Rebuilding trust in education for white working class communities

Today’s education system is not serving the interests of white working class children, independent Inquiry concludes

• The Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes finds that severe absence, academic performance, sense of belonging, and relationships between families and schools are all markedly worse for white working class pupils.
• These gaps emerge early, widen through primary school, and accelerate during the transition to secondary, where engagement often collapses.
• Many white working class pupils and families do not believe that doing well in school reliably leads to opportunity, financial security and a good life.
• Working class families do not have fair access to high-quality early education and are demotivated by the absence of apprenticeships in their communities.
• Some individual schools and colleges successfully support white working class children to thrive, hinting at potential alternative outcomes for this group – the largest low-performing demographic in the school system.
• Critically, there is discomfort about how to engage with the issue of white working class underachievement, no shared definition and a lack of robust data for this group.
• "Once-in-a-generation" reform programme, including major structural change in early years support, parent-school relationships, apprenticeship policy and wider post-16 education provision, is needed if systemic shortcomings are to be reversed.

Today we publish the report of the independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes.

The Inquiry finds that white working class underachievement is not the result of low aspiration or individual failure. It reflects a wider set of systemic challenges: early gaps in educational development, weaker relationships between families and schools, lower sense of belonging, higher absence, limited access to enrichment, and too few clear, credible routes into further study, training and work.

Public First is proud to have led the research programme underpinning the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes. This has been one of the most extensive pieces of research into white working class educational outcomes undertaken in recent years, bringing together large-scale polling of pupils, parents and school staff, focus groups, immersive research in schools, colleges and communities, expert evidence sessions, local roundtables, written submissions, and new analysis of national education data. The result is a major body of evidence on how white working class children and families experience the education system today, why gaps persist, and what a serious programme of reform will need to confront.

Running since the summer of 2025, the Inquiry has today concluded a vast research programme across the country and an extensive exercise in policy diagnosis and policy formation. Its final report, findings and recommendations are published here.

The Inquiry set out to answer one of the most pressing questions in contemporary public policy: why white working class educational performance is so far behind all other large demographic groups, despite repeated research highlighting the challenge, and how this trend can be reversed.

For example, as of 2025, just 36% of white British pupils on free school meals achieve a Grade 4 or above in English and Maths GCSE, compared with 72% of non-free school meal pupils – a difference it terms ‘the white working class disadvantage gap’. Any government interested in closing the overall disadvantage gap, the report says, cannot do so without focusing heavily on improving white working class outcomes.

The work of the Inquiry was overseen by a panel of many of this country’s leading educationists and education policy experts and co-chaired by Sir Hamid Patel CBE, CEO of Star Academies, and Baroness Estelle Morris, former Secretary of State for Education. Other members include education union leaders, the government’s school standards’ tsar, leading academics, former education ministers and multi-academy trust CEOs.

At the heart of the Inquiry’s work has been extensive research directly with white working class young people, parents and communities.

The Inquiry – which was referenced several times in the recent DfE Schools White Paper – includes 33 individual findings. The headlines are:

• The education system is not set up to serve white working class children and families.
• White working class communities and the education system are misaligned in how they define success and the purpose of education.
• White working class families have a poorer experience of the school system than their peers.
• Transitions are key pressure points where gaps widen and engagement declines for white working class young people.
• White working class educational outcomes are shaped by the education system as well as wider economic conditions, local context and declining trust in institutions.
• Sitting underneath these headlines are a series of stark data points revealed by a new analysis for the Inquiry.
• Only 48% of white working class children reach a good level of development by age five, compared with 75% of white British middle class children.
• Some 48% of white working class parents say they communicate with their child’s school regularly or very regularly, compared with 60% of white middle class parents and 68% of non-white working class parents.
• Just 52% of white working class pupils felt they were likely to go to university, compared with 82% of their peers.
• White working class pupils miss nearly twice as much school as pupils overall: 13% of school sessions, compared with 7% for all pupils. They are also twice as likely to be persistently absent and two-and-a-half times as likely to be severely absent than pupils overall.

