In June 2014, the House of Commons Education Select Committeee published its report on Underachievement in Education by White Working Class Children.
The report’s summary states:
White working class underachievement in education is real and persistent. White children who are eligible for free school meals are consistently the lowest performing group in the country, and the difference between their educational performance and that of their less-deprived white peers is larger than for any other ethnic group. The gap exists at age five and widens as children get older. This matters, not least because the nature of the labour market in England has changed and the consequences for young people of low educational achievement are now more dramatic than they may have been in the past.