System ‘failing white working-class pupils’

The education system is not set up to serve white working-class children and families, an independent inquiry has concluded.

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The probe into the group’s educational outcomes also determined that once-in-a-generation reforms were needed to tackle why such children are the lowest-performing large demographic in England’s school system.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson welcomed the report, saying white working-class children have a government that will fight for them “for the first time in a long time” while Reform UK insisted the system needs “radical reform” that only it can deliver.

But the Sutton Trust said this is not about setting one disadvantaged group against another, adding that disadvantaged young people from black Caribbean backgrounds are “just as unlikely to become top earners”.