White British families without many or any academic qualifications or ability will have by and large been okay after leaving school compared to ethnic minorities with few qualifications and/or limited English. For decades you could get a trade and apprenticeship or just by luck find yourself in a job that aftera few years pays the mortgage. For eample, the local garage might give you a chance or a family friend of a friend. Quite difficult for ethnic minorities to be hired by a local knuckle dragger.

Too many British people take services in this country for granted. Education, hospitals and healthcare, policing etc. Where there is little of these in home countries, they're probably more appreciated. Also if white British people have hardly or never paid tax they don't know the value of education. Or if the safety net is so safe that it has until now provided enough room/rooms, new mobiles and Sky telly, where's the incentive to raise your game?

COYP

Poor folk don't do as well in school, jobs, housing and health as well-off folk and really well-off folk (all 68 of them) run everything and pretty much get what they want when they want.

And this is news?

I saw it with my own eyes 15 minutes ago. Black kids with pants around the seat of their pants, rapping, along with all the hand signals. Whilst the studious muslim kids seemed to have their heads buried in their text books getting a head start on their homework. I agree with Rudy most kids are so dumbed down that they all thing they are going to be playing in the NBA or are going to be Raps next big mogul....

Pro USA & Israel

The reason poor white kids are not doing well in school is cultural not ethnic. The guardian article suggests out that the social cohesion of the poor white community was destroyed by thatcher in the 80s. There is an element of truth to this but only in so far as many poor white folk were unionised and were employed in the manufacturing industries. Many poor white folk were neither. The destruction of the poor white idyll of always being able to leave your door open or popping next door to borrow a cup of sugar had gone long before thatcher said there's no such thing as society, if it ever existed in the first place. No. What destroyed that culture was the success of other cultures more attractive to poor white kids. It could be argued that this started in the wake of the austerity following the Second World War, when music and literature encouraged a generation to rebel against the previous generation's failure to avoid killing each other. Rock n roll, beatniks, the stones, flower power, glam rock, punk rock, new wave, rap.......the list is endless. Nihilism became cool. You reap what you sow.

Time to go Alan

When I was a poor white kid, admittedly living in an area with a lot of wealth, there was a lot of emphasis with my parents on the importance of education, not necessarily educational success. To my parents, education was something that wasn't available to them, and they saw that their lives were limited because of it.

This certainly seems to be true of some of the working class in the past, particularly among trade unionist organisation members and a significant section of the working class (left wing and right wing) that education was vital to opportunity.

Obviously there were those who didn't care, and invariably among my family, their kids achievements have been minimal in life, echoing their parents, rather than surpassing them - and some of them definitely have made a good life for themselves in spite of a s**ty start - but the great advantage of education and a willingness to learn and exploit your own intelligence, is that it means opportunities exist and continue to exist, that simply would otherwise be closed.

Most important thing a child can get, is a good basis in education. You don't have to be the best student, you just need to understand the 'why and how', be able to read proficiently, communicate and write. One thing I noticed when I did my apprenticeship, was that a large part of it was focused on skills that appeared to have nothing to do with my job (writing skills, computer literacy, presentation skills and comprehension skills).

To me, the failure to obtain a reasonable competency in these skills, along with a respect for intelligent achievements, dooms a white working class to simply to repeat its previous generation.

Indian parents, Asian parents, Black parents, Muslim parents etc seem to understand that knowledge and the capacity to use knowledge is inherently rewarding in life (which may well have not been an option for their parents).

A reasonably stable background and competency in education are essential to the improvement of the working class, especially in an era where work otherwise will be limited, and prospects entirely defined by the options their employment can provide.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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Good book. I particulary relished reading the evidence the dispells most of what people think about everything (not that you're allowed to mention any pattern where race is a variable, even when presented alongise the statistics, but that's another story)

I'll confess that I don't know many highly educated people or any with children old enough require too much of an educational kick-up-the-backside but these people are generally white lower middle-class and are happy as long as the kids are focussed and have interests outside of schools such as sport or art.

Whatever the stats say, money buys an education, which in turn yields a greater income.. And repeat.

Looking at kids from my school, I can't see any deviation from the established norms, I mean none of them are millionaires. Can I derive from that this is because none of the parents were well-off? Sadly the working class part of me does cling to that assumption.