We also heard from parents, pupils, teachers and community leaders in white working class communities across the country:

• “It’s almost a generational cycle of ‘because you didn’t aspire to much then your kids won’t aspire to much’, it’s a circle like that.” – White working class father of child aged 16, North East Parent Focus Group
• [Success is] “Living a happy life, having a stable job and having a roof over your head.” – Year 7 Pupil, North East Pupil Focus Group
• “Schools look at pupils as a number, whereas we look at our child as a person…so we’ve got completely different goals for them. The school just wants the academic achievement, whereas we want happiness, which is a completely different kind of success.” – White working class mother of children aged 8 and 10, South West Parent Focus Group
• “Pressure to get good grades makes your mental health worse. You get stressed, and then anxiety gets worse, and then you just don’t want to come to school.” – Year 7 Pupil, North East Pupil Focus Group
• “I don’t think there’s a lot of support for your next steps, there’s career interviews and all that, but I’m still really undecided about what I’m gonna do, and all my friends are too.” – Year 10 Pupil, North East Pupil Focus Group
• “I had a bit of a shock moving from primary school to secondary school, because at primary school you’re so involved… and then it kind of went from that to nothing. I don’t know what the teachers look like, I don’t know who they are, I don’t know who his new friends are, I don’t know their parents.” – White working class mother of a child aged 13, West Midlands Parent Focus Group
• “Something happens at Key Stage 3 that absolutely turns young people off.” – College Leader, College Leader Roundtable
• “I go on my phone as soon as I get home and stay on it until I go to bed.” – Year 6 Pupil, West Midlands Pupil Focus Group
• “We look back historically in this area and the wider area, there was a heavy industry, and there was a dignity with work…And what has happened over a number of generations now is that dignity of work has been eroded, really…If that end point isn’t there, what is the point?” – Community Roundtable, Knowsley
• “We don’t just teach anymore. We’re social workers and education psychologists and everything else. And I think – social workers don’t have to teach, so why are we doing everybody else’s job?” – Teacher, South West Teacher Focus Group

In response, the Inquiry makes a series of bold policy recommendations. These include:

• A clearer definition of ‘white working class’ in education should underpin a more open, confident, and evidence-led discussion of white working class educational outcomes across policy, practice and public discourse. Greater clarity and confidence in how the issue is understood and discussed is essential if we are serious about closing the gap.
• Universal free childcare for all disadvantaged families – an offer that matches the 30 free hours currently offered to working couples, which leaves the most disadvantaged children without access to crucial early education.
• A renewed focus on reading fluency at primary, such that white working class young people can successfully access the secondary curriculum, preventing them from becoming disengaged from school.
• A refreshed approach to school-family relationships, so that education becomes a shared endeavour, including more school-based support for families and major investment in extra-curricular and community activities for all children.
• Access to high-quality vocational options in Key Stage 4, alongside a core academic curriculum, that links coherently to post-16 pathways.
• Free access to local transport for all under 21s, opening up opportunities for white working class young people in enrichment, work experience, vocational and technical routes and higher education.
• A major overhaul of apprenticeship policy such that all young people who want one can access a high-quality apprenticeship local to them.
• An overhaul of how much of higher education functions, including a greater convening role for FE colleges, and a major expansion of flexible, work-linked and locally accessible higher and technical education, reducing the need for young people to leave home or take on excessive financial risk to progress.
• Targeted support for schools, colleges and communities with the greatest teacher retention and recruitment challenges, including reforms to encourage the widespread adoption of teacher apprenticeships and provide a flow of high-quality white working class teachers into white working class communities.

For the full list of recommendations, please read the full report.

Baroness Estelle Morris, Inquiry Co-Chair and former Education Secretary, said:

“Improving outcomes for white working class children will require sustained national effort over many years. It needs us to face up to the scale of the challenge and to believe that change is possible. Responsibility cannot sit with schools on their own – they are already working incredibly hard. Government, employers, colleges, universities, trusts, community organisations, families and wider society all have a role to play.

