A longstanding talking point in education has been the divide in attainment levels between children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers from affluent backgrounds. Addressing this issue and shortening the gap remains a key priority for all policymakers and stakeholders in education.

There are a number of reasons as to why youngsters from poor backgrounds perform less well in education, but two of the underlying and major factors concerns ethnicity and socioeconomic deprivation (the two can and do overlap significantly). While both groups underperform compared to their “better-off” alternatives, there are curious imbalances within this cohort.

As a new report from the Department for Education notes, “the lower achievement of white working class pupils in comparison with children from other ethnic backgrounds with similar socioeconomic status continues to attract attention”. Despite being in the “same place”, so to speak, the latter outperforms the former. There are tiers within tiers.

Again, the reasons as to why are numerous, but, by and large, they concern - in a sweeping way - the role parents have in shaping their child’s understanding and approach to education - nature and nurture - and the quality of schools that ethnic minority and white working class children have access to.

“Existing studies have pointed to the importance of parental, student and school factors in explaining why ethnic minority pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have shown higher levels of educational attainment, and made greater progress, than their white working class counterparts,” the authors of the paper note.

“Both the qualitative and quantitative research literature points to an important role for parental factors, including aspirations, in explaining the higher educational attainment and progress of pupils from ethnic minority groups.”

In short, ethnic minorities tend to place more emphasis on the importance of a good education and, accordingly, from a young age, youngsters from this group are more motivated to succeed in their studies. Meanwhile, the opposite is true of white working class youngsters, who enter into a culture whereby education is seen to be a perfunctory activity, as opposed to a means of improving social mobility.

One solution put forward to level out attainment levels between the two groups is to upskill the English skills of white working class children, which sounds, at first, rather odd. However, despite English being their first language, research has show that this group is often held back by having poor language and literacy skills.

Improved language skills have been identified as a key factor enabling ethnic minority pupils to catch up with white British children over time,” the paper expanded. “Studies indicate that while White working class pupils do not have English as a specific barrier, language and literacy skills are an area of concern.

“They might therefore benefit from targeted help. Evidence suggests that language and literature interventions in the early years can be effective in ensuring children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not fall behind. Therefore additional resources to assist white working class children with language and literacy are likely to be best targeted at the youngest pupils.”