Tag: Workingclass

  • Student Success and Working-Class Students: Whose Success is it Anyway? 

    Student Success and Working-Class Students: Whose Success is it Anyway? 

    This blog was kindly authored by Max Collins, a student at the University of Sheffield and Jon Down, Director of Development at Grit Breakthrough Programmes.  

    A lot is made of higher education being a driver of social mobility, a route for students from working-class backgrounds to achieve labour market success and higher earnings. But, at the same time, many argue that this view is at odds with how students think about the value of their education.  

    The student-led evaluation of the University of Sheffield Ambition Programme, in which Grit was a delivery partner, tells us that this is not how working-class students see it at all. Funded by the Law Family Charitable Foundation, the programme aims to support the success of young men from pre-16 through to graduation and beyond.  

    For some, being at university is less about personal success, more about what it means for their family. Students interviewed by the evaluation team talked about how:  

    success is less about my career or actual achievements. It’s more about my family…  guiding my younger siblings into higher education.   

    For others it’s about taking the opportunities that run alongside the academic experience:  

    At the end of the day a degree is a piece of paper to get to you into a field of work but the opportunities are what makes a degree… for me it’s definitely the wider opportunities. 

    Personal growth and personal satisfaction are also significant indicators of success. Success is: 

    Proving that I could do it. My parents didn’t expect me to go to uni. I wasn’t ever a person who was getting straight As or was the smartest in the class… no one ever thought I was going to go into higher education. Even I didn’t. 

    And it comes with  

    the process and the journey, what you learn from different situations and experiences. 

    Much of this mirrors what employers say about the priorities of new graduates in the workplace.  As one student said:  

    Success is more about the satisfaction you feel at the end of the day, your work-life balance and just feeling like you’re making a difference rather than the financial (although obviously the financial has an impact). 

    Underpinning the conventional, narrow take on what success should look like is a Social Mobility narrative stuck in deficit mode. It is one where working-class pupils at school need to be mended, to be fixed, so they can fit in at university and, ultimately, the graduate work place. They must conceal their identity to successfully navigate the world of Higher Education and a graduate career. It is a narrative that says working-class students need to change – economically, socially, culturally – if they are to succeed: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/working-class-students-feel-alienated-from-their-creative-arts-degrees-heres-how-to-help/. 

    But, once again, the evaluation of the Ambition programme suggests that this is not how working-class students see things. While the students freely acknowledge the struggles they have had with belonging, with imposter syndrome, with the stigma that comes with a working-class accent, they also describe making connections across the classes: 

    When you’re from a working-class background, you don’t really talk to people of different backgrounds, but the programme has provided a different approach. So now I speak with people who’ve had an upper-class background. I’ve got a lot of international student friends and I’ve learned a lot from them. 

    How they have found belonging: 

    I feel like I belong at uni more than I thought I would because in the programme I immediately met people with a similar background to me…  

    How they got past feelings of stigma: 

    I did feel a bit hesitant, especially coming from Rotherham… literally everyone I met sounds like the Queen’s English, that everyone’s quite posh except me… but once you get to know everyone, you change your opinion and perception of it.  

    Success for working-class students, then, does not have to mean a transformation of identity, rejecting who you are and where you have come from. It’s not about conforming to an alien aspiration. Success is a reframing, on each individual student’s own terms, of their expectations for themselves and their future lives. It can mean a myriad of different things, but success doesn’t have to mean leaving your old self, your family, your community behind.  

    In times when there are significant questions about whether young people will be as wealthy, healthy and happy as their parents, when there are increasing debates about the value of a university education, isn’t it time for universities to expand their definition of success to what feels right and true, rather than to what extent students conform to somebody else’s expectations? 

    So, for the working-class students on our programmes, success might be about the contribution they make to their community or the next generation (the relative values of the pay of teachers and academics has been eroded significantly in recent years but few would argue that these are not a socially valuable and important roles). It might be about their happiness, fulfilment, job satisfaction and quality of life. It might be about finding new ways to live in the world around them. 

    As the old economic certainties are called into question, universities need to find new ways of measuring success beyond those that focus on earning potential and social status. They could start by making more use of questions from Graduate Outcomes Survey around well being and satisfaction. And, rather than being simply a snapshot in time, the Survey could look at the broader graduate journey.  

    For example, alumni can give a much richer picture of what success means in the long term. Case studies and narratives of life journeys help us understand how success means different things at different times. Where success for working-class students means returning to or staying in the communities where they were brought up, instead of being part of the flight to the big cities, then we might capture the economic impact on the prosperity of a local area. 

    In our programmes, we have seen how, with the right mixture of support, challenge and encouragement, working-class students come to define success on their own terms. It becomes an experience rooted in their own selves. After all, whose success is it anyway?