“We hope the report will provide a strong foundation and shared purpose for the joint work ahead to rebuild confidence that education remains a meaningful route to dignity, opportunity and a good life.

“The challenge set out in this report is significant. But so too is the opportunity. Every child in this country deserves to feel that education is for them, that their future matters and that success is achievable regardless of where they come from.”

Sir Hamid Patel CBE, Inquiry Co-Chair and Chief Executive of Star Academies, said:

“Throughout this Inquiry, we were struck by the pride, aspiration, resilience and strong sense of solidarity within many white working class communities. Parents want better lives for their children and place a high value on success. The problem is not a lack of ambition but a combination of embedded barriers, opportunity gaps, distrust and differing experiences of the education system.

“Too often, conversations about socio-economic inequality focus only on deficit and decline. The task ahead is not to diminish the communities who are at the heart of this Inquiry or their identity; it is to build an education system that better recognises, values and builds upon the strengths already within them.

“Closing the gap will not be easy, and will require long-term commitment, sustained political focus, and collective national effort. At the Inquiry, we plan to continue our work by translating evidence into action, and invite communities, families and partners across society to work with us to create positive change.”

Baroness Nicky Morgan, Chair of the Careers and Enterprise Company and former Education Secretary, said:

“This important Inquiry has identified that for a significant group of white working class families and pupils our education system is not connecting with them nor successfully offering them the opportunities that others are getting. This may be down to parents’ own experience of school, other people’s definition of success which doesn’t resonate, and disengagement, particularly in the early years of secondary education. There is much to do to tackle this disconnection.”

Professor Rob Coe, Director of Research and Development at Evidence Based Education, said:

“It has been wonderful to be involved in this Inquiry. The depth of the research done, the wisdom of the rest of the panel and, above all, the importance of the issue have all made this extremely rewarding. I am immensely proud to be associated with the final report and I really hope the recommendations are taken seriously. It should be an urgent priority for everyone in education to do what we can to close the gaps in outcomes for white working class young people.”

Dame Lesley Powell DBE, Chief Executive Officer of the North East Learning Trust, said:

"We've known for too long that too many white working class children do not reach their full potential. We also know from experience that these children can and do achieve the same as their peers when they have access to a truly inclusive education. I hope we can now share the learning from this Inquiry and the good practice of what we know works up and down the country so that every child can experience the education they deserve."

Steve Crocker OBE, non-executive board member at the Department for Education, said:

“Never before has it been so urgent and important to understand why our children are not fulfilling their potential. This comprehensive and coherent report should be the first step along the road to reforming our education system in a way that enables all children to flourish.”

David Hughes CBE, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, said:

"The report reveals a shocking misalignment between what many children, young people and their families want from the education system and what they are being offered. That misalignment results, as the report shows, in large numbers of children disengaging with education because they do not believe it will help them in their lives. We can and must do better than that, because the ambitions and potential of too many children will continue to be wasted if we don't. I hope that the government and the education system collaborate now to implement the recommendations and rise to the call for action so that this picture changes, and changes soon."

Pepe Di’Iasio, ASCL General Secretary, said:

“It won’t come as a surprise to many to see that the detailed research for this Inquiry led to the conclusion that the Government needs to move quickly to reform school and college accountability measures. We need to introduce measures which encourage and incentivise successful progression into apprenticeships, technical education, employment and further study with parity equal to that of progression to university.

The Government must look to strengthen and extend existing destinations measures so that they place much greater emphasis on sustained progression into apprenticeships, technical education, skilled employment alongside traditional university pathways.”

Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive of Confederation of School Trusts (CST), said:

“The Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes is one of the most important pieces of work in education policy in this term of parliament. The findings need our collective attention. Severe absence, academic performance, sense of belonging and family relationships with schools are all markedly worse for white working class pupils. It is entirely possible to move the dial on this, and the report offers some strong recommendations that we should embrace.”

