The reasons why so many children from white working class backgrounds are failing at school are complex - Jayne Dowle

Her comments came as A Level grades, vital for young people wishing to pursue higher education or enter a degree-level apprenticeship, showed alarming variation around the country.

In the prosperous Midlands county of Rutland, for example, almost half - 41.2 per cent - of A Levels were awarded at the top grades of A* and A. In Greater London almost a third, 31.9 per cent, are top grades this year, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications.

In our own region, achievement of top grades varies by as much as almost five per cent, with students from less-advantaged sub-regions performing lower than their peers elsewhere across Yorkshire and the Humber.

In North Yorkshire, 28 per cent of A Level grades were awarded A* or A, in South Yorkshire and the East Riding, this fell to 23.4 per cent and 23.6 per cent respectively, with 25.6 of passes at these top grades in West Yorkshire.

“Every young person should have the opportunity to achieve and thrive”, Phillipson added. It’s stirring stuff, but beneath the rhetoric are a complex combination of factors which require sustained focus from this ambitious Education Secretary, whose own educational journey, from a Gateshead council house with no upstairs heating to graduating from Hertford College, Oxford with a 2.1 in modern history and modern languages is well-documented.

A Levels are important, but let’s start with GCSEs, the first stepping stone in the journey of public examinations, and the one that leads to life-changing chances. This week Year 11 pupils will find out their results.

Last year, nationally, just 18.6 per cent of white British pupils eligible for free school meals achieved at least a grade 5, considered a ‘strong pass’, in their English and maths GCSEs. This is compared to 45.9 per cent of all state school pupils in England over the same period, according to Department for Education (DfE) data.

Across England, almost a third (28.8 per cent) of 16-year-olds failed to achieve a basic Grade 4 pass in English language (28.8 per cent) and maths (28 per cent).

What Phillipson really needs to do is start with the basics. Without good passes at GCSE, young people are hampered from the start. If they are self-motivated and supported by family, those who fail at 16 may go on to resit their exams.

Yet post-16 GCSE delivery can be a patchy affair, with further education colleges often under-resourced. Last year, the proportion of pupils aged 17 and older achieving a grade 4 or above in English language was only 20.9 per cent, a drop from 25.9 per cent in the previous year.

Far better to get it right the first time. But this requires a very honest appraisal of why less-advantaged young people are failing to achieve at GCSE. Both my children went to our local academy. My daughter was academically-motivated, my son less so, but they both did their best. However, I saw at first-hand the difficulties teachers had in trying to deliver GCSE programmes to a cohort which often showed very little interest in learning.

As my daughter observed, if you want to see what it’s like in a typical state secondary school in a ‘challenging’ area of the North of England, watch the TV drama Adolescence.

Yes, it was shocking because of the murder the young teenager, played by Owen Cooper, committed, but it also stands as a huge eye-opener into the chaos in so many classrooms and corridors, pupils fighting each other, attacking and harassing teachers, refusing to do as they are told. “Every day was like that at our school,” my daughter said. “You just had to keep your head down and get on with it.”

It's easy to blame the teachers and school managers, but this fails to address the issue of why so many teenagers refuse to settle and accept that school is a place for learning, where they can equip themselves with qualifications which will take them forward into successful adulthood.

It is vitally important for government ministers to address this poverty of aspiration.

It starts at home, I’m afraid, and is amplified in friendship groups where learning is dismissed as pointless. The result? Thousands of young people find themselves on the scrap heap.

No more excuses. Answers must be found.