The White Working Class: low expectations? Low aspirations? Or both?

This week a report was published.  It was all about white working class (WWC) pupils under-achieving at school.

Here's a link: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq51j10q601o

Speaking as someone who was a white working class pupil, here's my tuppennyworth.

1. I was brought up as a white working class pupil.  My dad was an NCO in the British Army.  My mum was a housewife.  Both were educated in secondary modern school, not grammar school.  My dad used to joke that his school was so good, it was approved.  Both parents left school at 14 and 15 with not a single paper qualification to their name.
2. Until 1982 I led a pads brat lifestyle, moving every 3 or 4 years as my dad went on his next posting.
3. In May 1982 we moved up to Redcar, on the North-East coast of England, minus my dad.  My parents had just been through a very acrimonious divorce.  We changed from being comfortably-off to being "nouveau pauvre," rather than "nouveau riche."  We moved overnight from married quarter to council house.
4. On my first day at my new school, I was stunned at the poor staff-pupil relations.  TL;DR: them'n'us attitude.  This contrasted with my previous schools, where at lunchtime Catchers Club, I would chat with my tutor about the Poole-Newcastle train, who was from West Yorkshire.  Most of the pupils were pads brats.  Discipline was rarely a problem.
5. One week after I had started at Rye Hills School, Redcar, I was leaving my science lesson, when Mr B, my science teacher grabbed my the knot of my tie, till I was standing tip-toe, as he then told me, "I saw you last week with Lee B.  Keep away from him.  He's trouble.  Once he had let go of my tie, I politely explained to him, that Lee B was my cousin, and I could not really keep away from him.  Would that have happened, if were a nice middle-class child, and not a skinny, scrawny working-class child, who would not say "boo" to a goose?  After all, they're only oiks...
6. When it came to choosing options at the end of third, I wrote on the form that I was interested in becoming a chef.  This was because I had met a comrade of my dad's, who had started as a chef in the Army, and was leaving the Army to be a hotel chain manager on a good salary.  To 14 year old me, that sounded like a good career choice.
7. Then in 4th year, there was Mrs Not Very Helping Hand, the careers teacher, three years away from retirement.  Monday morning careers lesson: "Today we're going to watch a video about joining the British Army.  Don' worry, girls, next week we'll watch a video about office work."  After all, that's all you oiks are good for: being a squaddie, or being a secretary (until you fall pregnant).
8. Assaults by staff against pupils were not uncommon.  The head of year, Mr W in the corridor once twisted a pupil's ear, crying out in pain.  How would he have reacted had that happened to his own middle-class precious child?  Thankfully this pupil was just an oik.
9. In second year, Mr Burning Bush, Head of RE, used to turn every lesson into one big bible-bash.  He once told me RE class that we should abolish weapons, just like Switzerland.  When I told him that he was wrong, and that Switzerland was highly militarised, with extensive national service, I was threatened with detention and told: "Don't backchat."  By Mr Burning Bush and by my mum.  This is the secondary modern outlook.  Sit there.  Be a passive absorber of what the teacher spews out.
10. Are WWC children viewed as weeds to be controlled, not FLOTC's (Future Leaders of This Country).  
11. Howard, a private schoolboy friend of mine said, "All private school gives you is a posh accent and supreme self-confidence."  You don't that when told, "Sit down, shut up."
12. Do too many WWC parents want their failure of contraception, bit of a nuisance, offspring, leave school at 16, bring back lodge, booze money, knitting wool money?
13. Do WWC parents think that university is full of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll?  (If there was, I didn't see any of it when I was at university 1989-1993.)  Do they think it is full of people talking about Wittgenstein's relationship to Bakunin in relation to philosophy on agnosticism.philosphical existentialism?  (Er, no.)
14. Do too many WWC children move around in a goldfish bowl, going no further than a quarter of a mile from their front door?  That was what I found when working as a supply teacher on Teesside nearly twenty years ago.
15. "My dad worked down t'pit/ICI/British Steel": is this mindset too deeply embedded among WWC children?  Compare that do private school kids, whose main decision is which Oxbridge college to attend, and want to follow in the footsteps of your parents who were a doctor or a major-general, just like their parents.
16. When I was at sixth-form college in 1986, one of my peers had won the Academic Achievement Award at her state school, which had a large proportion of middle-class kids.  Did my bog-standard comp have such a prize?  Guess what.  No!
17. Again, when I was at sixth-form college, lots of my Asian friends were all looking to become pharmacists, accountants, well-paid, respected jobs.  Why?  Because their parents had grown up in poverty, were very family-oriented and recognised the extrinsic (financial) and intrinsic value of education.
18. When I got my degree result in 1993, I was a FIF (first in family to get a degree), I rang my mum and told her I got ("only") a 2:2, instead of a 2:1, which I had hoped for, her reaction was to sigh with disappointment. "Remind me, Mum, what did you get for your degree?  Oh hang on, you haven't got a single paper qualification to your name..."
19. Jabberwocky, is I'm sure a fascinating text to examine and analyse if you are academic and wonder why the author used this word and not that word on line 14.  But when Mr K taught this lesson to a bunch of WWC pupils in 1984, nobody, even my mate, Eddie B, later an Oxford graduate, was interested or engaged.  I suspect Mr K had been teaching this lesson for twenty or more years, and this was in his comfort zone.
20. Swot!  Boffin!  The ultimate insult among WWC youngsters.  Don't try to escape the lobster pot.  They'll pull you back in.
21. So, how to make WWC education relevant; raise aspirations, raise expectations.  Here's the challenge.  I'd say, make the curriculum less academic, or at least less abstract.  Get them learning motor mechanics, even as an afternoon at the local garage.  Bring in schemes such as Aim Higher, so that WWC youngster realise that they can and should go to university.  Get them visiting the local museum and park, so they can learn about history, geography, so that learning has relevance.  It's not just about crop rotation in the fourteenth century.
22. Or why bother?  After all, they're only oiks...
23. Long live the Lumpenproletariat!