Suella Braverman said white working class boys are victims of racism and sexism, and said only a Reform government would fight it. She also vowed to end the demonisation she said is holding back white children if Reform win power.
The argument comes against Department for Education figures showing 36 per cent of white British boys on free school meals reached the expected standard in GCSE maths and English, compared with 65 per cent of all pupils. Braverman said the data shows white boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are failing at a level that needs a political response, not just a school-level one.
Department for Education figures
Braverman said the problem is not limited to exam performance. She said white working class boys on free school meals are among the least likely to remain in education after age 16, linking the GCSE gap to what happens after compulsory schooling ends.
She said equality laws with noble intentions had, in practice, institutionalised anti-white racism and anti-male sexism. In her account, public bodies ranging from the RAF to the Bank of England had introduced internships or employment schemes explicitly designed to exclude white men.
Braverman on schools
Braverman also said schools were openly discriminating against white boys. She said, "In some of the schools around the country, what you have seen is a demonisation of boys and an attempt to push boys down rather than acknowledge their skills."
She added, "Our children are being told how evil the British Empire was. They are being taught to loathe, not to love, their country."
Reform's next test
Braverman, a former Conservative Home Secretary who quit the Conservatives, framed the issue as one other parties will not confront. "A lot of people don’t want to talk about the abandonment of white working class boys. It doesn’t fit the fashionable narrative," she said.
What she did not set out was a detailed policy package beyond the pledge that a Reform government would fight the problem. For white working class boys in school now, the immediate question is whether that political argument becomes a specific education plan, or stays at the level of diagnosis.
