Educational failure and working class white children in Britain

What does it mean to be working class in Britain at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century?

Why, despite over fifty years of compulsory education in Britain, are many working class children still likely to end up in the same kind of low-paid, routine occupations as their parents?

Either schools are failing working class children or working class life presents alternative means for gaining social status that conflict with what it means to do well at school. Or perhaps both factors are relevant. Taking the reader on a journey of self-discovery in Bermondsey, Southeast London and making the process of learning how to become a certain kind of British person its central focus, this book provides a window onto another world.

This is a world where middle class values are challenged and the complex cultural politics of white working class pride is revealed.