The problem for poor, white kids is that a part of their culture has been destroyed | Paul Mason

Thatcherism didn't just crush the unions, it crushed a story - as the report that says working-class white children go backwards at school proves

The report came couched in the usual language of inclusion, technocracy and "what works". Disadvantaged children are doing so badly at school that only one in five hits an international benchmark designed by the authors.

But the headline grabber in the paper from the liberal thinktank CentreForum concerns ethnicity: the serial losers after 28 years of marketisation, testing, a centralised curriculum and decentralised control of schools are poor white kids.