Why kids and the working class feel left behind in Grimsby

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]All right.

[00:00:02]>> There's such a thing as a workingass culture and it has its values. It had its things that people feel are right and wrong and all that. It's just that the whole system is set up not to meet the needs of these kids, the curriculum, everything.

[00:00:18]>> So, I'm just going to do a bad school and can't do it.

[00:00:21]>> There aren't a huge amount of prospects within this area. So, where are your aspirations coming from? Your father was a fisherman. Your grandfather was a fisherman. You followed on in their footsteps.

[00:00:34]>> The kids need a chance. They need a chance. There's no fishing no more. You know fishing. It's nice for the memories, but there's no fishing.

[00:00:44]>> Those memories run deep. Grimby was once the world's biggest fishing port. And there's huge pride in the legacy. But as the industry declined, it's left the people and the place struggling.

[00:00:58]>> This community is one of the most left behind in the UK. Bottom 3%, but it's a fantastic community. Just the humor. People are really down to earth.

[00:01:14]They can spot a phony and Milo. John Ellis has run the Shalom Youth Center in East Marsh for 54 years and he's worried about a growing problem.

[00:01:26]>> The education system is totally failing a whole stream of young people.

[00:01:33]>> This last 12 months is the first time ever we've come across young people who say they don't go anywhere.

[00:01:41]>> They're just not engaging with any form of education.

[00:01:47]So lads, why aren't you all in school today? I I won't go to school for like 3 months.

[00:01:54]>> I went to school, got kicked out.

[00:01:57]Boring.

[00:02:00]>> I don't like it. We didn't even learn.

[00:02:02]Everyone was messing about in that.

[00:02:05]>> Like no one learned.

[00:02:07]>> I'd say there's easy 15, 20 of them that come in here that are all in the same situation. A couple of hours schooling a day. I suppose all this academy stuff has improved education for the top kids.

[00:02:20]For the young people we know, it's just a disaster because it's moved further away from the culture that they live in.

[00:02:29]>> Yeah.

[00:02:29]>> I want to get a good job.

[00:02:30]>> You think you need school for that good school, Max?

[00:02:32]>> Yeah.

[00:02:34]>> Just can't.

[00:02:36]>> You feel like you believe in yourself like >> No, not really.

[00:02:42]cuz I'm just going to do bad at school.

[00:02:44]Can't do it.

[00:02:45]>> Jackson's battle seems to be with the system though, not the subjects.

[00:02:50]>> You struggle with the work, Jack.

[00:02:52]>> No, I'm in top set. But then >> I was like you. I was brought up down street and my dad used to say to me all the time, you're just stupid. Oh, people used to say that to me. And I believed it for a long, long time. And then when I was 38, I went to uni and got all the things that I wanted to get.

[00:03:12]But I think around here, the culture around here, you are a bit like that.

[00:03:16]You takes you a long time to grasp that that's the things you need to do and you can do anything. Don't listen to the >> people that say you care.

[00:03:24]>> Jackson is being brought up by his grandparents, Harold and Karen.

[00:03:29]>> We want them to have the best.

[00:03:32]You know, we never had it, so we want it better for them. When I was a young boy with Grimby being a fishing town >> long time ago, >> whatever you did, it was like my old man say to me, >> get your ass out to sea.

[00:03:49]>> Yeah, but that was in them days and it's different now.

[00:03:53]>> A job was a job, >> I mean, but these children don't have that anymore.

[00:03:58]>> The kids, would you like your kids to be fishermans? Yes.

[00:04:04]Well, we it'll never happen because vision industry is >> I know exactly what I'm saying, but wouldn't you have liked that?

[00:04:11]>> I would have done. Yeah, but >> yeah. So, you pass the kids need a chance. They need a chance.

[00:04:19]>> There's no fishing no more.

[00:04:21]>> There's no fishing. It's nice for the memories, but there's no fishing.

[00:04:28]>> Hey, school's boring, is it? Wait till you start work.

[00:04:32]Come on.

[00:04:33]>> Come on.

[00:04:34]>> Build.

[00:04:35]>> Well, you've got good brain.

[00:04:37]>> Why do you want to be a builder?

[00:04:40]>> It's the easiest job.

