White working class boys bottom of the class in English

White working class boys are amongst the worst performers in English, according to inspectors today.

They are consistently being outperformed in the subject by Indian and Chinese pupils.

The report, English at the Crossroads, reveals that the majority of white working class boys fail to reach the required standard in English national curriculum tests for 14-year-olds. Only 40 per cent succeed. Nearly half of seven-olds (47 per cent) also fail to make the mark in their tests.

It concludes that standards in English are not rising fast enough - and that there is an unacceptable gap between the performance of the best and worst schools.

“There is a significant gap between the most effective schools and the rest,” said Christine Gilbert, chief inspector of schools.

“Too much English teaching is no better than satisfactory and too many pupils are not able to make the progress they then need to catch up.”

An analysis of English lessons reveals that three out of ten are at best satisfactory.

The report criticises teachers who fail to engage and enthuse pupils in their classes - and merely talk at pupils and hand out worksheets. It says that some of the country’s most disadvantaged schools have difficulty in recruiting talented English teachers.

“Pupils who were less enthusiastic about the subject and made poorer progress said that it had too little to do with their lives or interests outside school,” it adds.

The report goes on to say that writing standards are lagging far behind reading in primary schools. In tests for 11-years-olds - while 87 per cent reached the required standard in reading - only 68 per cent did so in writing.

“Some ethnic minorities, such as pupils of Chinese and Indian heritage, consistently achieve above the national average,” it adds. All the ethnic groups within the black category and pupils of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage perform below the national average.

“Little progress has been made in closing the gap between the performance of pupils who live in the most deprived areas of the country and those in the most affluent areas.”

It says of teaching standards: “Inspectors saw lessons where low-attaining pupils spent too much time copying learning objectives into books.

“The level of challenge was also sometimes too low as in lessons observed where lower-attaining pupils were asked to draw a pirate and write five words describing him or to collect images of war by cutting pictures from magazines.

“Such undemanding activities may be one of the reasons why boys (who make up the majority of pupils in lower sets) achieve less well than girls.”

Weak lessons were also “too dominated by teachers, leading to passive responses from pupils with too few opportunities for independent work”.

Meanwhile, youngsters of Pakistani and indian origin are more likely than whites to believe being British is important to them, according to a survey of 17-year-olds conducted for the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

In all, 80 per cent of Pakistanis took a pride in being British, 76 per cent of Indians and 72 per cent of whites.

White youngsters were also the least likely ethnic group to believe it was easier for them to get on in life than their parents. Only 14 per cent strongly agreed so so compared with 41 per cent of black African youngsters and Bangladeshis.