Tireless work is rightly being done to improve outcomes and break down barriers to opportunity based on class, race, gender, disability and more. But one group has been forgotten in the push for social justice: white working-class boys.
This is not a hunch. It is one of the most consistent findings in our education data. White British boys from low-income backgrounds have the lowest outcomes of any major ethnic group. The trend begins early and persists all the way to adulthood.
At the end of primary school, just 40 per cent of white British boys who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. That compares with 58 per cent of Black African boys and 71 per cent of disadvantaged Chinese pupils.
White FSM-eligible girls do slightly better, but even they remain well below the national average.
By the time these boys reach their GCSEs, the picture is still bleak. Around one in four achieves strong passes in English and maths. On the Progress 8 measure, they record some of the lowest scores nationally. In other words, they are not just under-achieving but falling far behind.
Higher education also remains elusive. Just 13.7 per cent of white British boys from low-income backgrounds progress to university by the age of 19.
That figure is dwarfed by the rates for other disadvantaged groups. More than half of Black Caribbean and Bangladeshi girls in similar financial circumstances reach higher education.
And at the most selective institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge white working-class representation is virtually non-existent.
This is not some sort of ‘reverse racism’; it is about poverty and its interaction with place, culture and identity. But we should not be surprised when some political factions make hay from turning it into a race issue.
Discomfort must not get in the way of action
Poor white communities, particularly in post-industrial towns and coastal areas, often feel disconnected from national policy. Their educational outcomes remain stubbornly low, their schools struggle to recruit and their aspirations are often shaped by generations of limited opportunity.
But white working-class boys have become politically awkward for mainstream politicians to advocate for, for fear that acknowledging their struggle will diminish the legitimacy of support given to others.
Case in point: a 2021 parliamentary education committee report described white working-class pupils as “a forgotten group” and called for action to tackle the underlying cultural and economic issues affecting their attainment. It should have been a turning point, but progress remains slow. Who has even heard of the report?
In truth, this very idea of a zero-sum equation plays into the hands of what were once fringe parties. We can recognise the need for targeted support for minority groups while also recognising that this particular group has been overlooked for too long.
The challenges are complex. Low expectations, limited parental engagement and a lack of visible success stories play a role. However, other disadvantaged groups face similar hurdles and have made significant progress, often helped by culturally responsive outreach and community engagement.
This is not a call to shift resources away from anyone else. It is a call to expand the conversation. If we are serious about social mobility, we must be honest about where the gaps are widest.
White working-class boys are less likely than almost any other group to read fluently by age six, to achieve five good GCSEs or to attend university. That cannot be acceptable in a system that claims to value fairness.
We need a renewed national focus. That means better early years support, targeted intervention in primary and secondary schools, stronger community engagement and a bold approach to post-16 pathways. It also means ensuring that university access initiatives explicitly include this group, rather than unintentionally excluding them.
We must not allow discomfort to get in the way of action. These boys are not underperforming because they are less capable. They are underperforming because, somewhere along the line, society stopped believing they could do better.
It is time we started believing again. And more than that, it is time we started advocating for them – or someone else will.
Nick Osborne’s “We need to advocate for poor white boys – or others will” (9th May
2025), argues that white British boys from low-income backgrounds—those eligible for Free School Meals (FSM)—are a “forgotten group” in social justice discourse. He cites
persistently low educational outcomes from primary school through to university as
evidence, calling for targeted support and national focus. Osborne stresses that this is not
“reverse racism” but an issue of poverty, culture, identity, and place. He also acknowledges
the risk of political actors reframing this as a racial issue, but believes advocating for white
FSM boys can coexist with support for minoritised groups.
However, one must ask: why do we continually create corrective interventions for specific
groups instead of addressing the structural failings of a compulsory education system that
privileges certain cultural norms and knowledge? A system built on inequality produces
predictable disparities. Yet, instead of radical reform, we resort to repeated interventions that act as mere sticking plasters.
Through the lens of Professor David Gillborn’s decades of work in this area, Osborne’s
argument can be critiqued as part of a broader discourse that, perhaps unintentionally,
undermines anti-racist efforts and obscures systemic inequities. Gillborn challenges the idea that white working-class pupils, or more specifically, white FSM pupils, are “forgotten”. He argues they have been a central concern in policy and media for over a decade. Their visibility, he suggests, is not due to genuine neglect but because they are often used to strategically assert white interests. As recent education debates show, such as criticism of considering race in school exclusion panels featured in the previous week’s Schools Week, this framing can redirect focus away from systemic racism.
A core issue Gillborn raises is the rhetorical conflation between “white working class” and
FSM-eligible white pupils. Osborne bases his claims on the latter group (13–15% of white
students), but uses the broader “white working class” label, which applies to a much larger
proportion (about 57–60%). This ‘discursive slippage’ inflates the scale of the problem and
encourages a perception that a majority of white children are being unfairly left behind.
Osborne claims white FSM boys have the “lowest outcomes of any major ethnic group”, but evidence clearly contradicts this. Gypsy and Roma children consistently have lower
outcomes, and that white FSM children perform similarly to Black Caribbean and dual-
heritage FSM pupils. Focusing exclusively on white FSM boys risks erasing the struggles of
other minoritised groups, including those not eligible for FSM but still subject to racial
inequities.
From a standpoint which centres the experiences of People of Colour and examines
systemic racism, this focus on white underachievement often re-centres white interests at
the expense of racial justice. Historically, concerns about white working-class struggles have been used to justify policies that harm minoritised communities. Osborne’s warning that “others will capitalise” on this group’s neglect aligns with Gillborn’s critique of how such narratives have been politically weaponised against anti-racism.
Highlighting “poor whites” in this way fits within a structure of white supremacy. White
supremacy, in this framework, is not just overt prejudice but a system that advantages white-identified people, even if unequally. Poor white people can serve as a “buffer zone” used to protect the interests of elite whites and deflect race-based critiques of the system. Rather than disrupting white supremacy, focusing on poor white groups may help maintain it by repositioning them as victims and marginalising calls for racial equity.
Osborne advocates targeted support for white FSM boys and insists this shouldn’t divert
resources from others. Yet, we know that such calls often result in exactly that: the
defunding of anti-racist and multicultural programmes, and increased support for initiatives that centre white students. Even without intent, the political history shows how emphasis on white underachievement tends to sideline equity efforts for racially minoritised groups.
While Osborne links poor outcomes to poverty and culture, he avoids engaging with the
concept of white privilege. Gillborn explains that white privilege doesn’t imply all white people are advantaged equally, but that they are not disadvantaged because of their race – an important distinction to make. Focusing solely on class within the white population ignores how systemic racism functions and risks presenting equity efforts as threats to white success.
In summary, while Osborne aims to highlight a disadvantaged group based on data, a race-critical view is that this framing risks entrenching racial inequality. By isolating white
underperformance from its broader systemic context, such discourse may reinforce a status quo that privileges white interests. True social justice cannot be achieved by prioritising poor white children in ways that obscure or undermine the intersecting disadvantages faced by other ethnic groups.