‘If this was any other ethnic group at the bottom, people would be unsettled, but because it’s the white working class, it’s somehow less controversial.”

That was James Eldon, principal of the Manchester Enterprise Academy, last week. He was talking about a new system of assessing secondary schools that marks down those with a large proportion of poorer children, especially poor white ones. At Eldon’s school, 90 per cent of GCSE students are on free school meals. Most are white.

Children like them are on average less likely to show improvements in test scores over their secondary school careers. Teachers like Eldon worry that the “Progress 8” assessment scheme thus writes off schools such as his as poor performers, reinforcing the image of white working-class