I had not heard the term “working class” in everyday discourse for many years until I started my journey into education. Until then, the term was something for the history books. It was associated in my mind with class warfare, manning the barricades, the rising of the proletariat, storming the Winter Palace and all that.

Now I hear it everyday in school as in: “He’s from a working-class family but they do have books in the house,” or, “She is working-class and is just plumped down with a tablet every evening with no reading, and it shows.”

In my former life as a marketer, we actually went out of our way not to use the WC word, or anything else like it. Not only had the old class monikers fallen into disuse, but categories like A, B and C1 had also gone the way of the dinosaurs. No, we inhabited a world where everyone was in the market for the products we tried to flog. Whether they were “actualisers” or “fulfilleds”, “strivers”, “makers” or “believers”, they were all an untapped reservoir of purchasing decisions waiting to drop our way if we could only find and get the right messages across to them.

People are gainfully employed in market research dividing and subdividing these groups, painting detailed little life portraits of them, their interests and their lives; the cars they own (remember Mondeo Man?), where they shop and how they eat. It makes for great, feelgood Powerpoint. Now all they need in their lives is the new-formula FMCG product that has been devised with just them in mind. One US (and nearly all this stuff originates from the US) classification has “experiencers”, “makers” and “strugglers” as “lower class”, out of eight categories. “Makers” alone are defined as “sometimes called the ‘working class’’. “Makers” are “suspicious of new ideas”, but, happily for the DIY marketeer, they are practical, mend their stuff and build. Even bottom of the heap “strugglers” are “loyal to favourite brands”. Happy days.

What is a working-class household?

But, let’s face it, quite a lot of guff and bluff is involved in stretching a world of aspirations into these kinds of categories. We all knew it in the presentation room; we knew that life is more complicated than that.

Now I am in a world where it is recognised that certain, very broadly defined, groups are disadvantaged. The WC and, whisper it, especially white WC (WWC) households are falling behind other groups. But how to define it?

A report from Lambeth in 2014 candidly admits “one of the difficulties with our research has been in defining the term ‘working class’. Everyone we talked to in the study gave us different interpretations and understandings of the terminology.” This widely noted report settles on those in receipt of free school meals (FSMs) and households whose main income is from the welfare state (another term I had somehow become disconnected from). The finding was that the attainment among WWCs receiving FSMs and not in receipt of FSMs was the most disparate of any ethnic group.

We are soon told that WWCs live in a world of language deficits, low parental aspirations and poverty, not to mention institutional shortcomings that condemn WWCs to below-average academic achievement. The report came up with plenty of best practice solutions to increase parental engagement, strategies to focus on numbers and language in the classroom to engage this group.

I have very little experience. But based on what I have seen, we need to to be cautious of our WWC usage. It is a world away from the marketing world I used to inhabit, but human nature is the same. A report becomes generalised and the generalisation is marshalled as evidence and it becomes set in stone.

I’m pleased research has identified a problem. I myself have not seen that much to support it. We all know that home background is important, as recently referenced by Tes’ William Stewart. Ofsted needs to recognise it. But I, for one, am minding my Ws and Cs in class because I think, as a category, it only helps us so far.

David Hall is applying to become a teacher. For 25 years, he worked in communications for a range of clients. He tweets @campdavid