Class, Culture, and the Classroom: A New Vision for Boys’ Education

22:02Dr. Alex Blower:guess when it comes to the attainment gap you know what I've seen in terms of the the private school so I'm lucky enough to go to a very nice gym now very nice gym and when we first went there first of all going into the car park and I was like yeah I don't belong here because I had a Ford Fiesta which is nothing wrong with Ford Fiestas but I had a few scratches and bumps on the side of the car right and I'm going into this car park and there are four by fours and all all of the nice cars were there so I walked in as a family and I remember we felt we felt quite alienated at the beginning we're like do we do we belong here because there's lots of people doing very very well for themselves anyway we've been there for a few years now and get to know people a lot of the people there send their kids to private school a lot of their kids have like private tennis lessons and stuff like that and you see after school the parents will go there the kids will come after school secondary school and they'll do their homework with their parents and what you were saying there in regards to you know I felt that myself as a kid not wanted to seem too engaged in the system because you know there's going to be negative consequences for that I feel like in the in the private schools in 11 plus schools grammar schools it's the other way around where if you are engaged and you are smart you're kind of rewarded and you're seen as cool because you are clever and you can just see how the attainment gap just stretches and stretches and stretches because on one side if you are clever you are penalized for that if you're trying you're not cool you're gonna get bullied for that on the other side if you are really clever and you are really smart you're celebrated and put on even more of a pedestal a debate that i think we've been having especially in our in our dad's community is would you put your kid into private school if you can afford it and it's always a really tense conversation especially for people who have come from working class backgrounds because there's a little bit of guilt I think going on there like you know do we deserve that should I do that I think when you put on race that can be more difficult because there's sometimes lack of black and Asian kids in those private schools so that's another conversation as well and other parents are like well you know if I can provide a really good network and support and aspiration they can go to a normal comp school and I think that's the best environment for them.

24:21Dr. Alex Blower:So I have a question for you. If you could, if you had the means, would you send your boy, your 10-month-old son, would you send him to private school when he gets older? Absolutely not. No.

24:36Joeli Lacey:That was very affirmative, yeah.

24:38Elliott Lacey:Yeah, you thought about that clearly. So absolutely, yeah. But with my PhD, you know, it was education and inequality and the way that things are set up through, you know, this narrative that we've got of choice with regards to catchment areas and the way that we segregate out almost our communities along educational lines. What I feel, for me, I would be doing if I sent my little man to private school is removing an opportunity for me to be engaging in education for and with communities. There's some research that was done a little while ago that was with working class mothers and it showed that middle class parents and mothers were more likely to engage educationally around the education of their young person.

25:33Elliott Lacey:Whilst if you were a mum from a working class background, you were far more likely to be engaging on issues with regards to that child's wellbeing and protecting them from harm because intergenerationally you have seen education as something negative and that's a threat whilst if you're from that middle class background no it's all about you know that academic stuff you know we trust school it's done well for me let's make sure it's supporting my child what that means is that if you look at schools that aren't selective they will be missing potentially those engagements from parents that can strengthen those links with the community that means parents are getting involved on PTAs, Board of Governors that do well for all of the students in that school and so I wouldn't pay to send my little man to a private school instead I would look at trying to do my best to support the school and community for where we lived.

26:30Joeli Lacey:Do you think we should get rid of private schools?

26:35Elliott Lacey:Yes. Yes, I do. Yeah. In terms of my ideology and worldview, they're not something that I see as supporting the type of society that we claim we want to progress into. If you look at education systems, you know, you always go to kind of Nordic countries for everything. But if you look at, you know, the proportion of public and state schools as opposed to private schools in those very, very good educational systems, there's not really a case to be made. And if you look at disparities in the employment market surrounding people who are privately educated and their backgrounds and they're an equal representation in those kind of more senior or high-level professions, then it's really quite stark.