James Bowen, Assistant General Secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, said:

“The importance of this report cannot be overstated. It shines a spotlight on a group of children and young people that for too long have under achieved in our education system.

For perhaps the first time, we now not only have a better understanding of the root causes of that underachievement, but also a clear set of actions we can take at each stage of a child’s education, starting in the early years.

This is not about quick wins or silver bullets, it's about a sustained and collective effort involving a wide range of agencies, schools, government and families.

We now have a genuine opportunity to transform life chances for generations of children and a roadmap for how to achieve that.”

Professor Lindsey Macmillan, Founding Director of the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), said:

“This Inquiry highlights that the attainment gap for white working‑class pupils is large, persistent, and opens early. It reflects a build‑up of disadvantage over time, not a single failure, and it affects the largest disadvantaged group in the country—so it matters not just for individual life chances, but for social mobility and economic performance. Closing this gap will require sustained action across the whole system: stronger support in the early years, tackling disengagement and attendance, and ensuring that post‑16 pathways offer clear, credible routes into good jobs.”

Anne Marie-Canning MBE, Opportunity Mission Challenge Director at UKRI, said:

“This report underlines the urgent need to ensure options for young people post-16, including further education, higher education and work, are increasingly locally rooted, inter-connected and more accessible. Making that a reality will benefit all young people but have especially positive impact for white working class communities.”

Baroness Sally Morgan, Master of Fitzwilliam College Cambridge and Former Minister for Women and Equalities, said:

“Education is a huge potential transformer of lives. But is has to start very young, and no group can be left behind. That is why this report is both timely and significant.”

Further information, please phone or email the team at Public First

Ed Dorrell, [email protected],  07779 782583

George Ryan, [email protected], 07906 501132

Notes to editors:

Please include the names of all panel members and their respective organisations where relevant.

a.     Sir Hamid Patel CBE, CEO, Star Academies (Co-Chair)

b.     Baroness Estelle Morris, Secretary of State for Education 2001-2002 (Co-Chair)

c.     James Bowen, Assistant General Secretary, NAHT

d.     Anne-Marie Canning MBE, Opportunity Mission Challenge Director, UKRI

e.     Dame Sally Coates, Former Director of Secondary Academies, United Learning

f.       Professor Rob Coe, Director of Research and Development, Evidence Based Education

g.     Sir Kevan Collins, Lead Non-Executive Board Member, Department for Education

h.     Steve Crocker OBE, Non-Executive Board Member, Department for Education

i.        Leora Cruddas CBE, CEO, Confederation of School Trusts

j.       Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary, ASCL

k.     Lucy Heller, CEO, Ark

l.        David Hughes CBE, CEO, Association of Colleges

m.   Professor Lindsey Macmillan, Founding Director, UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

n.     Baroness Nicky Morgan, Chair, Careers and Enterprise Company, and former Secretary of State for Education

o.     Baroness Sally Morgan, Master of Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, and former Minister for Women and Equalities

p.     Dame Lesley Powell CBE, CEO, North East Learning Trust

2.     This independent Inquiry was commissioned by Star Academies, funded by The Christopher and Henry Oldfield Trust, and conducted by Public First.

3.     This report is based on a mixed-methods research programme conducted for the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes. The research combined a range of methods, namely:

a.     Large-scale polling of 2,003 parents of school-aged children, 2,007 young people (aged 9-18), and 501 school staff

b.     Eight focus groups with parents of school-aged children, eight focus groups with young people (aged 8-18), and six focus groups with teachers

c.     Immersive research in schools, colleges and white working class communities (Hartlepool and Camborne)

d.     Roundtables with school and college leaders, and with community organisations in Grimsby, Great Yarmouth and Knowsley

e.     Expert evidence sessions with sector leaders, employers, and policymakers

f.       Written and oral evidence through an open call for evidence

g.     A review of existing literature, including international comparative research, and a policy review.

h.     New analysis of national education data by the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities