“They’re like ghost children.”

Headteacher Joel Hinchliffe is talking about a group of pupils on the fringes of various narratives of educational disadvantage but who are rarely explicitly mentioned.

They are usually missing from the bleak images of white working-class children found on news websites and book covers. They’ve been absent from much of the national conversation around white British pupils’ underperformance. They don’t get their own focus in the gender divide discussion.

Yet school leaders warn that white working-class girls’ struggles are more acute than ever.

As the “stark gaps” in outcomes between white working-class pupils and their peers are being scrutinised by both the government and an independent inquiry, there are calls to focus on this particular problem.

“There’s been tunnel vision towards the boys,” says Hinchliffe, who leads E-ACT’s Parkwood Academy in Sheffield, where nearly half of the students are on free school meals.

What the data says about white working-class girls

Why have white working-class girls been overlooked, what are the main barriers they face and what support do they need?

On one level, the first question has an obvious answer: white working-class boys perform more poorly at GCSE and are more likely to be excluded or suspended when compared with white working-class girls.

This is what the Commons Education Select Committee homed in on in a 2021 report on white working-class outcomes, which contains four times as many mentions of boys as girls.

Is this skewed focus justified by the data?

Outcomes for disadvantaged white boys are indisputably poor: two-thirds of GCSE students nationally (66 per cent) achieve a grade 4 in English and maths, but this drops to 38 per cent for white boys who have been eligible for free school meals (FSM) at any point over the past six years (these pupils are categorised FSM6).

The figure for their female counterparts is two percentage points higher (40 per cent).

“Although they perform better at school, it’s important to recognise that the attainment of white girls who are eligible for free school meals remains very low overall,” argues Carl Cullinane, director of research and policy at the Sutton Trust. “Yet they receive far less attention than boys.”

A similar pattern can be seen with Progress 8 scores.

The average score across all students was -0.03 last year. For white FSM6 boys, it was -0.83, compared with 0.33 for non-white boys who haven’t been eligible for FSM.

For white FSM6 girls, the figure was -0.69, compared with 0.53 for non-white, non-FSM6 girls.

Again, disadvantaged white girls are not performing well but are still outperforming boys.

The difference may be small but it has a significant impact on where the spotlight is shone. David Thomas, CEO of Axiom Maths and a former Department for Education adviser under the previous Conservative government, says “people just have a tendency to talk about the group that is the lowest performing”.

“They go to where the hard problems are and where they feel moral purpose in their work,” he adds. “In general education circles, people talk about boys. In maths circles, people talk about girls.”

Is there a risk that skimming over the underperformance of white working-class girls simply because they do slightly better than boys could see their progress falter or even fall?

Hidden disadvantage

The broader context is that girls overall have long outperformed boys at GCSE, but the gender gap is narrowing - not just because boys are catching up but also because girls’ results are falling.

Lynsey Holzer, chief executive officer at Active Learning Trust, based in the East of England, says the potential long-term impact of this is being missed.

“Because there’s so much attention on white working-class boys’ underachievement, the girls can be overlooked - and they are underperforming,” she warns.

“The girls are quietly getting on with it, generally. And so it can be hidden disadvantage for two reasons: hidden because the school doesn’t focus on it, and hidden because they tend to be a bit more under the radar about their lower performance.”

That “quietly getting on with it” partly refers to the fact that white working-class boys are more noticeable in behaviour statistics. The exclusion rate is 0.89 per cent among white FSM6 boys, and 0.55 per cent for their female peers, according to analysis by FFT.

With suspensions, once again boys in this group are worst but the rate is also high for girls.

And what isn’t reflected in the data - yet - is a concern among many leaders that girls’ behaviour in general is becoming more challenging.

“We have increasing issues with girls and behaviour in school,” says Holzer.

Perhaps, given the long-term impact of GCSE grades on students’ futures and the nature of the school accountability system, it is only natural for the sector to prioritise assessment outcomes.

And the huge disruption that difficult behaviour can cause in the classroom makes it hard to ignore exclusions and suspensions.

But these measures only tell part of the story.

For example, more than half of white working-class girls on FSM are persistently absent - the highest rate of any group in FFT’s analysis. This is undoubtedly slowing efforts to raise attainment. So, what’s going on here?

“There’s more compliance [from girls], maybe - but their thirst for learning can be harder to identify,” reflects Hinchliffe.

New research shared with Tes provides some crucial insights as to why this might be - which, in turn, may shed some light on those high absence rates.

The research, by UCL’s Social Research Institute with ImpactEd Group and TEP, finds that white British girls on FSM are less interested in their lessons, have the weakest sense of agency at school and enjoy school less than any other group.

The findings do not drill down into why these students seem to be less engaged with school than others, and the view of most leaders and experts is that this is a complex area.

But several themes crop up repeatedly, including the impact of gender roles.

“A lot of our girls, when you talk to them, they picture the man in a relationship doing the main job,” says Holzer.

“You see that gender split happening quite early, particularly in those more working-class schools,” she adds, pointing to the need for careers work to start early on in the primary phase.

“In a lot of our families, especially our white British working-class families, there’s a lot of tradition there,” echoes Hinchliffe. “For girls, they’ve got to grow up quickly and contribute to the household.”

‘The extracurricular offer is a big factor in building that sense of belonging’

Sometimes this means staying at home to look after family members.

Nicole McCartney, CEO of Creative Education Trust, grew up in the USA as a young carer in a low-income family, and says it is important for schools to identify students facing similar circumstances.

“I think there’s still a hidden large number of young carers - in this group [white working-class girls] in particular - that we’re not doing enough to unearth.”

Rooting out the reasons for the patterns of absence can be a matter of asking the right questions, she advises.

“We broadened our definition to ask, ‘Do you have extra responsibilities at home?’ Because being a young carer is a stigma. If your parents have drug or alcohol abuse issues, you’re not going to say that. But you might say you’ve been doing extra dishes, hoovering, without giving the reason.”

‘Social anxiety apocalypse’

Mental health problems are also known to be a significant factor in school absence, with girls overall more likely than boys to have a diagnosable mental health issue.

It is well understood that poverty can compound certain mental health problems. And it is the white disadvantaged girls at McCartney’s schools who seem hardest hit by rising levels of anxiety - a trend she believes is fuelled by social media.

“I’m really concerned about mental health issues that we’re seeing among this particular group deriving from social media,” she says. “One of the things that goes with social media is consumption as a way of life. Do you have the latest make-up? Do you have the latest face wash? And when you’re living in poverty, consumerism cannot be a way of life.”

This tension, faced by a group of students who may have lower levels of self-esteem to start with, is contributing to a “social anxiety apocalypse among these girls in particular”, McCartney warns.

Holzer describes similar concerns, and says some girls are taking time off school when they have an acne outbreak because they “feel like they’ve got to have the perfect skin”.

‘You can’t fight it’

Working-class girls with fewer resources and lower levels of self-confidence can be particularly susceptible to a social media-driven fixation on looking a certain way, she says.

Her trust has adjusted its school uniform policy in line with this trend. Schools now ask for “subtle” nail polish and make-up instead of none.

“You can’t even fight it any more,” Holzer states. Asking girls to remove foundation with a wet wipe - once an acceptable request - could now result in a “massive loss of self-esteem and confidence”. “It would not be right to do that, and not moral any more,” she says.

McCartney also blames social media for an even darker trend. “Girls are feeling like they have to sexualise themselves. I have spoken to students myself, young girls, who say that OnlyFans is their career path.”

It is easy to see how this shift could affect girls’ attendance. And it is the girls lacking “healthy stimuli”, such as extracurricular clubs and museum trips, who are the most vulnerable to toxic messaging, says McCartney, who adds that her trust has done a lot of work around harmful sexual behaviour, including a student survey and a campaign around appropriate language.

The impact of poverty

Trying to emulate a filtered image on social media is undoubtedly even harder if you lack basic resources like a washing machine. “We serve a lot of the working poor,” says Hinchliffe, who cites the cost-of-living crisis as another drag on school attendance.

“They’ll see their parents going out to work and trying to make ends meet, but still there might be no heating or washing powder, and they’re putting the same dirty uniform on.

“If you’re a male student you can rock up and be a stinky boy and it’s almost OK - but not so much when you’re a female student who’s on their period for the first time and has dirty underwear. It can take a lot of resilience to pull yourself out of bed and cross that threshold.”

So if poverty, lack of self-esteem, mental ill-health and social media pressures are converging in a way that disproportionately hits the engagement, attendance and - ultimately - the attainment of white working-class girls, what can schools do? After all, a lot of these problems stem from outside the school gates.

On attainment, Professor Rob Coe, director of research and development at Evidence Based Education, queries whether this is the right question.