[00:04:41]>> You're better than that. You can do a lot more.

[00:04:46]>> I I think you should be a solicitor or an accountant. That's where the pengu is.

[00:04:55]>> At the local food bank, we meet Emily, who's volunteering while she's trying to find work. I was quite lucky I was in Topset and I enjoyed school. So they kind of encouraged us in top set to really try and go to university. They would take us like to the local university, show us what it was like.

[00:05:10]And I think that was really important for like people like me whose parents didn't go to uni. But actually I found my experience it was quite isolating being from my background because a lot of the people there are quite posh and like all their parents have gone to uni that kind of thing. as I come back home because of like the cost of living and I want to be close to my parents. There's not really a lot here. I was kind of like told that if I went to uni, I would like, you know, I'd get a degree and I would be able to get a job and it would kind of like answer all my questions or it's like the natural next step. So, I'm now 65k in debt, which I'll probably never be able to pay it off.

[00:05:46]>> On the other side of the counter, the barriers to success at school are more immediate.

[00:05:52]>> I'm at the food bank for a very good reason.

[00:05:54]>> I'm scared.

[00:05:55]>> Yeah. not afraid to admit.

[00:05:57]>> I won't be able to afford uniform >> the second quid for her >> and she goes in willies the next day. I get mad at Everly who wear school shoes.

[00:06:03]I can't afford any till I get the next month's payment if if they're knackered and it's raining all the time as well.

[00:06:08]The clothes are constantly wet. They're going into wash the same day. I don't have a dryer at home. I can't afford it.

[00:06:13]>> They just want the children to sit conform and just face the front and be done.

[00:06:20]It's an old-fashioned curriculum. What not been changed over years and kids are just learning different things now, aren't they?

[00:06:28]>> I'm trying to find a job as well with the job center. I'm doing so many search hours a week. I get the kid to school on time one day. Oh, but it's still not the right coat or it's still not the right pair of trousers or not. Oh, congratulations. You've been on time every day this week.

[00:06:42]Nothing of that. None of the um well done. It's all just negativity and I can't stand it anymore.

[00:06:51]>> 10 minutes up the road in Cleorps is St. Peter's Primary School.

[00:06:55]>> Did they eat anything today?

[00:07:00]>> Miss Albert has been in this school for over 30 years.

[00:07:06]>> We are right at the heart of the community. We know our kids. We know our parents. We know the support that they may need. So we have our own food bank and school uniform clothing bank.

[00:07:18]>> When the children come into reception, they don't come in at particularly high baselines. And I think following co I think it has changed the perception of people their value in education as a way out of poverty or into employment.

[00:07:30]>> I like year six.

[00:07:33]>> Do you all enjoy school?

[00:07:35]>> At least you're honest.

[00:07:37]>> You enjoy parts of it. Like some parts are like dead fun and exciting, but some parts you're just sat in a room writing for like an hour.

[00:07:47]>> Sometimes difficult for everyone.

[00:07:49]>> Well, yeah, but that's part of learning, isn't it? That I find things really difficult in my job.

[00:07:54]>> We've done a lot of work on behavior.

[00:07:56]It's not about allowing behaviors just to slide, but it's about understanding them, respecting that those things have happened. It hasn't ruined their day. It hasn't ruined that relationship.

[00:08:09]The primary schools are very much more people centered and then they go up to secondary school and the whole thing is crammed into this highly academic procedure and it just destroys a lot of kids.

[00:08:28]>> Back at the Shalom Center, they're determined to catch and care for the ones who fall out of the system. But they say that system must now change if every child is to have the same chance of success.

[00:08:41]>> A lot of the young people come here absolutely got such a low self-esteem.

[00:08:48]>> This is where the love starts.

[00:08:54]>> It's like family.

[00:08:56]>> Like some of the kids here, I was the mom and dad's youth worker.

[00:09:00]>> They know you. They trust you. and they'll come to you with anything they need help with or anything, but you need to have that relationship first to get to that stage with them.

[00:09:09]>> They deserve so much better. All of them.

[00:09:12]>> Right. Come on. Let's get home.

[00:09:14]>> Right.