     

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  • The Language Crisis: How can we increase working-class uptake in languages? 

    The Language Crisis: How can we increase working-class uptake in languages? 

    Author:
    Lee Marney

    Published:

    This blog was kindly authored by Lee Marney, a recent graduate of the University of Manchester.   

    Introduction 

    Megan Bowler’s recent HEPI report lays bare the problems that language educators are experiencing in the face of declining uptake of modern foreign languages (MFL) at both post-14 and post-16 levels since the removal of compulsory foreign language Key Stage 3 in 2004.  

    The report is a fascinating insight into how language learning is indeed more vital than ever in the face of artificial intelligence, and the skills acquired are beneficial not only to individuals who learn MFL, but also to local communities and the economy.  

    MFL and pupils for lower socioeconomic backgrounds 

    With just 6 per cent of AS/A- Level students studying French or Spanish being eligible for Free School Meals, policymakers must do more to remove barriers to entry to language learning for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. This is imperative, given that MFL uptake at both post-14 and post-16 is most common among students whose household income was above the national average, with uptake notably highest among students from socioeconomically advantaged households (£78,000 or more). 

    The report recommends various measures to promote language educational uptake. However, more ought to be done to target groups of students who have disproportionately low participation in MFL to address the current language learning crisis, particularly through the form of:  

    • offering alternative qualification pathways; and 
    • reforming curriculum through utilising heritage languages (A heritage language is a minority language, migrant or indigenous, learned at home during childhood) to move away from a Eurocentric model of MFL across all Key Stages. 

    Beyond the Euro-centric approach 

    As far back as 1975, curriculum reformers have argued that languages spoken by migrant families are a cultural asset to the UK. Multilingualism is already ubiquitous in British society, with 90% of schools having students for whom English is their additional language, with over 20% of students having a first language that is not English. The most common first languages among these students are Romanian, Urdu, Polish, Punjabi, and Arabic. Indeed, schools already possess a rich linguistic tapestry that is, currently, being underutilised. 

    In the U.K, roughly 75% of ‘underrepresented groups’ have knowledge of a heritage language, including working-class and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. Despite this, 82% decide not to pursue a formal qualification due to the push in schools towards the big three: French, Spanish, and German.  

    Overhauling the current Eurocentric MFL curriculum that understates the role of heritage languages is vital to aid the language crisis. The current exam-focused system fails students who speak heritage languages, restricting their ability to fully maximise their language capabilities. A new model that embraces the UK’s diverse tongues would boast both cultural and economic advantage, given that the UK’s lack of language skills cost the UK economy around 3.5% of GDP. 

    An applied approach to language learning 

    Megan Bowler’s report suggests a level three certificate in Applied Languages to boost post-16 participation in MFL. However, to appeal to working-class students, governmental policy should also encourage post-16 education institutes to incorporate language components in the new technical qualification T-Levels such as marketing, media, and management and administration. While not exclusively for working-class students, this would specifically benefit them by creating a pathway to use languages in professional settings. This is pertinent when considering that students from socioeconomic advantaged backgrounds have more opportunities to use their language capabilities when engaging in their international travelling lifestyle, conceptualising their MFL as useful outside of an academic setting, allowing for more opportunity to construct a world view. One such model is the diplôme de compétence en langue in France that takes a holistic approach to language learning for professional competence development. Bodies such as the British Academy have also recommended this. This type of linguistic competence development is essential to ensure UK competitiveness in a globalised economy, given that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are 30 per cent more successful in exporting when they utilise language capabilities. 

    Conclusion 

    While policy can be a useful top-down tool to encourage MFL uptake, Megan Fowlers report rightfully points out that it must be accompanied by an ethos that reformulates the way in which we view the skills accrued by MFL learning. However, one must also be able to acknowledge that policy is a vital tool in encouraging that ethos growth by uplifting the linguistic diversity of this country’s working class. By reforming qualifications and allowing curriculum content to reflect the linguistic diversity of the UK and beyond, policymakers can ensure MFL are a tool for social mobility.  

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  • Working-Class Wisdom in the Age of Neoliberalism and Trump

    Working-Class Wisdom in the Age of Neoliberalism and Trump

    In the United States of 2025—where neoliberal capitalism and creeping authoritarianism grind down the human spirit—there’s an urgent need for a way of thinking, surviving, and resisting that doesn’t come from think tanks or corporate wellness plans. Street Psychology is that way.

    This idea isn’t new. It’s an outbreak from earlier projects like Street Sociologist (2009–2012) and American Injustice (2009–2013), digital spaces that chronicled working-class survival under austerity, war, mass incarceration, student loan predation, and the Great Recession. Those projects documented both despair and resistance—voices from the margins that understood the system was not broken but operating as designed. Street Psychology is the next step in that lineage. It names the psychic toll of exploitation and dares to offer tools for survival drawn not from institutions, but from the people themselves.

    Street Psychology isn’t a licensed profession or clinical method. It’s a bottom-up philosophy. A way of being that honors grit, grief, memory, and movement. It draws from Black Psychology, Radical Social Work, and the unspoken survival strategies passed down through generations—especially those of the poor, the working class, the dispossessed.

    It tells us: you’re not crazy. You’re living in a society that has normalized cruelty.

    Life Under Pressure

    In today’s America, working people face a perfect storm. Medicaid cuts, climate shocks, unpayable debt, and housing crises are daily facts of life. The Trump regime, emboldened by a Supreme Court that erodes checks and balances, offers little more than political theater and corporate tax breaks. “Law and order” is back—but so are vigilante violence and state repression. In this environment, working-class people are expected to carry on as if nothing is wrong—grinding away at gig jobs, navigating broken transit systems, shouldering invisible pain.

    Street Psychology offers no false comfort. It teaches that burnout, anxiety, and despair are not personal failures—they are rational reactions to a system that exploits and isolates. It offers a politics of honesty.

    It reminds us that mental health cannot be separated from rent, food, dignity, and debt.

    Lessons from Horror and Triumph

    Street Psychology is grounded in history—not the history of presidents and generals, but the people’s history of how folks made it through.

    During the Great Depression, when one in four Americans was unemployed, it was mutual aid, union organizing, and government pressure from below that helped form the New Deal—not just FDR’s goodwill. Neighbors shared food. Workers seized factories. Families survived on ingenuity and grit. Street Psychology carries that memory.

    During World War II, ordinary people faced rations, displacement, and death on an unprecedented scale. But they also built community resilience. Black Americans moved north and west in the Great Migration, seeking both work and dignity. Women entered the workforce by the millions—not for empowerment branding, but to survive. Trauma was everywhere, but so was collective purpose. Street Psychology remembers that duality.

    And in the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the brutal convergence of economic inequality, medical neglect, and state failure. But we also saw mutual aid networks rise overnight. Grocery workers, nurses, delivery drivers, and custodians became the front line—not billionaires or generals. People created community fridges, distributed masks, and organized rent strikes. Even amid mass death and disinformation, something deeply human survived. Street Psychology draws its oxygen from these moments.

    It says: we’ve been through hell before—and we’ve learned how to survive together.

    Radical Roots and Collective Healing

    Street Psychology stands on the shoulders of Black radical thinkers like Dr. Na’im Akbar and Dr. Wade Nobles, who taught that psychological liberation requires historical truth and cultural self-determination. It borrows from the Radical Social Worker tradition that insists depression and addiction often emerge from exploitation, not deficiency.

    It echoes the voices of those doing hard, dirty, “bullshit jobs,” as David Graeber called them—people whose work is exhausting, precarious, and spiritually deadening. It respects those whose minds and bodies are tired because they’ve been used up. And it says plainly: this is not your fault.

    Healing begins with naming the madness.

    A People’s Practice

    Street Psychology thrives outside institutions. It happens in union halls, kitchens, church basements, food pantries, WhatsApp threads. It takes the form of eye contact, a ride to work, a bag of groceries, a story told without shame. It asks us not to fix ourselves to fit a broken world—but to remember we are not alone in our pain or our power.

    It teaches that even in a world of distraction and despair, we can practice presence and solidarity. We can re-learn how to listen, how to mourn, how to laugh in defiance.

    This psychology is not neutral. It does not pretend to be apolitical. It stands with those being crushed—by the debt collectors, the landlords, the ICE raids, the fascists in suits. It says: you matter. Your struggle matters. And you’re not the only one carrying this weight.

    A Call to Reclaim Our Minds

    Street Psychology is not a cure. It is not a self-help manual. It is a collective reckoning. A refusal to be shamed into silence or fragmented into diagnosis. It is the unlicensed, unpolished wisdom of people who’ve lived through hell and still show up for each other.

    In the age of Trump, AI surveillance, climate breakdown, and economic betrayal, this might be our best chance: to recover the human, to restore the political, and to reclaim the psychological as a shared terrain.

    Let’s build a new commons—not just of resources, but of understanding. Let’s build a psychology that is street-smart, justice-rooted, and history-aware.

    Sources & Influences:

    • Akbar, Na’im. Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery

    • Nobles, Wade. Seeking the Sakhu

    • Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs

    • Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed

    • Radical Social Worker Collective

    • Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

    • American Injustice (2009–2013) and Street Sociologist (2009–2012) blog archives

    • Historical memory from the Great Depression, WWII home front, and COVID-19 mutual aid networks

    • People’s CDC, APA, KFF data on structural causes of psychological distress

    Street Psychology lives in those who refuse to forget—and who refuse to give up. If you or your community are practicing this in any form, we want to hear from you.

