This week marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the report of Lord Sewell’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities (CRED). In spite of a suitably diverse group of commissioners (or perhaps because of that), it refused to blame ‘systemic racism’ for the underachievement of certain ethnic minorities. It didn’t dismiss that hypothesis entirely, but concluded that other factors, particularly class, geography and family background, were more important. This analysis – supported by lots of data – did little to protect the commissioners from the fury of the woke left, who denounced them for ignoring historical injustices.
Exhibit A in the report’s argument was the poor educational performance of white working-class boys. If ‘systemic racism’ was so determinative, why did they do worse in their GCSEs than working-class Caribbean boys? Exhibits B, C and D were the success of other ethnic groups, such as Africans, Indians and Chinese.
Five years on and poor white boys are faring no better. According to new research published by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), only 36 per cent of white British boys on FSM reached the expected standard in GCSE maths and English last year. This compares with 65 per cent of all pupils, 39 per cent of black Caribbean boys on FSM, 58 per cent of black African boyson FSM, 68 per cent of Bangladeshi boys and 82 per cent of Chinese boys on FSM. The consequences when it comes to higher education are stark. Just 14 per cent of poor white boys went into higher education at the age of 19 in 2023-24 compared with more than half of all black and Asian students on FSM.
‘White working-class boys from the poorest homes are still stuck at the bottom of the class,’ says Lord Sewell. ‘Our warnings were not listened to.’
Those warnings focused on family breakdown, a factor also singled out in the CSJ report. It found that two in ten poor white children live with married parents compared with six in ten poor children from non-white families. Turns out, growing up in a stable two-parent home is a stronger predictor of educational attainment than which ethnic group you belong to. There’s more bad news for the ‘structural in-equality’ brigade: sex is a predictor of success – but not in the way they think. Women accepted onto full-time under-graduate courses in the 2025 Ucascycle outnumber men by 28 per cent.
The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has described outcomes for white working-class pupils as a ‘national disgrace’ but she’s done precious little about it. Last year she pulled the plug on a new academic sixth-form, co-sponsored by Eton and Star Academies, that had been approved to open in Middlesbrough. She did, however, give the green light to a similar school in Oldham, which just happens to have a much larger non-white population.
Grievances previously felt by black Britons are now nursed by the white working class
Decisions like this have fuelled a growing sense among the white working class that they’re being treated like second-class citizens. A striking finding in the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales is that Asians and black people are more likely to have a positive view of the police – 55 per cent – than whites – 48 per cent. A Gallup poll in December found that only 30 per cent of Reform voters, who are overwhelmingly white and working class, have confidence in the judicial system, compared with 67 per cent of Labour supporters and 63 per cent of Conservatives. Perhaps not surprising, given the additional legal protections granted to those with ‘protected’ characteristics. Only an intervention by the Home Secretary last year prevented the Sentencing Council from mandating that ‘pre-sentencing reports’ be provided to the courts for certain minority groups, making it less likely they’d be sent to jail. To add insult to injury, anyone complaining about our ‘two tier’ justice system is dismissed by the liberal elite as a ‘conspiracy theorist’.
My main takeaway from reading the CRED report was that the huge effort undertaken by successive governments to address institutional biases against black Britons has been a success, with GCSE results and university participation rates improving and mistrust in the police and the courts declining. But this has come at the expense of the white working class, who have in effect switched places with them. The grievances previously felt by black Britons are now nursed by this demographic, and in the past five years the ‘left behind’ feeling has got worse.
Lord Sewell says the solution is to address inequality through fair and universal policies aimed at benefiting the least well-off, regardless of ethnicity. Amen to that.
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