[00:09:22]>> Well, why are the government focusing on this very specific group and what should they be doing about it all? Well, earlier I spoke to the academic Dr. Lisa McKenzie, whose work focuses on class inequality and social justice, to Katie Carr, director of education at Public First, a think tank currently chairing a committee exploring this issue. And from Blackpool, Alan Francis, the chair of the Social Mobility Commission and principal of Blackpool and Filed College.

[00:09:50]Dr. Lisa McKenzie, you have just watched our film. I just wondered what you made of it.

[00:09:55]>> The people in that film were great. You know, they were honest. Um they were talking about their communities and not in a negative way either. You know they were talking about lots of positives about the very proud of >> their very proud and I think we should never forget that >> the government have decided to focus quite clearly on this group of children.

[00:10:14]>> Um >> why do you think that's important because it's a very contested area isn't it? Who is working class? What relevance is their whiteness?

[00:10:22]>> Yes. Yeah. what what what's happened um over the last I don't know perhaps even 20 years is the inner city schools have upped their game um and the de-industrialized communities and the coastal communities they have been I don't call them left behind because that sort of suggests they've done something they were purposefully left out >> and and and Katie Carl what does your research show about this particular group of children and why succeeding seems to be so difficult >> I think there's something really interesting in the intersection between class and ethnicity here um where we know that um a third of white working-class peoples uh get a grade four or above in English and maths which is kind of the essential qualifications that you need in order to access almost every part of education and employment compared with twothirds of other pupils.

[00:11:12]They're also three times more likely to be suspended than other children. Um, and we also see um issues to do with um the kind of family relationship between schools uh and white working-class communities. Lots to talk about there, but Alan Francis, you're the both the chair of the Social Mobility Commission and the chief executive of a further education college in Blackpool. The big question is why? Is it ethnicity? Is it place? Is it de-industrialization?

[00:11:39]There's no easy answer, is there?

[00:11:41]>> There's definitely no easy answer. Uh I'm really pleased that you're highlighting the problem, but there's the very important part of that is the point that I think Lisa was making about the industrialization.

[00:11:52]Those that occupational change in this country is a particularly uh geographically disperate one. So, we've seen London and the areas around London grow really spectacularly and we've seen areas outside of London with exceptions like Manchester and we're starting to see some changes in other big cities now uh starting to improve but they've been we can use the word left behind and we can use other words but they've not had the same range of opportunities >> exactly to the point that they're all important these things aren't they?

[00:12:22]>> They are. They all are all important.

[00:12:24]But what we never do with social mobility is look at the way that middle class people gain the system. We always look at what we can do to workingclass people. You know, they need better education. They've got to have a better uh idea about education. You know, there's something wrong with their culture. There's something wrong with them.

[00:12:43]>> But the reality for the people in in Grimby and in communities like that across the country is, you know, education has to try and work for them.

[00:12:51]whether it it it's failing them or there.

[00:12:53]>> Yeah. But what then but what happens? So you could you could like raise the standards at a school in Nottinghamshire where I'm from in Ashefield or Mansfield or Sunderland or Blackpool. You raise that standard but then what? Because they're coming out of school at 18 to what? To a post-industrial community that has been hollowed out.

[00:13:13]>> And what does all that do to expectations, hope, aspirations among these kids and their families? When we asked white working-class parents what they wanted for their children, they all said that they wanted them to be happy, but that that happiness came from localness.

[00:13:29]>> Mostly working-class people have got lots of aspiration, but it's a different aspiration to perhaps what politicians and the media think it should be.

[00:13:37]>> Alan Francis, that idea that social mobility is something that you do to working class that you make them almost feel ashamed of where they're from. What do you make of that? We've been arguing at the social mobility commission in the last three or four years when I've been there that actually we need to change the way that we think about social mobility away from the kind of Dick Wittington go to an elite university get an elite job in London view which has worked for some and has helped London greatly but hasn't helped the wider majority of people. So we are interested in a version of social mobility that says you don't have to change your class. So when we talk about education, we've always got a problem that education has to meet the needs of a very very wide range of people. So it's got to meet the needs of people who grow up in Grimby that do want to go to elite universities, but at the same time it's got to meet the needs of the young people we can see in the film. Our solution to that is to provide more choice, you know, to strengthen vocational routes, creating pathways into occupations which allow people to build on their strengths, but that doesn't mean declining standards. It does mean high quality choices for everybody. But there are difficult conversations that I assume we accept have to be had about parental involvement.

