Peter Gale discusses culture views towards race in the education system in the below blog.Peter Gale is a Surrey-based educational professional. Skilled in various areas across the field of education, he has established his expertise over a career that has spanned more than 20 years in the field. Having served in a variety of roles in the various educational institutions that he has had the pleasure of being a part of, he is a passionate educator whose main vision is to always affect positive changes in country’s educational system.

The phrase white working class is an odd one. Thanks to its commonplace use though, a lot of people seem to pay attention to the fact to this oddness. In most cases, it denotes both contempt and pity.  On one hand, it is a phrase describing the section of the population that has been left behind and have been lost through deindustrialisation and globalisation. It is also used to describe the bigoted and the uneducated, especially those that support Brexit and Donald Trump, and have a rather hostile attitude against foreigners and immigration.

This particular discussion gives us an insight on how populations between whites and non-whites are regarded. Whites seem to have a class division. Meanwhile, the non-whites are often lumped together as classless communities. This is a perspective that does not only ignore the social divisions present within minority groups, but also racialises class distinctions.

At present, the focus seems to be on women’s agendas and ethnic minorities. This has caused some negative impact on the boys belonging to the white working class. This is because they are not really being told to learn or to aspire. According to statistics, boys from the white working class do tend to perform the worst when compared to other groups in any British school. This has been an alarm that has been raised by numerous organisations across the country.

Undoubtedly, racisms have indeed played a part in how some children in certain minority groups were performing poorly. Class differences are doing the same thing too. However, the academics and the policymakers have become way too fixated by ethnic categories that they ended up ignoring class differences as a result. This is despite the fact that an Ofsted report in  2000 highlighted the impact that social class has over the performance of kids in school- in this case, it was shown to be more than double that of the impact of ethnicity. For some reason, the data was just ignored.

Class differences do persist. In secondary schools alone, children who have a Caribbean or Bangladeshi background are three times likely to get free meals from the school compared to those pupils who are Indian or Chinese. They are twice as likely to receive these free meals too compared to the white ones. While the performance of pupils who belong to the disadvantaged minority has dramatically improved over the years, that of the children from the white working class has just stagnated.

This growing marginalisation has shaped the way that children of the working class have looked upon themselves, and the way that they were looked upon not just by their teachers but by the authorities too. These days, the working class seems to be just an object of contempt and derision, and are referred to as chavs. The social organisations that used to give the lives of the working class the solidarity, dignity, and identify have since disappeared. This is why if people are really serious about addressing the problems that are faced by both the minority groups and the white working class, it is time to address the relationship between class and race differently. Read more about Peter Gale who previously worked for Nonsuch School here, Follow Peter Gale on Twitter here and Read Peter Gale other blogs here to learn more about the education system in the UK.  Watch Peter Gale Nonsuch Video below.