Children must be taught about working-class people who do well, to address “classroom bias”, an academic has claimed.
Prof Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert at the University of Exeter, said lessons should reflect the diversity of pupils instead of trying to turn pupils from working-class backgrounds into “middle-class clones”.
In a new book, Equity in Education: Levelling the Playing Field of Learning, he suggests that schools teach children about working-class achievements in society, such as the work of Stormzy, Marcus Rashford or Tracey Emin.
Schools should also teach about the social-class divides explored by Charles Dickens and other writers in their works of fiction, he said.
Other examples of inspirational working-class people cited include Michael Faraday, creator of the first electric motor, whose father was a blacksmith, or Mary Anning, from a working-class family on the Dorset coast, who became a palaeontologist.
