Why White Working-Class Boys Are the Great Underachievers in English Schools
By Jaffa Levy
The story of white working-class underachievement is not about laziness or bias against them; it is the unfinished business of Britain’s caste order. Victorian England taught generations to “know their place.” That psychology still clings. Immigrant families arrived without it — and their children rose.
The Caste System of Victorian Britain
England in the nineteenth century was not only the first industrial nation; it was also one of the most unequal. The empire’s bounty — the dividends of the East India Company, the rents from colonial plantations, the wealth of joint-stock markets — flowed to the middle and upper classes. For them it was a rentier economy, one in which wealth accumulated without labour.
Below them, the working poor were confined to a life as servants and casual labourers. For women, the route was most often domestic service, sometimes prostitution when service was not available. For men, low-paid factory work or seasonal labour in the docks. Slums rose in the heart of London: in Drury Lane and St Giles, families of eight or ten crowded into a single room on the fifth or sixth floor of rickety tenements. Disease, hunger, and moral panic about the “residuum” of the poor defined the Victorian city.
This was not accidental. The class system was structured to preserve hierarchy. The fee-paying “public schools” — Eton, Harrow, Winchester — trained the sons of the elite for the civil service, the army, the bar, and the church. Grammar schools offered a narrow escape for the most talented of the lower orders, but even there the ceiling was real. Oxford and Cambridge remained dominated by the privately educated, and the professions reserved themselves with informal but effective barriers.
The effect was psychological as much as material. The British working class was taught to “know its place.” Advancement was possible only at the margins, and aspirations were muted by generations of constraint. Teachers, employers, and even parents assumed most boys would become labourers, artisans, or soldiers; most girls, housemaids or seamstresses. Social mobility was the exception, not the rule.
This legacy — deeply embedded in culture — survived long after the soot was washed from the factories. It explains much of the fatalism that later shaped white working-class attitudes toward schooling. The Victorian mould cast a shadow across the twentieth century, and its imprint remains visible in the low expectations that still haunt English education today.
The School System and the Class Ceiling
That Victorian psychology carried into the twentieth century and crystallised into a three-tier order: the fee-paying “public” schools of the elite; the selective grammar schools; and the secondary moderns (later, comprehensives) for everyone else. Grammars created ladders for a talented minority — but even successful grammar pupils hit a ceiling in admissions and the professions. State schools meanwhile often reinforced class destiny.
Careers officers told white working-class girls to consider catering or hairdressing, and boys to take up plumbing, factory work, or labouring — jobs their parents had done before them. For the majority, education did not open futures, it confirmed expectations.
The Immigrant Arrival and a New Psychology
Post-war immigration — Caribbean, South Asian, African, later Eastern European — brought workers who were not socialised into Britain’s caste code. In kitchens and minicabs, on shift work and zero-hours, parents told their children to aim at the professions.
The academic literature has a name for this: immigrant optimism — high parental aspirations which, controlling for deprivation, translate into higher progression and attainment than for comparable white British peers.
By the 2022–23 GCSE cohort, the pattern is stark: Chinese pupils (88.6%) and Indian pupils (83.5%) were the most likely to achieve grade 4+ in English and maths, while disadvantaged white British pupils sat at the bottom of the table. Among FSM-eligible white children, fewer than one in five reached grade 5+ in English and maths — the lowest outcome of any major group.
Reform, Autonomy — and the London Effect
Here accuracy matters. Academies were launched under Tony Blair in 2002 to turn around failing schools; the 2010 Academies Act then enabled mass conversion. Free schools — England’s equivalent to US “charters” — were introduced by Michael Gove in 2010.
But London’s lift-off began earlier. The London Challenge (2003–2011) targeted leadership, mentoring, and collaboration. Ofsted later credited it with turning the capital from laggard to leader: by 2010, nearly a third of London secondaries were rated Outstanding, against under 18% elsewhere.
From that base, academisation and free schools expanded the mix. Selective sixth forms such as Brampton Manor in Newham and Harris Westminster now produce Oxbridge entrants at rates that match — sometimes surpass — the most famous private schools. Brampton alone reported 56 Oxbridge places in 2024. These institutions are selective, but they show that ceilings can be broken.
Two Streams, One System
In the same classrooms, two streams emerged. One stream — often the children of immigrant families — pushed hard, fuelled by parents who saw education as the road to dignity. The other — disproportionately white working-class — drifted, their ambitions muted by a class psychology inherited over generations.
Teachers could set equal expectations, but without reinforcement at home, boys especially fell behind. The House of Commons Education Committee has described the underachievement of disadvantaged White British pupils as “real and persistent.” They arrive in school with weaker early-years language skills, lag further in GCSE outcomes, and are least likely to progress to higher education.
