A bitter row has erupted in Westminster over a new report by the Education Select Committee of MPs, which concludes that white working-class pupils in England have been let down “by decades of neglect and muddled policy thinking”. It blames the use of the phrase “white privilege” in particular for this neglect.
The Conservative MP Robert Halfon, the committee’s chairman, has described it as a “major social injustice” that white British pupils on free schools meals perform slightly worse at GCSE than the average pupil on free school meals, and that white British students on free meals are significantly less likely to go to university than black Africans, black Caribbeans or Bangladeshis on free school meals. “If you think it’s about poverty, then it doesn’t explain why most other ethnic groups do much better,” Halfon said.
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