According to the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, white working-class children need to be motivated to become more aspirational at school and learn to "push themselves" like their peers from other backgrounds. In an interview with the Spectator, Rayner expressed her belief that the educational system’s focus on women and minority ethnic groups may have had an unintended negative effect on the attention paid to white working-class boys.
Rayner herself left school at the age of 16, pregnant and without any marketable skills. She understands firsthand the challenges these boys face and believes that they have not been able to adapt because they lack the cultural impetus to learn and aspire to more. They operate under the impression that they do not need to "push themselves" as disadvantaged groups have had to in the past.
To address this lag in education, Rayner suggests that we need to do more to change the culture of the white working class in the UK. She feels passionately about the benefits of intervention in helping disadvantaged young people turn their lives around. Using herself as an example, she returned to college to gain qualifications, became a care-home worker, and was elected to parliament in 2015. Without those interventions, she would have been seen as a "scrounger" and unlikely to make anything significant out of her life.
Rayner also believes that the focus on school choice is misguided, as many parents do not have the time to evaluate the options available to them. Instead, her job is to ensure that every child gets a good school place. If a community is suffering from a particular disadvantage, they need more investment to level the playing field.
To achieve Labour’s ambitions of investing heavily in education and other areas, Rayner acknowledges that it is a high-risk strategy. Still, she believes it is necessary for Britain’s economic future. Rayner’s determination to invest in people is rooted in her personal experience and illustrates what she believes is the true spirit of socialism.