The Social Mobility Commission notes the same pattern: London pupils, many from immigrant backgrounds, now advance far more rapidly than children in coastal and post-industrial towns where the white working class dominates.
A Word on Private Schools
Critics say private schools have “lowered standards.” The fairer statement is that during the pandemic grading years, when exams were suspended, independent schools saw the largest surge in top A-level grades — and then the sharpest fall when exams returned. Their dominance in Oxbridge admissions continues, but the pandemic spike was an artefact of teacher assessment, not evidence of superior learning.
Conclusion: The Inheritance of Fatalism
The white working-class boy who fails his exams today is not failing because of laziness, nor because teachers are biased against him. He is failing because he has inherited a psychology shaped by centuries of constraint. Victorian England told his ancestors to “know their place.” That whisper still echoes.
Immigrant families, unburdened by that inheritance, brought different expectations. Their children rose when opportunity arrived. Until that psychology is broken, the underachievement will persist.
Research Notes / Data Summary
Private schools & grading: Independent schools’ A/A* rate rose ~12 percentage points in 2021 under teacher-assessed grades, fell sharply when exams returned.
GCSE English & Maths (2022–23): Chinese pupils 88.6% grade 4+, Indian 83.5%, White pupils materially lower; disadvantaged (FSM) pupils 42.9% vs 71.6% non-FSM. Among FSM White British, only c.18% hit grade 5+ — lowest major group.
Education Committee (2021): Found White British FSM pupils the lowest-attaining group at GCSE; gap persists.
London Challenge (2003–2011): Drove capital’s improvement; by 2010, 30% of secondaries Outstanding vs 17.5% nationally.
Brampton Manor Academy (2024): 56 Oxbridge offers, rivaling Eton and Westminster.
I’m a headteacher and I’ll be honest, what’s written here is something most of my colleagues would never dare to put in black and white because it strikes at the very foundation of Britain’s class system, and I can already hear the backlash coming. But it’s true, and it hurts to admit it. We’ve built an education system that has never shaken off its roots in a caste order where some kids are expected to climb and others are expected to know their place. You can dress it up with talk of academies, Ofsted ratings and free schools, but the truth is that white working-class children are still shackled by generations of learned fatalism, and schools too often reinforce it. Teachers like me can push, but the psychology is inherited, deep, and real. Immigrant families came in without that baggage and told their kids to aim high, and they do — meanwhile white working-class kids are told in subtle ways, by careers officers, by parents, even by teachers, not to bother aiming beyond a trade. That’s not laziness, that’s conditioning. The uncomfortable bit is we don’t want to admit that our own institutions — schools, universities, even the professions — still quietly preserve that old hierarchy, and until we smash that ceiling, the gap will stay. This article says it, plain and brutal.
Yes, the caste system in England is probably worse than the caste system in India, because it works subtly and indirectly. It is what keeps those white boys from aspiring. They have been trained from birth to “know their place,” and it is decades of indoctrination, written into the habits and psychology of parents and grandparents, that holds them down.
At the top sit the monarchy and the honours system, which make inequality look noble, as if rank is a natural thing. The House of Lords embodies it in law — we would never accept a “House of the Working Class,” but “Lords” is fine. Beneath that foundation lies land. There is no land reform, no land ceiling. Estates pass intact through trusts that avoid inheritance tax, while millions struggle for a flat. Britain has the strongest property rights in Europe, but overwhelmingly for the few.
Then there are the gateways: the public schools like Eton and Harrow, which train not just for exams but for confidence, accent, and connections. Oxford and Cambridge sit as bottlenecks, controlling access to law, politics, the civil service and the professions. The “old boy” network then carries the same faces into the City, the law courts, Whitehall and the clubs of Albany. Even the intelligence services — MI5, MI6, GCHQ — and the senior civil service are drawn largely from the same narrow pool. They are the permanent custodians of the system, outlasting elections, migrating eventually into the Lords to keep it whole.
Culture seals it all: accent and manner as quiet passwords; deference taught across generations so that working-class children do not expect to rise; imitation of the upper classes as if their tastes and speech are the model to follow. It is a tribe, distinct and self-reproducing: either you are in it, or you are not.
And so the system persists. Each layer protects the others: titles justify privilege, land secures wealth, schools and universities guard entry, networks bind the elite, and the deep state enforces stability.
To abolish it means taking each strut away: close the inheritance loopholes, reform land rights, strip away titles, replace the Lords with a democratic chamber, fold private schools into the state sector, build up universities beyond Oxbridge, outlaw unpaid internships, and confront accent discrimination. Without that, egalitarianism in Britain will remain only surface-deep — the same colonial pyramid dressed in modern clothes.