Another year, another educational inquiry, another round of soul-searching about the underachievement of white working-class pupils. This time, senior education figures have concluded that high-performing schools should be compelled to take more white working-class pupils, citing the fact that some grammar schools have only three per cent of children on free school meals compared to about 26 per cent across England.
White working-class pupils underachieve in spite of other groups’ progress, not because of it
It is true that middle-class families and ethnic minorities are disproportionately over-represented in grammar schools. One school in north London, which had nearly 3,000 applicants for its 104 places, took only one white British child in 2024-2025. A nearby school had only two white British pupils in a year group of almost 200. This has been the case for some time: a 2016 report by The Sutton Trust found that disadvantaged Indian pupils were four times more likely than disadvantaged white British pupils to attend a grammar school. Disadvantaged Chinese pupils were 15 times more likely to do so.
Yet this is no conspiracy by the educational establishment; there is no DEI foul-play here or anti-white discrimination. White working-class pupils underachieve in spite of other groups’ progress, not because of it. No, the reason why so few white working-class students go to grammar schools is the same reason why 40 per cent of white children on free school meals are persistently absent, or only a third achieve a pass in English and Maths GCSE: failures of parenting.
