Class not race is the barrier to success

Yes, so only one Caribbean black student got into Oxford University in 2009. And it is farcical if you think about it that Oxford has come back by saying that “at least” 26 others who were black got in that year, as did another 14 who were mixed race. This is out of an intake topping some 3,000 students and therefore accounts for little more than about one per cent of those accepted. Hardly impressive.

But the fault does not lie with Oxford University or any other university. The stage where lack of diversity kicks in is among students qualified to apply for entry. One simple fact that David Cameron and others would do well to take heed of is that only 452 black students in the entire country got good enough grades Oxford in 2009.

Interestingly nearly half of all black students who gained good enough grades applied to Oxford, whereas only 28 per cent of white students who achieved the necessary grades applied.

So why the focus on only black students? I wonder how many white working-class boys made it to Oxford? Will the leading lights of the coalition bleed their hearts for this underrepresentation?

Of course it is hard to measure the failure of this group, even those white working-class students lucky enough to get into grammar schools will be measured in the same category as working-class youngsters who went to the effective war zone of a failing state school.

A fifth of kids leave primary school unable to read and write properly. Many go on to a secondary school that can be host to poor teaching, a severe lack of discipline and an atmosphere that is more reminiscent of a battleground than an educational establishment.

Yet as politicians from all three main parties have focused on improving educational standards among ethnic minority children it seems as if the white working-class, particularly the boys, have been forgotten.

Research has shown that when factors such as single-parent status and living in deprived neighbourhoods are taken into account it is white working-class pupils who attain the lowest grades in 21st-century Britain.

By age 11 the Government’s own figures show that it is poor white boys who have the lowest attainment and this is true by the end of their secondary education too. In fact in 2008 it was revealed that a shockingly poor 15 per cent of white working-class boys were leaving school with basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic.

The figure was only 20 per cent for white working-class girls. This record is worse than for children from all other groups who were brought up by poor parents. Some 22 per cent of working-class black kids, 29 per cent of Asian boys from deprived backgrounds and 52 per cent of those from a poor Chinese background left school with these essential basic skills.

While we have heard plenty of determination from politicians who want to see more children from ethnic-minority backgrounds get on there has been precious little focus on the white working class who have steadily fallen behind in the grade rankings, while black students have on average improved the most over the past few years.

Poor white boys are officially the worst achieving group in England yet this is downplayed as their middle and upperclass counterparts dominate the top universities.

Part of this is down to social breakdown, with many raised in homes where no one has ever worked, or where no parent has ever encouraged their child to pursue good grades and a degree. Research finds that white working-class children also have the lowest expectations of exam results of any demographic group.

A big factor as well is the poor quality of many state schools. These of course are not the schools that Cameron and Clegg’s parents paid tens of thousands of pounds a year for them to attend. They are also highly unlikely to be the grammar schools that are left in the UK that still provide children lucky enough to attend them with a decent shot of getting on in life.

These failing schools are comprehensives in inner cities, where the police and headteachers are less concerned about academic excellence and more concerned about installing metal detectors to ensure pupils don’t carry knives.

This whole sorry mess can be neatly summed up by Labour MP for Hackney Diane Abbott. She benefited from a grammar school education that enabled her to get intoCambridge – before spending her political life arguing against academic selection.

Unlike many of her constituents, she then had the financial clout to send her son to a £10,000-a-year private school to stop him falling prey to gang culture.If only Mrs Abbott’s constituents, whether white, black or brown, could one day send their children to a grammar school. Maybe then we’d see more working-class youngsters of all skin colours in Oxford.