“The way girls learn is not really different from the way boys learn,” he says. “That’s not to say that they may not come in with some different behaviours that teachers need to respond to, but in terms of the fundamental anatomy of learning, it isn’t different.”

Professor Coe sits on an independent inquiry on educational outcomes, due to report next year, but is speaking in a personal capacity.

“One of the strengths of this particular inquiry,” he says, is that “it hasn’t differentiated girls and boys”.

On engagement, however, the UCL study suggests that different initiatives may be needed for disadvantaged white girls compared with boys.

“For instance, programmes designed to increase the value that boys place on education, and thus the effort they exert into their schoolwork, may be particularly important,” writes report author John Jerrim.

“On the other hand, for girls, such initiatives might instead attempt to build their sense of agency, the quality of their relationships with their peers, and more broadly their enjoyment of school.”

Cutting absence with extracurriculars

One leader of a school in the North East, who prefers not to be named, says staff carry out extensive targeted outreach to try to cut absence - but one of their biggest attendance wins with girls came from putting on a school musical.

“The extracurricular offer is a big factor in building that sense of belonging,” he explains.

However, replicating this success will be challenging.

“Literally everything we offer after school is on goodwill. Schools with a really good extracurricular offer…We just wouldn’t be able to afford that,” he says.

As well as helping girls to feel more connected to school, after-school activities could also perhaps reduce the time spent scrolling on phones.

Andrew Taylor, headteacher at Buttershaw Business and Enterprise College in Bradford, says there are far more extracurricular activities in the community aimed at boys than girls, which his school is trying to “counteract” - for example, through its successful girls’ football team.

Could this be an area of focus for the government? Department for Education adviser Sir Kevan Collins pushed hard for an extended school day when he was education recovery commissioner under the previous government - and resigned when his £15 billion Covid catch-up plan was rejected by then prime minister Boris Johnson.

As well as feeding into Labour’s upcoming White Paper, Sir Kevan also sits on the white working-class educational outcomes inquiry set up by the Public First think tank and Star Academies.

As ever, the success of any recommendations or policies resulting from these pieces of work will depend on the funding available to implement them.

Redefining ambition

In the meantime, one area that many schools are focusing on is gender stereotypes.

Holzer is an advocate of targeted mentoring for female students from working-class backgrounds. “These girls need to see strong role models outside their family,” she says.

This is not always about raising aspirations but channelling them.

“When we talk about ambition, I think it’s misunderstood a lot of the time. The girls will see Instagram influencers and think that’s success. What we’re trying to do is show them different careers that are a little more grounded but also very successful,” says Hinchliffe.

His school has tried using the Year 9 options bucket to encourage a wider take-up of traditionally gendered subjects, but also presses students to think big - whatever their field of study.

“So you don’t have to be the next YouTube sensation: if you want to go into hair and beauty, you can be the best hair and beauty technician in the village. It’s about being the best version of yourself.”

‘Girls need to see strong role models outside their family’

Amy Anderson, headteacher at Meridian High School in Croydon, South London, agrees that the problem is not a lack of ambition. “We have very aspirational children in our school, but they just don’t necessarily know how to achieve those dreams,” she says.

More than two-thirds of students at her school are FSM6 - far higher than the national average of 27 per cent.

Having grown up in the former steelworks town of Corby, Northamptonshire, in a working-class household with a highly gendered division of labour, Anderson wants her school to “blow up” the stereotypes that can hold back girls with similar backgrounds to hers. This feeds heavily into personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education lessons, and also involves detailed conversations with students about their subject options.

Support, not a saviour

Other schools are looking at the gender split of leadership roles. Buttershaw has a female head of technology and engineering, and is introducing construction to the curriculum from next year, led by a woman. “We’re doing what we can to fight against those stereotypes,” says Taylor.

Subject choice becomes increasingly important in areas of high disadvantage with fewer job opportunities, says the North East head. “Around here there are a lot of engineering jobs. The challenge is getting the girls to pick the options that would link them into higher-paid jobs in the local community.”

In summary, the challenges faced by many white working-class girls are all too familiar to the schools that serve them, but aren’t yet reflected in the national discourse.

Maybe this would change if a broader range of measures was used to judge how far they are lagging behind.

What comes across clearly from school leaders with the deepest understanding of this group is that these girls need support to reach their potential - not rescuing.

“We’re not saving them,” says McCartney. “We’re finding diamonds. We are not saving the poor unfortunate - we are panning for gold.”

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