Educational Performance: Boys Debate
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Lord Evans of Rainow
Main Page: Lord Evans of Rainow (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Evans of Rainow's debates with the Department for Education
Educational Performance: Boys
Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney), and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins).
I would like to bring a different view to this debate. Although we have been talking about cities and inner cities, I represent a shire county, a rural area in west Cheshire. First of all, I declare an interest in that I am a white working-class poor boy. I left school at 16 with no qualifications and I was written off for low-paid employment, exactly as the hon. Lady talked about. I am also a governor of a school in my constituency. I feel passionate about helping poor, working-class people of any gender to succeed in life. I also have two boys and a little girl at state school.
The north-west is underperforming compared with the national average—71% of girls achieved five GCSEs at A* to C compared with 59% of boys. That is a gender gap of 12%. In my constituency, it is even worse—it is 15%. The total university applications from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are an equivalent number to the gender gap, so this is a massive issue for those of us in England.
White working-class boys are far less likely to go to university than any other group in the country and I say to the Minister that “coasting” schools in shire counties such as Cheshire have been an absolute scandal over many years. Some progress has been made by previous Governments—Labour Governments—in inner cities, certainly in London, but those of us representing shire counties in the north of England, for example, have been badly let down.
I am keen to allow other people to speak so I just ask the Minister to look at “coasting” local authority schools and schools generally in the northern shire counties to see what can be done to make sure that working-class boys, currently and in future, get the best opportunities available to them in a new globalised economy.