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IMPACT
WHITE WORKING-CLASS BOYS
LEAST LIKELY TO GET INTO UNIVERSITY We often hear that race, gender and socioeconomics can affect an individual’s chances of achieving academic success. Whether scoring perfect GCSE and A level results or getting a place at a top university, it seems that identity really matters. In the latest round of discussions in academic and journalistic circles on how the identity of our students affects their educational opportunities, a new group has emerged as distinctly underachieving: White British working-class boys. But does this problem really exist and if it does, have we all become too ‘woke’ to realise it? Has modern politics, in its efforts to ensure the success and welfare of minority groups, somehow become distracted from the difficulties that white communities can face?
“If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university” (Theresa May, 2016) A study conducted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on all students in England who took their GCSEs in the 2008/9 academic year, found that White British working-class boys are now the group of students least likely to go to university. Although published in November of 2015, this discovery only found major media coverage after the then Prime Minister Theresa May mentioned the statistic in her first statement in July of 2016. “If you’re a white, working-class boy,” the Prime Minister remarked, “you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.” Since the comment, the media across the UK have rushed to cover the story. Each publication keen to press their own covert political biases upon it. Looking at the data, we can however break down and analyse the phenomena impartially. First, ethnicity. Higher education participation has risen far quicker for ethnic minorities across the studied time period compared to White British students. The IFS study found that Black African pupils are almost 35% more likely to go to university than otherwise-identical White British pupils. Most other ethnic minority groups are around 15-25% more likely.
“Over 50% of universities admit less than 5% of white students from low participation neighbourhoods” (National Education Opportunities Network, 2019) Next, socio-economic status. As with ethnicity, socio-economic factors’ impact on higher education participation are substantial. In the 2015 IFS study, it was found that pupils from the highest socio-economic quintile group are around three times more likely to go to university and around seven times more likely to go to a selective institution than those from the lowest
