LBP0010

Written evidence submitted by Nick Cartwright, ‘Teleola Cartwright, Adree Wallace and, Roy Wallace

Evidence

Left behind white pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds

Authors (alphabetical order)

Nick Cartwright, ‘Teleola Cartwright, Adree Wallace and, Roy Wallace.

Background

Adree and Roy have considerable experience working with underprivileged communities in Northern Ireland. Roy edited and produced a book on the issue as a community engagement project. Their professional practice brings them into contact with many different communities including the Protestant Unionist Loyalist (PUL) working-class community.  Roy is a Senior Lecturer in Media Production at the University of Northampton and researches media representation of historiography and different voices.  ‘Teleola has experience working with children who have been excluded, or risk being excluded, from school in East Northamptonshire and more recently on student retention, progression and achievement at the University of Northampton.  ‘Teleola’s research focuses on the nexus between the complexity of identity and education. Nick is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Northampton and researches education, engagement and identity from a critical race theory perspective. Adree, a Visiting Fellow in Law at University of Northampton, is a community practitioner who has produced several social justice documents including a community response document in 2019 which helped generate agency funding to examine these particular issues.

Submission

This submission focuses on white, male pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in Northern Ireland.  It suggests that the way the data is organised masks inequalities between different communities in Northern Ireland.  On this basis the authors make the following two recommendations:

1. that the interventions that have proved successful for some communities within Northern Ireland should be extended to all and,
2. that multimodal, active approaches to learning and teaching should be utilised to re-engage left behind pupils.

The issue of educational generational underachievement amongst white PUL males within Northern Ireland is historic and systemic and is widely evidenced in academic and governmental research over the past 30 years (Mulvenna, 2012). The most recent report, the fifth Peace Monitoring Report (Gray et al., 2018) noted that the “greatest inequality” in educational achievement was between children who attended a grammar school and those who did not. It further concluded that: “While there is under-achievement among working-class pupils generally - and this is worse among boys - working class Protestant boys continue to have lower educational attainment than Catholic boys.”

In Northern Ireland there are huge differences in all the areas the DfE’s statistics cover, including Progress 8 measures, between Catholic Nationalist Republican (CNR) and PUL white pupils, particularly boys, eligible for FSM. Unfortunately, the DfE statistics do not disaggregate the data adequately to show this.  This is complicated by the five specific ethnic groups that sit under the broad ‘White’ category which requires these pupils to either identify as White British or White Irish, ignoring the complexities of identity of white pupils in Northern Ireland.  Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and therefore PUL pupils may identify as White British whilst CNR pupils may identify as White Irish, although even if they were to identify within the same specific ethnic group this would not allow one to be compared with the other.  This comparison is important because the educational achievement of PUL pupils is significantly different from that of CNR pupils and the DfE statistics ignore this.

The complexities of identity, and particularly disputes around the authenticity of Britishness have been identified as key drivers of educational underachievement in other groups (Hirsch, 2018).  For example, the complexity of what it means to be Black and British is identified as a key contributor to the underachievement of Black boys from underprivileged backgrounds.

White PUL boys from FSM households are underperforming when compared to other groups, including white CNR boys from FSM households.  By aggregating the data of these groups together, and with other groups, the underperformance of PUL pupils is masked by the comparative over-performance of CNR pupils. 

The role of place, the availability of provision, and the impact of the lack of positive role models all contribute towards this (Mulvenna, 2012) as does the complexity of the working-class PUL identity.  Traditionally the PUL community has been stereotyped as middle or upper-class and the CNR community as working-class.  These issues are not new and were recognised prior to the period described as ‘the troubles’ by theorists including Darby and Morris (1974), they however remain unresolved.

The availability and quality of early years provision plays a significant part in the worldview of young males in PUL communities. CNR communities have an effective track record of initiating and maintaining community-based funding for such projects which act as a positive gateway for personal, social and, educational development that underpins hierarchical confidence in coping with and developing alongside societal change.

As this early year’s provision is sporadic within PUL communities the issue is further compounded by the lack of community capacity to cohesively address the issue and this ensues in a cycle of individualised fragmentation which becomes the foundational building block for many young males within working-class PUL communities.

