Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what measures they are taking to improve the education of white working class boys.

We set high expectations for what every young person can achieve, regardless of their background. Our ambitious programme of reform is already transforming the education landscape to enable our country to deliver the high quality education and training that every young person deserves.

There are 1.8 million more children in schools rated good or outstanding than in 2010, and the Education Endowment Foundation is working in hundreds of schools to expand the evidence of what works best to accelerate progress. Our continued investment through the Pupil Premium, worth almost £2.5bn this year alone, provides additional funding to support schools in raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. White working class boys form the largest group of eligible pupils and so benefit significantly from this extra support. The most recent gap index analysis shows that the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is narrowing at both age 11 and age 16; this means better prospects for disadvantaged pupils.

We know, however, there is more to do. Our £72m Opportunity Areas programme will both create opportunities for young people in social mobility ‘coldspots’, and share effective practice across the country to ensure all young people get the opportunities they deserve.

The twelve areas represent a wide geographic spread; several, such as West Somerset, Blackpool and Scarborough, have high proportions of white pupils.

Our reforms to technical education, as described in our Post-16 Skills Plan, will create a system of high quality employer led routes to skilled employment which will help young people, particularly those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, to fulfil their potential.

We are also working to widen access to Higher Education. The Higher Education and Research Act will require providers to publish application, drop out and attainment data broken down by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background, shining a spotlight on those institutions that need to go further. The Director of Fair Access (DFA) for Higher Education enforces access agreements to promote disadvantaged student pathways into Higher Education and we recently asked him to focus universities on increasing the participation of white working class boys.