Poor white British boys and girls educationally underperforming
18 Jun 2014 02:47 PM
The Education Committee
publishes its report on Underachievement of White Working Class
Children
Poor white British boys and
girls are educationally underperforming – but great schools have
transformative effect.
Good schools and teachers can
make a huge difference to the academic achievement of children eligible for
free school meals, MPs argue in their latest report.
Chair's
comments
Launching its report,
Underachievement in Education by White Working Class Children, the Chair of the
Education Committee, Mr Graham Stuart said today:
“Poor white British
children now come out of our schools with worse qualifications than equally
poor children in any other major ethnic group. They do less homework and are
more likely to miss school than other groups. We don’t know how much of
the under performance is due to poor attitudes to school, a lack of work ethic
or weak parenting. What is certain is that great schools make a significant
difference in turning poor children’s education around.
“The problem of poor,
white British under attainment is real and the gap between those children and
their better off class mates starts in their earliest school years and then
widens as they get older.
“However we also know that
the effect of attending an outstanding school is transformational for poor
children because it doubles their chance of success at
GCSE.”
MPs also found
that:
- Good schools greatly benefit
disadvantaged children: Twice the proportion of poor children attending an
“outstanding” school will achieve five good GCSEs when compared
with what the same group will achieve in “inadequate” schools. In
contrast, the proportion of non-FSM children achieving this benchmark in
“outstanding” schools is only 1.5 times greater than for equivalent
peers attending schools that are rated as
“inadequate”.
- The problem of white
“working class” underachievement is not specific to boys; while
girls generally do better than boys poor, white, British girls are the lowest
performing major ethnic group.
- Just 32% of poor white British
children achieve five good GCSEs including English and mathematics, compared
with 42% of black Caribbean children eligible for free school meals and 61% of
disadvantaged Indian children.
- The attainment of poor children
from other ethnic backgrounds is improving faster than the attainment of poor
white children.
- The achievement gap between
white British children eligible for free school meals and their better-off
white British peers has barely changed over the last 7 years, and this gap is
larger for white British children than in any other ethnic
group.
- White British students with
lower socio-economic status spend fewer evenings per week completing homework
than peers from other ethnic backgrounds.
- White British students who are
eligible for free school meals have a higher rate of absence from school than
other major ethnic groups.
Maintain recent
focus
The Committee calls on Ofsted to
maintain its recent focus on economically deprived white children, to update
its guidance on good practice in this area, and to produce an annual report on
how the Pupil Premium is being used. In particular, MPs recommend that guidance
for schools is needed on how an extended school day could be used to provide
space and time for children to complete homework, given that some pupils may
not have this at home.
Meanwhile, more work is needed
to understand what interventions can be most effective in improving parental
engagement, early language stimulus and other home based conditions which can
set children up to succeed in school and in life.
Socio-economic
status
Eligibility for free school
meals is commonly used as a measure of disadvantage, but there are many
children just outside this group whose performance is also low. The Committee
calls on the Government to look at how data from a range of Departments could
be combined to develop a more rounded indicator of child socio-economic status
for use when targeting intervention. Action is also required better to
understand why some ethnic minorities appear to be more resilient to the
effects of poverty on educational achievement.
The Government should also
publish an analysis of the incentives that influence where teachers choose to
work, and use this to design a system that ensures that the most challenging
schools can attract the best teachers and leaders.