‘Left-behind’ white working class shun university places

Less than one in six white British school-leavers from the poorest backgrounds go on to enter higher education in England, with pupils in former industrial and coastal communities less likely to see getting a degree as a way to improve their lives, it has been warned.

Data published by the English regulator, the Office for Students, show that the proportion of white British pupils who had been eligible for free school meals – a proxy for relative poverty – and then started higher education by age 19 is just 16 per cent. The rate of progression for all other white British students is 40.9 per cent, a gap of 25 percentage points.

In comparison, the proportion of students from Asian backgrounds who had been eligible for free school meals progressing to higher education ranged from 47 per cent, for Pakistani students, to 73 per cent for Chinese students.

The rate of progression for black students who received free school meals ranged from 32 per cent, for black Caribbean students, to 59 per cent for black African students.

The OfS also applied a new experimental measure to identify how the combination of factors such as race, poverty and place affected the likelihood of progression into higher education. It calculated that of those in the “lowest-access quintile”, 90 per cent were white British students on free school meals who had grown up in a low-participation neighbourhood.

Writing on the OfS website, Chris Millward, its director for fair access, says that to understand why some white students have been left behind, “you need also to consider the influence of place”.

The analysis showed that white students who receive free school meals in London were much more likely to enter higher education than those in other parts of the country, with the entry rate for poor white students in London nearly 8 percentage points higher than any other region.

Almost all the lowest participation neighbourhoods across England are in formerly industrial towns and cities across the north and the Midlands, or coastal towns, according to Mr Millward.

“The expansion of educational opportunities, and the belief that equality of opportunity would flow from this, have not delivered for [these communities]. So they are less likely to see education as the way to improve their lives,” Mr Millward writes.

“Research suggests that this is not about low aspirations or wanting any less for children; it is about expectations – a realistic assessment of the barriers to getting on. Schools can do a lot to shift expectations, but as recent focus groups have shown, people in left-behind towns feel the decline of local institutions and civic engagement – the ‘propaganda’ that used to help shape identity and ambitions.”

According to Mr Millward, there is a need to ally educational interventions with other measures to improve local prosperity. Universities and colleges can bring this together in their local areas “through the breadth of their subject interests, their relationships with businesses and public services, and their bridging of education and skills with research and development”, he says.

He identified the Uni Connect programme, which funds 29 partnerships of universities, colleges and local agencies that undertake outreach in low-participation areas, as a way of supporting this. However, in a recent letter to the OfS, the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, announced a cut of £20 million to the programme’s budget.

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com