Yorkshire has its own educational divide and parents should shoulder the responsibility - Jayne Dowle
Years ago, I was talking to a parent at a birthday party who informed me her family was relocating from Barnsley to Harrogate, “for the sake of the children”.
The family had no connections in Harrogate. But they had clearly decided that this elegant spa town in North Yorkshire and its excellent state and independent schools would be a better fit than our ‘good’ local primary and improving local state secondary schools.
“And also,” the parent added, “I don’t want my kids growing up with a Barnsley accent.” Off they went. We never saw any of them again.
That conversation crystallised for me what I now know to be true, that Yorkshire, the largest county in England and Wales, with a population of more than five million people, is riven with its own north/south - and east and west - divides.
So I was interested to read the Sutton Trust’s new report, which highlights how geography, gender and ethnicity all impact opportunities for disadvantaged young people, with big variations across and within England.
Nowhere is the disadvantage discrepancy as stark as in Yorkshire. The educational charity found that white working class children from cities such as Leeds and Sheffield lag dramatically behind their peers from more affluent locations.
Researchers for the Crossing Paths report mapped opportunity by parliamentary constituency area. Sheffield has two in the bottom 20 out of 543 locations, Brightside and Hillsborough and Heeley, along with Leeds Central and Headingley and Bradford South.
Meanwhile, Skipton and Ripon and the Colne Valley in Yorkshire and Fylde in Lancashire are the only three locations across the whole of the north of England in the report’s ‘opportunity top 20’, alongside the likes of Kensington and Bayswater and Chelsea and Fulham in London, South Devon and Bicester and Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
The A-level point score for children on free school meals (FSM) in Skipton and Ripon against Sheffield Heeley, for example, was a full 25 per cent higher, while earnings at the age of 28 were 27 per cent higher.
The research delivers fascinating and much-needed insight into geography, gender and ethnicity - every politician who purports to care about the future of this country should read it. It points to devastating consequences for the shape of our cities, which should function as regional powerhouses.
It’s about children and young people, sure, but it shines a very important light on how England will fare economically in coming years, exploding the myth that impressive academic achievement automatically opens doors for everyone.
For instance, a FSM Bangladeshi girl in the North West will have GCSE attainment almost three times higher on average than a White British FSM boy from the South East, but earns almost £5,500 less annually by the time she is 28.
We need to open up far more conversations about such outcomes; not doing so will hold us back as a country.
A key question is why are so many children from white working class backgrounds not achieving their potential - despite all the improvements to curriculums and support offered in schools - in an educational climate which supports their peers from different ethnic backgrounds to shine?
Of all disadvantaged pupils, those from Indian and Bangladeshi backgrounds performed the best. Meanwhile, White British pupils consistently achieve the lowest results.
Sorry to be blunt, but too often it’s a case of ‘blame the parents’.
“White working class parents are much more likely to have had negative experiences of school themselves, which affects their engagement with schools and the importance they place on education,” says Carl Cullinane, director of research and policy at the Sutton Trust.
At one end of the scale then we have parents who worry so much they move their families to further their parental ambitions, and at the other we have those who see school and education as the enemy.
When my kids were in school, I remember only too well the parents whose main connection with classroom life was to turn up regularly in reception to complain about some perceived injustice which had befallen their offspring.
Bullying, obviously, should never be tolerated and every parent holds the right to raise concerns if that is happening. Parents of SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) children also have their own anxieties.
However, I certainly recall parents openly verbalising their distrust of teachers and on occasions, making serious accusations about their professional abilities.
What kind of message does that send in the home? That school is a place of danger and distrust, rather than a supportive environment which should seek to do the best for every pupil.