Lower-income families may prioritise children’s happiness, but academic achievement helps create the economic circumstances that foster it Daily Telegraph If you’re interested in cultural differences within the British population, the work of the Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes is essential reading . Its polling, focus groups and interviews with white working-class children and their parents, reveals a fundamental cultural outlook that explains a great deal, not just about the educational and economic performance of those children, but about Britain’s current economic and political condition. The key finding is that white working-class children and their parents are much less likely than everyone else in the country to think that passing exams and doing well at school is important. This is a class issue. Fifty-seven per cent of white ABC1 parents, otherwise known as the middle classes, say that achieving good grades is a key part of succes...
Asking voters and think tanks to shape policy means blame can be spread more widely when everything falls apart Daily Telegraph First you wait for ages for a 10-year plan, then two come along at the same time. But then it turns out that the second plan wasn’t ready after all , and there would be an extended delay before it arrived. Such is life in Labour’s Britain. First we had Keir Starmer, or “two-year Keir” as some social media wag christened him, defying criticism from his own party by announcing he needed at least 10 years in office to turn things around. And he had a plan to prove it. He would have been wiser to produce a four-months plan. Then his successor, Andy Burnham, promised his own 10-year plan and even suggested that those dissatisfied with John Healey’s Budget last month should look to the publication of the plan , before the year’s end, to answer everyone’s substantive questions that the Budget did not. But now the plan itself has been delayed until January, th...