Since the implementation of peace funding in Northern Ireland the sectarian funding polarisation has become even more acute which in turn affects the role of place, which in Northern Ireland is significantly different from other areas of the UK. For example, Rathcoole Housing Estate, the largest working-class social housing estate in Northern Ireland, which is situated on the outskirts of North Belfast and has experienced severe and systematic poverty and social deprivation since its inception in the late 1960’s (Neill, 1992).

This aspirational working-class overspill housing scheme is unique as it has struggled to establish the basic social infrastructure that many similar areas in the UK would take for granted. Lack of investment, community capacity building and, collapse of secondary education provision in the North Belfast corridor, has meant the ‘role of place’ was negatively stereotyped by the media which in turn helped facilitate its demise through to the 2000’s.

As shown in Table 1 below the Rathcoole estate, which comprises four electoral wards, ranks within the top 10% of overall depravation within Northern Ireland. The measures, known as NIMDM 2017, were informed through public consultation and Steering Group agreement, and provide a mechanism for ranking the 890 Super Output areas (SOAs) in Northern Ireland from the most deprived (rank 1) to the least deprived (rank 890).

Table 1 – Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure (NIMDM) for all wards

One of the most worrying statistics within NIMDM 2017 is the fact that 58.9% of all residents within the Rathcoole estate have either no formal qualifications or only very low levels of qualifications (equal to Level 1).

Overall, within the Borough of Antrim & Newtownabbey a sizable majority of young people living in depravation would come from PUL communities.

Table 3 - Number and Percentage of Young People Living in Deprived Areas within Antrim & Newtownabbey

Educational underachievement has been a significant issue and challenge within the area. This is because of a range of different factors including the levels of deprivation and disadvantage and the significant change in the local school structure with the merger of Monkstown Community School and Newtownabbey Community High School following closure and demolition in 2015.

With the demise of an education safety net, the home learning environment provides the primary means for teaching and learning outside of official schooling activities. With underlying poverty as the backdrop, which is similar to other communities in the UK, the main difference is the overwhelming dominance by paramilitary history and affiliation which the communities find difficult to break from. Distrust of authority and government has seriously affected the confidence of PUL communities to progressively develop and move beyond sectarian allegiances.  

Such personal, family, community and, political allegiances provide the template for a lack of cultural sophistication where brutality and violence regulate social norms. These unofficial power structures act as role models for young people and provide a sense of economic, personal and cultural security for predominately young white males. A similar situation is reflected in inner city drug gang affiliations throughout the UK. These power structures act as surrogate role models which would have normally been challenged through youth and positive community activity provision which no longer exist in many PUL areas.

Many areas are dominated by church groups and organisations due to issues of distrust of government agencies and funders in PUL community organisations which may include ex-combatants acting as community leaders. This differs greatly from CNR communities where generally the community support both the political and paramilitary factions of the ex-combatant experience. Funders and government agencies have less difficulty dealing with CNR ex-prisoner groups than similar PUL groupings which has a significant impact on capacity for community development. The social deprivation and relative attractive lifestyle of paramilitary membership and this ‘closed circuit’ operates similarly to Black, Asian and minority ethnic youth cultures in mainland Britain.

The Fresh Start Agreement (2015) provides a set of inter-related and high-level proposals which seek to overcome some of the most challenging and intractable issues within Northern Ireland. One of the key issues addressed within Fresh Start is that of the legacy and impact of paramilitary activity. Among the strategic actions to end paramilitarism is a commitment to a cross-departmental programme to prevent vulnerable young people becoming involved in paramilitary activity. However, the reality is that many communities, including Rathcoole, have yet to see any actions which would challenge these behaviours and provide alternatives.

With increasing levels of anxiety and stress related illness growing amongst marginalised young white males in PUL communities, the alienating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on this group would suggest an increasingly spiralling trend into depression, drug/alcohol abuse and petty crime and then into the criminal system justice. The lack of community cohesion and the alienation felt by many young people now manifests in large groupings of underage and detached youth creating social nuisance across PUL communities. The demise of the previous paramilitary unofficial policing of those areas has led to increasing demands on resources and officers in the PSNI who are tasked with policing these communities. The breakdown of trust and policing means that criminality replaces traditional the youth activities which have been devastated through underfunding, lack of vision and, mismanagement.

