Poor white children lack motivation to succeed at school, warns think-tank

Ally Paget, a researcher at Demos, said that low attainment is often caused by a lack of "values or character", and that to overcome this all children should be taught skills such as how to be self-motivated.

Her comments come as the education select committee publishes its Underachievement in Education by White Working Class Children report, which shows that white boys and girls from disadvantaged backgrounds are continuing to achieve lower outcomes than peers from other major ethnic groups.

The report shows that underachievement is highest among white girls from disadvantaged backgrounds, this group performing worse than white disadvantaged boys.

The committee also found that the gap between disadvantaged white children and their wealthier peers has remained stagnant over the past seven years, while the attainment of poor children from other ethnic backgrounds is improving faster than that of disadvantaged white children.

Paget said: “Too often, low attainment comes down to students lacking the skills, character traits or values that they need in order to learn – rather than pure ability or subject knowledge.

“The Education Secretary sparked a lot of discussion of ‘British values’ – what we should be talking about are values that help pupils from working class backgrounds to success, things like paying attention in class, self-motivation and organisation.

“Seeing disadvantaged white girls falling behind their educational attainment comes as a surprise and suggests the current methods aren’t working.”