Volgens een nieuw rapport over schoolprestaties in Engeland doen arme witte jongens het nu officieel ’t slechtst van allemaal. Daarvoor waren zwarte jongens uit de estate counsils de domste jongerengroepering. Deze dubieuze eer hebben ze overgenomen van arme zwarte jongens nadat bleek dat hun statistieken tot nu toe werden gecamouffleerd door die van rijkere witte kids. Slechts 17% van witte jongens die in aanmerking komen voor gratis schoolmaaltijden (de officiele maatstaf voor armoede) bleek in staat om goede cijfers te halen. Dit in tegenstelling tot 19% van zwarte jongens, 40% van Indiers en 70% van Chinezen…

The report says that the problem cannot be fixed through more funding – over the past decade the education budget has increased by 50 per cent while academic standards have still stagnated. The real issue, according to the authors, lies with the council estate culture of unemployment, family breakdown, underachievement, crime, alcohol and drugs.

“The fact that poor children from Chinese and Indian backgrounds, where family structures are strong and learning is highly valued, outscore so dramatically children from homes where these values are often missing suggests that culture, not ethnicity or cash, is the key to educational achievement.”

Many of these poor white kids are likely to end up in jail and the report urges the government to intervene at an earlier stage. “To prevent the growth of an uneducated and unemployable underclass of forgotten children, we have to get their parents to engage in their learning and schooling from an early age.” To this end, the government are discussing issuing Foetal Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (FASBOS) in an effort to identify and correct the lives of kids who are likely to fail even before they are born.