An inquiry has found once-in-a-generation reforms are needed to fix an education system that “is not serving the interests of white working-class children”. The co-chair, Baroness Morris said responsibility “cannot sit with schools alone” and was not due to a lack of aspiration or effort from young people. Here, an experienced state secondary school teacher tells India Sturgis what she sees in her classroom.

Reading the recent government backed report into poorly performing white working class pupils, I felt one overriding emotion: frustration. Frustration, particularly, with its assertion that our education system “is not set up to serve white working class children and their families”.

As a teacher of more than two decades, working across state and private schools, it’s a sentiment that I do not share or believe is entirely fair. After speaking to thousands of young people, parents and teachers, the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes, backed by the Department for Education and co-chaired by Baroness Estelle Morris and Sir Hamid Patel, found absences, academic performance, sense of belonging, and relationships between families and schools were markedly worse for white working class children.

As a demographic they did worse in English and maths, fewer reached a good level of development by age five – meaning significant gaps were visible from early primary school age – and they missed more school. It is a bleak picture; but, I might add, not a new one. Anyone who works near the education sector has known about this disadvantage gap for a long time.

It’s my belief, affirmed through 20 years of teaching 11- to 18-year-olds, that one of the biggest factors in a pupil’s success is parental engagement and involvement. Underperforming WWC children are not the fault of teachers or schools alone – or best pinned on a dearth of vocational opportunities and apprenticeships (which, rightly, the inquiry impresses the importance of improving).

How young people feel about school and their future depends just as much – if not more so – on the messages they receive from their parents and other care-givers at home. Teachers have children in front of them for seven hours a day, five days a week, those at home have them for significantly more. I loathe to say parental attitudes are purely a product of class or ethnicity – of course, it’s more complex than that – but, in my experience, there’s a strong mistrust of and apathy towards schools and teachers that pervades many WWC parents’ belief systems. And it’s a attitude I’ve seen filter down to children.

There’s a feeling of: “School let me down, so why should I expect it to help my son or daughter?” As a result, educational aspirations are dimmer. I’ve sat through parent-teacher meetings with WWC families, quite often with their child present, and been told many times, “Well, I was s**t at maths so my son/daughter will be s**t, too”.

Another meeting with the father of a Nigerian student in a London school stands out in my memory. His son had been rude and I’d called a meeting about his behaviour. The father was horrified by the trouble his son had caused. He offered the school his full, unquestioning support in backing up our decisions to act, including with reinforcement at home. This partnership enabled a productive and successful route forward for the student.

Respect for teachers, learning and school in general can be stronger in second and third generation immigrant families who value education and culturally have seen this modelled by parents. Comparatively, I can spend the majority of time in a similar meeting with other families, including many WWC parents, simply trying to justify having called it. I’ll be asked whether I can prove it was their child who was at fault, or told that the reason I’m pulling up behaviour is because I don’t like them.

‘Research into family and parental mindsets, across racial and class lines, examining how to promote a more aspirational and positive mindset towards education, teachers and school communities would be money well spent’ (Photo: PeopleImages/Getty Images)

I’m referring here to a generation of parents and grandparents who went to school during the 70s and 80s, following wide scale closures of state grammar schools and the fast expansion of local sink comprehensives. Then, Blair sold a dream of “education, education, education” but, in reality, poverty gaps widened as those who could move to better catchment areas or forked out for an independent education. Those who believed in better prospects, having put in a lifetime of hard graft, have seen little change in terms of economic or social mobility. Some degrees are now not worth the paper they are printed on, in terms of increasing employment opportunities. Many WWC people fail to equate education with opportunity or mobility. They say, “Those who can’t, teach,” – a phrase that wouldn’t be dared uttered in other countries.

To touch on something else, much of the inquiry’s research rests on the definition of “white working class” as being White British and eligible for free school meals. This is, obviously, flawed. Many families do not qualify for free school meals but would describe themselves as working class – and have favourable (or not) views of the education system. Deciding what “working class” means is not an easy assignment and cannot indeed be understood through income, a job, housing or where you live alone. To me, the report raises more questions than it does answers.

And while many of its recommendations are sound – free access to local public transport for under 21s, making reading fluency for WWC children a priority, and rolling out a major expansion of local, high-quality apprenticeships – I would add that research into family and parental mindsets, across racial and class lines, examining how to promote a more aspirational and positive mindset towards education, teachers and school communities would be money well spent. It would encourage greater success across all demographics in a long-term, organic and self-sustaining way.

It is often said that success in education requires support from three sides at once, like a triangle: the pupil, the teacher, and the parent.