no aspirations

White children in Manchester are among the lowest-performing in the country. Experts blamed poverty and a culture of 'low expectation' in communities blighted by successive generations of unemployment. Council education chiefs said the performance of white working-class children was a national as well as local issue – and said poverty, not race, was the most important factor.

Prof Mel Ainscow from Manchester University, who is an expert on inner-city schools, said teachers in deprived, predominately-white areas faced one of the greatest challenges. “Some children are from homes where families are not so experienced with their own education and aren't able to help children as much...You have got children concentrated in areas with high levels of unemployment and low levels of aspiration.”

John McNerney, headteacher of St Peter’s RC High School "...we have some families who have no tradition of education. I interview pupils about their expectations and find that some of them don’t know even one person who has gone to university, which is astonishing. There is generational unemployment in east Manchester and because of that people have got out of the habit of doing things they need to be successful, like having a good attendance record"

"The best-performing schools tend to have similar, if not the same, best practices," said a 2007 policy paper. "Strict school uniform policies, with blazer, shirt and tie, and with a zero-tolerance of incorrect or untidy dress."

Yet, David Brunsma , a sociology professor at Missouri-Colombia University, explained he was "utterly flabbergasted" at such "superficial glossing over of complex social, democratic, cultural, material and political issues", embarked on some serious research. After eight years, Brunsma concluded that: "The results, although surprising to many, simply cannot be ignored. Uniforms do not make our schools better. My conclusions over the years are that this is an issue of children's rights, of social control, and one related to increasing racial, class and gender inequalities in our schools"

State-school children can now dress smartly and cheaply (Tesco uniforms were £3.75 in the summer), but the divide between them and the pupils of Eton (three-piece tailsuit, £170) or Harrow (monitor's black top hat, £158) is wider than ever.