Poor white UK pupils lag behind black peers

Chris Cook:

White schoolchildren in Britain's poorest communities lag behind peers who are black or of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, a Financial Times analysis of more than 3m sets of exam results reveals.

Poor white children even achieve worse average results than deprived pupils for whom English is a second language.

The average black pupil from among the poorest fifth of children, identified by postcode analysis, gains the equivalent of one more GCSE pass at A*, the highest grade, than the average white child from a similar background.

The figures highlight the challenge facing the coalition, which has identified social mobility as one of its top concerns. Earlier this month, the government published a "social mobility strategy", which stated that "tackling the opportunity deficit...is our guiding purpose".

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust and Britain's leading educational philanthropist, said the FT results showed that "if the coalition is really serious about raising social mobility, it will need to find a way to crack the problems of the English white working class".

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 26, 2011 3:46 AM
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