But still, challenges remain. It certainly won’t be easy for every school in a white, working-class area to emulate Hetton’s success.
Prof Lindsey Macmillan, an expert in how education shapes life chances, was involved in the recent inquiry into white working-class children.
The pupils start school already behind, she says, and that gap only widens through secondary school due to a growing disengagement with education.
The inquiry found “telling” evidence that the connection with school “falls off a cliff” for white working-class families at the point of moving to secondary school, leading to poor attendance.
Parents told the inquiry things like, “I didn’t need qualifications” to get into work – the same message as Pinkney hears from some parents in Hetton-le-Hole. (In reality, Macmillan says, formal qualifications are now more important for getting a job than they were in previous decades, when there were more routes into well-paid industrial work, and more on-the-job training.)
That’s a point supported by Prof Jerrim, who thinks schools should get families to buy-in on education by clearly explaining to them how qualifications can help their children find work.
The inquiry also reported a sense of white working-class parents not wanting their children to leave their area, with its strong sense of connection. England’s education system was described as being out-of-step with the values of white, working-class communities. Parents in those areas are ambitious for their children, the inquiry found, but often prioritise happiness and life-readiness alongside or above high grades.