Educational Opportunities: Working Classes

Lord Woolley of Woodford Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for securing this debate. I would like to use the few minutes I have in what I see as a critical debate to focus on those areas that are rarely spoken about, much less understood in these discussions. I first declare my interests as chair of the advisory group for the Government’s race disparity unit, director of Operation Black Vote and board director for Youth Futures Foundation.

The importance of this debate must not be underplayed: as an extremely wealthy nation, we should be ashamed that children from poorer backgrounds are now less likely to have job security, and possibly social mobility, than when I left school 40-odd years ago. A decent and more level playing field in education, from early years to university, has to be the goal. We are talking about not dumbing down, but rather investing to raise up. It is in the top universities’ self-interest to acknowledge that a student with all the socioeconomic disadvantages who still gets two As and a B is probably as bright as a privileged student who has gained three As.

My second point is on the growing and misleading narrative that seeks to pit white working-class students against working-class black and minority ethnic students. First, black and minority students, particularly those from Roma, Gypsy and Traveller, African, Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani families, are more likely to live in poverty and disadvantage, as are their families. So why are they doing better than some disadvantaged white students? I would argue there are two fundamental reasons.

First, particularly outside big cities—for example, for some in the north, in Wales, in the south-west and in other places—there is a bottom-up lack of investment in good jobs, or in schools. This can contribute to certain sections of their communities having expectations and aspirations that are not as high as they could be.

In contrast, the black and minority ethnic, and the migrant, mentality towards education has been: “It’s your way out of poverty and disadvantage, and it will lessen race inequality.” In spite of their educational aspirations, BAME working-class students and youths face a disadvantage that their white counterparts do not: the race penalty. Just a few days ago, Operation Black Vote, alongside the Carnegie Trust and University College London, launched a research paper entitled Race Inequality in the Workforce. The data showed that black and ethnic minority young people

“are 58% more likely to be unemployed”

and

“47% more likely to have a zero-hours contract”.

In education, we are more likely to be expelled from school and have lower degrees, even though students start at the same level. But for me, the clearest factor, which we have witnessed, is that when student papers are marked blindly, without the student’s identity being revealed, lo and behold, black and minority ethnic students do that much better.

Let us bring this back to finding solutions. First, we must understand class that and racial disadvantage are not the same and stop pitting one community against the other. On race, I call upon the Government to have the biggest recruitment drive for black and ethnic minority teachers and role models ever seen. Funding our universities must be linked to them adopting the race equality charter—as they did for gender with Athena SWAN, which dramatically moved the gender inequality dial. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, as a nation, in a scary post-Brexit world, we must have the political will to properly invest in our children’s future. That is looking after our own self-interest.