What working-class boys need to succeed at school: respect and open conversations

Across the UK, working‑class boys are navigating an unprecedented convergence of pressures. There are entrenched gaps between working-class boys and their peers in their levels of attainment at every stage of education.

Often, however, the solutions for addressing this gap in attainment have roots in assumptions and stereotypes. These tend towards positioning working-class boys as somehow suffering from an innate deficiency: apathy, laziness or a lack of ambition for their future careers and employment. The evidence does not back these stereotypes up.

Our research has focused on understanding the experiences of these boys. In 2023, we carried out research that used creative activities to explore what being a young man meant for them. We found that some of the young men felt the need to create protective identities linked to aggression, emotional suppression and educational disinterest at school to avoid harm. For them, being a boy who expressed themselves was a risky enterprise. One boy said:

I feel like you know the bullying and torment would definitely go up quite a bit for, I guess, you know, something stupid like writing how I feel on a page.

We worked with young men who were open and able to engage in challenging and complex discussions, but who made it clear to us that doing this in their own educational environments would potentially lead to social, emotional and potentially even physical harm.

We saw young men with deep rooted aspirations they were often afraid to express. We did not see problematic boys in need of disciplining, but a need to understand and address the relational and structural conditions which shape their behaviour.

Lacking resources – and evidence

In almost every public debate about boys, whether it be attainment gaps, misogyny or youth violence, teachers are positioned as society’s key defence. The government’s recent violence against women and girls strategy, for instance, foregrounds the role of educators in shaping boys’ attitudes and preventing future harm.

But it assumes that schools possess the frameworks, training, and relational bandwidth to meet these challenges. Crucially, it also assumes that we truly understand the daily dynamics between teachers and working‑class boys.

The reality is that we don’t. The last major study of teacher perceptions was over 20 years ago. This decades-wide gap in evidence and understanding is a void which, our findings demonstrate, has been filled by stereotype and assumption. Rather than a focus on what boys need to achieve at school, there’s a risk that they are seen, both within schools and by the general public, as perpetrators of misogyny and violent behaviour in waiting – that they are an issue that needs to be targeted.

We’ve recently carried out a national survey of over 500 teachers, exploring their perceptions of boys and young men in the classroom. It was followed up with in-depth focus groups with 40 working-class boys aged from 12 to 16, as well as 17 teachers.

We found that teachers showed a high level of confidence in their ability to model dignity, respect and active listening in the classroom. However, the perspectives of young men painted a far more inconsistent picture. It pointed toward two significant disconnects.

First, that respect is defined very differently by educators and the boys and young men they taught. Around 90% of teachers reported that they consistently modelled dignity and respect in the classroom. But when speaking with the boys, often they described the respect they received from teachers as conditional, inconsistent or transactional. The expectation was that respect for teachers came from their position of authority and respect was only paid to the young men in return for theirs.

Second, that masculinity, emotion and online influence are poorly understood and rarely discussed. When asked, just a third of the educators we surveyed could recall a meaningful conversation with a male student about masculinity. Many felt uncomfortable and unprepared to have conversations like this. From the boys’ side, they described significant emotional needs which were often unmet, limited safe spaces to discuss feelings, and punitive responses to distress.

How teachers perceive working-class boys, and the opportunities they have to discuss masculinity at school, aren’t the only factors affecting academic attainment for these young men. Poverty, for instance, has a significant impact on early attainment and a lasting impact on educational success. But our research showed that when reflective, safe, judgement-free conversations occurred, the boys and young men responded positively. It demonstrates that working‑class boys engage, reflect and thrive in educational contexts where they feel respected, listened to and understood.

On the other hand, though, the research suggests that teachers are influenced by wider societal narratives. Within the study many educators defaulted to talking about misogyny or Andrew Tate even when not asked directly. This suggests a narrow lens of focus on issues related to masculinity, shaped by wider social anxieties.

The boys and young men consistently faced contradictory expectations about who they should be. They reported being told to “open up”, yet faced being penalised or ridiculed when they did. They were told to avoid harmful online content, yet weren’t provided any space to engage in critical, deliberate conversations about what they had seen.

Without that space for conversation on which to build, it is our fear that efforts to tackle misogyny, disengagement or disparities in educational outcomes will continue to fall short.

Jon Rainford conducts research for Boys Impact

Alex Blower is affiliated with Arts University Bournemouth and Boys' Impact.