[00:14:43]>> So I think there are really brilliant examples of schools doing fantastic things on parent engagement. Um I >> So why don't parents engage?

[00:14:53]>> A lot of this is very rational for white working-class pupils and parents in that they do not perceive education to be relevant and to be useful to what they want to achieve in in life. It is definitely true that white working-class parents don't always engage with education. It's also true that white working-class people are also stigmatized, looked down on, uh, and these forms of prejudice around them as well.

[00:15:16]>> They're similar arguments though to to many black and ethical minorities. They are, aren't they? They are because the issue is class.

[00:15:23]>> And can I can I just pick up on that point because I think that was another thing that we heard really powerfully was how uncomfortable people are talking about white working-class actually. Um and that is partly because we don't have a definition that people agree on uh for white working class. So I think um that we need to surface this conversation, give people a definition to work from.

[00:15:42]But I want to come back to you Alan if you would about what you do in education right now because it is true for example that some ethnic minority free school meals pupils because that's the definition that seems to be currently the most workable one are doing much better than their white equivalents and we need to understand why that is don't we >> do we also need to recognize that class in some respects is a helpful category in other respects make creates great complexity So, so it's not universally the case that all working-class students do badly. That's just not true. Um, but there is an issue when you start to look at who's doing well and who isn't. I was noticed the the woman in in the clip who was talking about the difficulty she has every day just getting to school on time. And and I'm sure that's come out of other people's research. These are difficult challenges, but the problem is for the school is if they start to make exceptions for particular families, then they're they're going to be seen as reducing expectations or lowering expectations. And these are difficult tradeoffs.

[00:16:44]>> You're saying quite gently that actually should parents should schools be less gentle? Should there should be more boundaries, more expectations? I don't care whether you're happy or not, you're going to school. Is that it?

[00:16:55]>> We also have to be very realistic. I was interested also by the guy in the film who talked with quite a lot of nostalgia about the jobs that have gone from Grimby. But we have to be really honest those jobs are not coming back. Those days are not coming back. So the future is technology. The future is higher skilled occupations.

[00:17:10]>> I mean that's true isn't it?

[00:17:12]>> Yeah it is true as well but but one of the things that we we don't we haven't done is we haven't measured this because or we haven't protected people as well.

[00:17:20]So, we've got protected characteristics for lots of groups of people, but the one group of people that can be uh you can be prejudiced against them without without fear is white working-class people because if you white middleclass people are protected by their class, whereas white workingclass people can you can you can be prejudiced against them. I mean there's still discrimination even even with the law against many many groups and still a number of groups who don't do much better than >> but socioeconomic status is not protected at all throughout. So so what we we don't have a good measurement of what's happening because free school meals is not a good measurement. Um also the tick box of what ethnicity you are is not a good measurement. Um and then also you know >> the government have taken this decision to focus on a group they call the white working class.

[00:18:11]They are talking about mission coastal and mission northeast which are placebased initiatives to try and put in money resource and target these children. Will it work? Is it the answer?

[00:18:23]>> So there are vanishingly few schools that do as well for white working-class pupils as as other groups of pupils. So I don't think we know um enough about what the solutions are for this group.

[00:18:34]Taking very place focused approaches to a group that is essentially all across the country is um is difficult. If you're growing up in Sunderland or Mansfield or Blackpool and the and still where you live is still been hollowed out. There's still not any opportunities. What's the what's the what does social mobility mean? It means getting on the M1 and going to London.

[00:18:58]We heard from pupils across the country they are fascinated by the idea of apprenticeships. They've really bought into this earning while you learn thing.

[00:19:05]But in white working-class majority areas, there are really few apprenticeships. So I think there are there are measures that we need to put in place to to sort of incentivize small and medium-sized employers in in white working-class areas to offer these sorts of things.

[00:19:17]>> Dr. Lisa McKenzie, Katie Carr, and Alan Francis, thanks so much for talking to us today. Thank you.

[00:19:23]>> Thank you. See you.