I was born in 1973 to much older parents.
By the time I arrived my dad, a highly-skilled frame knitter, was well into his forties. My mum, a housewife and florist who worked out of our garage, was just a few years behind.
Both of their fathers before them had worked in factories, and until they had children their mothers had been in domestic service.
Not one of them, or my two older brothers, had been to university. In fact, all apart from my eldest sibling had left school at the earliest opportunity and gone into manual jobs.
I could not be prouder of my family and my background. I am honoured to be from true working-class roots.
It is because of my background that I know the complete lack of importance many parents placed on education.
To this day my mum, now nearly 80, will regularly tell me that ‘school and qualifications don’t matter’. It is a view still widely held by many and it is a view that could not be more wrong.
My mum will often tell me how when she left school with no qualifications her aunt got her a job at the local factory. The same happened to my dad and to my brother. That was how things were then. We had a strong manufacturing sector and a real pathway, albeit limited, for working-class kids to enter into gainful employment.
By the time I left school, without five ‘good’ GCSEs, in the late 1980s things were changing. My part of Leicestershire had been hit hard by the closure of the coalmines, factories and associated industries and young working-class boys were finding it difficult to get work.
There was a glimmer of hope, though, brought about by the simple geography of being in a central location on the road network: warehouses. It was a time before the widespread use of computerised solutions and a great many workers were still needed.
I come from what was probably the very last generation where there was an accepted route into employment for working-class kids.
Many of our parents, often fearful or mistrusting of authority, placed no importance on education safe in the knowledge that we would have a job that would, when we were fully trained, eventually give us a decent standard of living.
Twenty-five years later society has changed dramatically. Manufacturing has gone and we have the best part of a million young people out of work. When I left school no one knew what a ‘Neet’ was; now you cannot seem to move for them.
But the simple fact is that for a significant number of working-class parents that generational detachment from education is still there. Many good parents are fearful at the lack of opportunities their children will have but ingrained in them is a mistrust of teachers and the establishment, and a misunderstanding (obvious to most of us) as to why getting good qualifications is important.
The issue of underachievement in white, working-class children is a massively important one and must be a priority for any incoming Labour government. It is one very close to my heart because I know, but for a few years, I could have quite easily been a jobless statistic.
It is not an issue that can simply be addressed with the stick of fining bad parents. Does the government realise just how much anger and distrust has been cultivated among working-class families by issuing fines for holidays during termtime? You cannot fine your way out of this problem.
When you start from a position of not trusting authority, getting a fine does not make you feel closer or give more respect.
No, the only way we get poorer parents to realise that education is an opportunity is to work with them in showing them it is one.
Labour must not be scared of highlighting to white working-class parents the perils of low attainment, but we must not preach to them either.
An incoming Labour government should mandate schools to increase pastoral support activities with underachieving groups, which would thereby include white, working-class parents. Parents must feel that they are in a partnership with schools so when it comes to important issues, such as transition between primary and secondary school, why not visit them with their agreement in their own homes? A simple step, which really can foster a relationship.
I firmly believe if my parents were talked with, rather than talked to, their view on the importance of education would have been different.
We need to make a winning case to parents that longer school days can make a real difference. A nine-hour school day does not and should not mean nine hours sitting in lessons.
But there are great examples of schools in tough areas providing breakfast clubs, homework clubs and sports clubs every day and if parents see their children enjoying them, irrespective of background, they will want the best for their children.
Individual schools are doing amazing things in including white working-class parents but it should not be the exception, but the norm. It is imperative that best practice is shared. Maybe it could be one of the first tasks for David Blunkett’s schools standards directors?
It is only when schools proactively help parents to have a vision that their child can aspire to more that we will truly change things.
Our schools do an amazing job in teaching but parents are the key to inspiring.
Let’s make sure a Labour government will give them the tools to do it.
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Leon Spence is a county councillor and Labour lead for children and young people at Leicestershire county council. He tweets @CllrLeonSpence
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Photo: David Gilmore
Hi Leon
my mother – bless her – was of the opinion that the best career a woman could aspire to was motherhood. Fortunately my father, a toolmaker and immigrant from the desperate poverty of the Welsh coalfields, was determined to see all his children educate their way out.
As a Coalville Councillor I would like to share your aspiration for the children of working class parents. As a Whitwick Councillor, I thought you might do well to remember George Smith ‘Friend of Children’, Victorian campaigner for worker’s rights and manager of the Whitwick brickworks. When he refused to exploit children in his factories, he was vilified by some of the working people of our town. Low paid families were more concerned about keeping a roof over their head and food in their bellies than fancy education.
Thanks to campaigners like George Smith, things have improved for working families. But the principle remains the same.
Successive governments – including our own – have artificially separated work and learning. We now expect young people to invest tens of thousand of their future earnings in higher education. We now have a generation – including my one of my own step-daughter – who have made that investment only to find that a degree is no passport to a job.
In the 1970s, as an all-round top-of-the-class grammar school girl, I was thinking of doing English, French and Latin and a degree in Literature. My Dad persuaded me to do science and medicine. Like most working people of his generation, he feared debt and saw it as a sure path to misery and starvation.
I and my siblings all continued their education in the form of apprenticeships, linked to guaranteed employment. My aspiring working class Dad produced an accountant, a doctor, an engineer and a nurse.
I didn’t pay for my degree. My siblings were all paid by their employers to learn. I know that if we had been, as modern youngster are, faced with the prospect of massive debts and uncertain employment, we would none of us gone on to further education.
As a child, by Thursday each week, my parents had run out of money and we had egg and chips for tea because that was all we could afford. Modern working class children are being fed by FoodBanks.Exhorting working parents to value education is to forget the reality of debt and fear that goes on behind closed doors in so many homes.
I would like to see a Labour Government create real apprenticeships – not phoney short-term work-experience – so young people can earn and learn in secure employment. Schools will find it much easier to sell education to children from poor homes if their parents can see it as a way out of poverty rather than a way into insecurity and debt.