Comment: What to do with the unlikely lads?

Some of the worthy discussion of the academic failure of white working class boys makes me shudder.

Education cannot compensate for society, but education can make things a great deal worse when expectations are lowered.

We should be expecting the academic best for white working class boys. They don't need pity, or pathologising, or cultural double standards.

All schools should be saying that if you are prepared to work, and to wrestle with yourself, and embrace complexity, you might walk out of here ready for Oxford, or Cambridge, or UCL, or Imperial.

Some of the best universities in the world, they should say, are right here on your doorstep, and you have as much right to be considered as anybody else.

If secondary schools are not saying this, from the start, then I don't know what they are about.

The tough point comes, of course, at 14, when pupils become more socially aware, and wilful. It used to be the case, in my day, and before the National Curriculum, that many English schools quietly allowed a section of the cohort to simply disappear. One good thing about the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 was that it challenged those low expectations.

Since 1990, however, we've had curriculum flexibility at Key Stage Four, and then personalisation, to placate the resistant, to allow them to decide. There is a strong case for options, and for choice at Key Stage 4, as schools are not penal institutions, but should history education really be a choice? And should the options include opting out of your academic education beyond the curriculum core at 14?

I think society, which schools represent, should say that if you don't make it, or choose to not take the academic route, then this isn't the end of your world, and you have not failed morally, or finally. Books can be picked up later. It is a well worn platitude, but learning really is for life.

And our state ought to fund level three adult academic education properly, just as school study is funded, so that those who opt out can opt back in. It’s shameful that it doesn’t. Why isn't the case for adult academic education being heard by this Labour government? Adult education used to be a central and proud part of the Labour tradition.

It is also true that many pupils don't hit the metrics, but so what? Schools, I think, should be saying that exams are an outward measure of your education, albeit an important one, as exams condense your learning. But regardless of your grades, you have done well, you are a better human being for wrestling with your intellectual self. Learning is hard, isn't it?

Now, you know so much more than you did when you started school, vastly more. You know your own mind better than you did, and you can see yourself, nature, and our social world, so much more clearly. And critically, you also know what you don't know. Hold on to that, resist the quick explanation, stall the easy judgements. Try again.

The discussion of the failure of white working class kids makes me shudder because it is so defeatist. We are talking about some kids who might well be struggling to see the point of their education, and the reasons for that will be mostly out of school, but these are not kids who are incapable of seeing the point. Ultimately, there are probably no quick fixes within education to the demoralisation of some without. Education cannot finally and fully compensate for the failures of society.

Schools should just stick to the truth. It is a tough but beautiful world out there, but there was never a time when education, or life, was easy for all. And it is always better to know things than to not know things.

Education is one of many important struggles in your life. In schools it is boys and girls against those deeply odd symbols that have been fashioned by prior generations. And many, of course, at the same time, struggle with a lot that they have not chosen.

Education, as I see it, includes the fight to assimilate those odd symbols, but also a fight to see yourself as a somebody, as a person with a voice that will make themselves heard. Knowing your own history, and the history of the society that made you, and which you also make, is a critical part of finding that voice. And boys, as it happens, tend to like history.

Education may not able to compensate for society, but society is most certainly something we can do something about. Either way, we shouldn't lower our expectations, or adjust our educational standards, as some suggest, because of what they reveal.

We will be debating all of this at the next Academy of Ideas Education Forum.

This forum is looking particularly at history, which more than half of English pupils don't take as an exam, as well as the principles now being discussed in the current National Curriculum Review.

Monday, 16th June, 7pm, online

Tickets are free but you must register.

Places are limited and are going fast, so book now to avoid disappointment. Tickets can be booked here.

Join the debate.

The picture is from Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen (2002), which is set in the Scottish town of Greenock, near Glasgow. It stars the superb Martin Compston as Liam. I urge you to watch this excellent film, which can be streamed on Amazon Prime and elsewhere.