associate or allow their children to associate with non-muslims so they condemn themselves to righteous poverty as peasant farmers and small shopkeepers.
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