What to do with ‘white working-class’ underachievement? Framing ‘white working-class’ underachievement in post-Brexit Referendum England

Abstract

Scrutinising disproportionate media and political attention provided to the ills of the ‘white working-class’, this article examines the framing of their apparent underachievement in education policy and discourse in early post-Brexit vote England. In a political context dominated by anti-immigration and nationalist rhetoric, this article aims to investigate the framing of such underachievement across class, gender and ethnic differentials. To that end, a Critical Frame Analysis was conducted of four policy documents focusing on differences in diagnosis of, and solutions for, ‘white working-class’ underachievement, and of responses to these documents in mainstream newspapers. We contend that the political emphasis on redistributive social justice and identity politics can introduce a logic that can lead to remedies consistent with the idea of interest-divergence emanating from Critical Race Theory (CRT). The article concludes that transformative reform is lacking and communicated outcomes overly focus on ‘white working-class’ boys, obscuring issues common across groups.