The impacts of this underachievement, both for individuals and for communities, creates a lifetime of despair and missed opportunity. Positive engagement is needed to help break the poverty cycle at key points including: early years interventions, schools, home environments, social places, community facilities and, secondary, further and higher education.

The monomodal educational system is simply out of touch with ever evolving technical developments which inform young peoples preferred personal, social and, informational lifestyles.

New forms of education actively blend different approaches and forms which connect with academically detached youth.  These forms prioritise meaning making as the methodology and this provides a proven route to help overcome personal, social and, cultural distancing.

The financial impact of this situation is difficult to quantify but sufficient academic and government research indicates that keeping young people out of the criminal justice system is preferable. Educational underachievement is a key factor in the transition from victim of crime to perpetrator.

We argue that investment in creative social justice programmes which can adapt and react rapidly to technical, social, cultural, political and, global situations is needed. 

We propose that a ‘changemaker’ model of social justice, creative engagement and, educational programme delivery which actively targets key areas to help expose and galvanise solutions to the problem would be effective in terms of both costs and outcomes.

The ‘changemaker’ model provides a safe, creative space for white youth from PUL communities to connect with and develop a critical consciousness of the traditionally engrained obstacles to achievement. This is the necessary first-step on a transformative journey which involves self-awareness, self-empowerment and, self-education.

Advancement is provided by guiding changemaker principles on which participants build their journey.  They have the freedom to move between active changemaker projects.

Priorities for Government in terms of tackling this issue should be focused on targeted community empowerment, creating the capacity which is lacking at the moment from within the PUL communities to identify and discuss solutions to the issue via the ‘changemaker’ model.

The locally tailored solutions suggested by Darby and Morris (1974), including youth clubs and community organisations, would provide considerable support for PUL pupils and their communities.  This has been proven with success in CNR communities where white boys from working-class backgrounds are accessing Higher Education in relatively large numbers. However, new thinking is required to radically address the issue and reverse the dynamic cycle of underachievement.

The traditional school system has failed this particular group, highlighting the necessity for tailored solutions. The school system is currently designed around monomodal, didactic principles which are out of touch with an ever-changing multimedia environment. An active, multimodal approach which fuses realism, creativity and, critical consciousness is needed to develop motivated learners. This however can only happen if the DfE statistics recognise the groups as distinct so that funding and support opportunities can be appropriately targeted.

The Northern Ireland Draft Programme for Government required a significant change in approach from that used by previous administrations and a key feature is its continued dependence on collaborative working between organisations and groups, whether in the public, voluntary or, private sectors. Delivery of the Programme should encourage working across boundaries and focusing on the outcomes rather than traditional departmental lines, but those impacts have yet to be achieved in working-class PUL communities.

The Department of Education have the lead role on the Programme for Government outcomes, which should address Educational Underachievement amongst young PUL males which clearly states: “we give our children and young people the best start in life by implementing the following actions”

•         Indicator 11: Improve Educational Outcomes

•         Indicator 12: Reduce Educational Inequality

•         Indicator 13: Improve the Quality of Education

•         Indicator 15: Improve Child Development

There has been a failure of government in Northern Ireland which has never adequately dealt with this particular issue from late 1960’s to the present. PUL community leaders unanimously point to the Executive Office in Northern Ireland as being directly responsible for the lack of community capacity building which as creates and sustains the conditions for educational underachievement in young white males within PUL communities (Wallace, 1997).

Reference list

Darby, J.P. and Morris, G. (1974) Intimidation in housing. Community Relations Commission.

Hirsch, A (2018) Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging (Reprint Ed.) (Vintage)

Marie Gray, E et al. (2018) Peace Monitoring Report: Number Five (Community Relations Council)

Mulvenna, G (2012) The Protestant working class in Belfast: education and civic erosion – an alternative analysis, Irish Studies Review, 20:4, 427-446, DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2012.731264

Neill, W. J. (1992). Anywhere and Nowhere: Reimaging Belfast. Fortnight, (309), 8-10.

Northern Ireland Executive (2015) A Fresh Start: The Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan

Wallace, R. (1997) Goodbye Ballyhightown (2nd Ed.) (RSHG)

June 2020