UK: Poor white boys sliding down GCSE pass rates

Article here. Excerpt:

'Boys from white working class homes are falling further behind their classmates when it comes to GCSE passes, according to a breakdown of this summer’s results.

A breakdown of the pass rate shows that fewer than one in five white British boys on free school meals obtained five A* to C grade passes including maths and English – the yardstick by which success is traditionally measured.

That put them 31.5 percentage points behind the national average – a rise of 1.3 percentage points in the gap in the past three years.

Separate research also published by the Government today underlined their poor performance.

The research, by Andy Ross from the National Centre for Social Research , showed youngsters who were “disengaged” with education by the time they were 13 were “more likely to be white males”.'