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  • Working-class students feel alienated from their creative arts degrees – here’s how to help

    Working-class students feel alienated from their creative arts degrees – here’s how to help

    Social class inclusivity is a problem in UK higher education.

    Research demonstrates that working-class students report being less likely to apply to university than their middle-class peers – and when working class people do enter higher education they may face discrimination and social exclusion. This is exacerbated in creative arts subjects.

    We interviewed students currently studying creative arts subjects at a Russell Group university to hear more about their experiences of social class inclusivity. Speaking to ten undergraduate and eight postgraduate students studying a range of creative fields including music, drama and film, we found that working-class students find it difficult to attend class, are disadvantaged in terms of accessing the cultural resources needed to succeed on their course, and feel excluded from social life on campus.

    Economic disadvantage presents a considerable barrier to students completing arts subjects at university. To be inclusive, university staff may have to adjust teaching and learning. We would like to make the case for those working in higher education to consider what classed assumptions are made about students in our institutions and accordingly reassess our expectations of those studying the creative arts.

    Many of the disadvantages or challenges that working-class students face are connected to wider structural inequalities that are deeply entrenched in our society. At the same time, there are still meaningful interventions that staff can make to support working-class students. We suggest four ways in which university staff can make their practice more inclusive to working-class students.

    Discuss working-class stories as present and live

    Universities are middle-class spaces. In creative arts subjects, students often make work referring to their class identity. This can be at odds in institutions where middle-class experience is the “norm”.

    Class diversity must be present within teaching. More working-class mentorship and role models would help students to feel like they belonged at university – including visiting working-class creatives. Our participants also advocated for contemporary working-class experience in the curriculum, in academic texts, and in the artworks discussed.

    Staff must maintain a supportive and safe space when discussing issues pertaining to social class. Staff should also recognise that not everyone wants to talk about their background or experience. Additionally, staff must be aware of social class-based stereotyping that might exist in other students’ creative work, and be prepared to intervene when necessary if (often unintended) prejudices around work, class, accent, or lifestyle emerge.

    Adapt teaching to the multiple demands on working-class students’ time

    More and more students are undertaking part-time work alongside their studies. It is difficult to devise our curricula for only those students who can commit all their time to studying, when significant numbers are balancing their studies with multiple part-time, temporary and precarious jobs, or with care responsibilities.

    Working-class and carer students may be commuting considerable distances to engage with their studies. This is creating a two-tier system of engagement, and many of the students we interviewed felt that teaching and learning on their courses was not flexible enough to support their participation. The same issues are present when students try to engage in extracurricular and cultural activities.

    Working-class students asked for more online resources and access to course materials immediately at the start of modules, alongside concerns over early starts and late finishes and travel costs. They wanted permission to speak to staff about part-time work without feeling like they were “doing something wrong” or not taking their studies seriously. The normalisation of working alongside studying is something that staff may have to accept and work with, rather than try to push against.

    Early intervention is important

    The early stages of the student’s degree are a key time when social class difference and disadvantage is felt, with high levels of anxiety around finance and budgeting in comparison to more affluent peers.

    Working-class students asked for the university to provide information to support their transition into economic independence. Examples include advice on budgeting, lists of free resources, inexpensive alternatives and free access to cultural resources.

    Peer support plays a huge role in the transition to higher education. Working-class peer support groups and mentorship are as significant interventions to help.

    Adjust assumptions and reassess expectations

    University staff can make a difference to the experience of working-class students through simple adjustments of the assumptions we make.

    Interviewees believed staff made assumptions about what creative arts students should know, or the kind of experiences they should have had prior to university. These assumptions corresponded with a more middle-class experience, for example knowledge of university life, or access to (and the ability to afford) cultural resources or engagement with extra-curricular activities. Participants were particularly frustrated by assumptions from staff that students could afford to pay for learning resources not available in the library.

    Extra work is also needed to ensure that working-class or other marginalised students feel comfortable and entitled to ask for help from staff.

    Because many students now must work alongside studying, students may have less time to complete their work outside of class. Stronger steers on the amount of time to complete activities and prioritisation of reading, and the removal of blame for those struggling to balance time constraints of working whilst studying can all be effective.

    Working-class creatives

    Class inclusivity means students feel like they belong on their course, alongside having the financial security to take the time and space to study.

    This is particularly important in the creative arts because the more time and space students have to engage with their course or with extracurricular activities like arts societies, the more working-class stories will be represented in the creative work they make. Creative arts subjects must better support working-class students to engage fully with their studies – and not to be disadvantaged by financial pressure, lack of resource, or through feeling like they don’t belong on their course.

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