White working-class children failed by England’s school system, inquiry finds

The education system is “not set up to serve white working-class children and families”, an independent inquiry has concluded. The Independent Inquiry into White Working-Class Educational Outcomes also determined that once-in-a-generation changes were needed to tackle why such children were the lowest-performing large demographic in England’s school system. Welcoming the report, the eduction secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said white working-class children needed help in school and beyond after it also found they were about half as likely as their less disadvantaged peers to get GCSEs in maths and English. The inquiry, which was commissioned by a schools academy trust but backed by the Department for Education (DfE), said the much-documented poorer performance by white working-class pupils could not be “solved by schools alone”. Based on statistics for white students who received free school meals, a standard metric for deprivation, it found that in 2025, 36% of this cohort in England got a grade 4 or above in English and maths GCSE, compared with an average of 72% for all pupils who did not receive free school meals. Co-chaired by Estelle Morris, a former Labour education secretary, and Hamid Patel, the chief executive of Star Academies, which commissioned the inquiry, the report said the issues identified could not be “explained away by low aspiration or lack of effort”. Phillipson hailed the report as “a really important piece of work”. …