27:16Elliott Lacey:And, you know, you just need to look at a list of prime ministers, don't you, in the particular educational institution to see how that plays out. um so for me i think there's um yeah work that could be done in that space to create a more cohesive education system and society as a result and alex i i agree with you i think um i have the same stance as well and i think i had a live example of it recently actually so you know me

27:42Dr. Alex Blower:and jolie got our mbes recently and congratulations not to bring that up again again for the 200th time Elliot anyway so um my eldest took a day off school obviously to come with me and the school asked for a picture so we sent a picture of me and her in the in the castle in Windsor Castle and the the the teachers were so proud and they put it in the newsletter and then I went to they talked to some of the other parents and the kids are asking asking her you met the king what was it like to meet the king and all this stuff and for me it was just like a real live example of we need people to not just go don't just be like I'm cool I've done my stuff I'm going now see you later now actually you can make a difference there I can imagine at a private school 11 plus school there's so many parents with honors and MBEs and stuff like that the school my daughter goes to which is a very working class school a lot of kids on free school school meals a lot of children whose parents have just come to the country I don't think there's many parents there that have met the king and stuff like that so to be able to show that this is possible you can go to this school and you can meet the king and you can go to this school and you can you can achieve certain things like what that I guess has done it's not to blow my own trumpet at all it's illustrative but what I think that is doing and illustrating is that if you go back you can make a difference and you can show other people that you know big things are possible So, yeah, I really like your stance on that.

29:17Dr. Alex Blower:And I definitely agree with that 100%.

29:19Elliott Lacey:One of the things that I talk about in the book, for a long time as a society, we've been talking about raising aspiration, you know, and this idea that if we could only get people to hope that bit higher, then they would be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and progress educationally. What all of the research has shown is that's not effective. Our Education Endowment Foundation has shown that there's limited to no evidence, really, that this raising aspiration thing that we've taken on board as a nation has any impact on the attainment of young people. Moreover, what it does is it kind of places the burden of responsibility onto their shoulders.

29:55Elliott Lacey:Oh, if you're not doing this thing, you know, meeting that gold standard, then you've got low aspiration and your aspirations aren't valuable. So what the book calls for, and I think it goes back to what you were saying then earlier about making real those opportunities or experiences are something that is touchable and tangible. We need to concentrate on expectations. There's a big difference between hoping to pass your GCSEs and expecting to pass your GCSEs. And the expecting comes from you having all of the resources at your disposal for you to just believe that's going to be the case rather than it being this abstract hope or ambition.

30:29Elliott Lacey:And if we look at ourselves as educators, as people that work with young people and we focus on expectations, then we focus on putting the resources in place to make that possible. And if those resources aren't in place, then it's not the fault of that young person. And I think that is a really important shift that we need to make. And there's really interesting intersections with kind of masculinity and economic inequality there and how it plays out kind of particularly. And for young men, that's linked to some of that masculinity stuff as well.

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31:30Joeli Lacey:as well as abolishing all private schools uh if you could wave a magic wand what would you change about the current education system and thinking particularly about obviously because this is a podcast about boys and we know that boys as well are not doing as well as girls in the education system at the moment is there anything in particular that you would change about primary or secondary school that you think would really definitely benefit boys and boys from working class backgrounds of course?

32:01Elliott Lacey:Yeah so I'm part of a task force at the moment called the Lost Boys Task Force which Paul Barber the CEO of Brighton kind of instigated alongside Football Beyond Borders and what they're calling for is a trusted adult guarantee. It's the idea that every young person in the country every young man has access to a trusted adult outside of the immediate family. For me, trusted adults, the relationships, the sense of belonging that that can foster is really, really important within an educational space. If that trusted adult was able to, going back to what you were saying earlier, Jolie, span the transition between primary and secondary school, where we know that there's a really significant shift for these children, then that would be a really, really positive step.

32:45Elliott Lacey:But with all of this, it has to be work that's done in concert with things like parenting out loud or looking at the employment statistics for men in early year settings and, you know, caring professions. Because what we need to do is create a new ecosystem where if you show vulnerability, if you are showing care, compassion, engaging academically, then it's not seen as an undesirable, effeminate thing. but that only comes through trust and relationships so cultivating those and then being the vehicles to have critical conversations about social media engagement and Andrew Tate and the Manosphere which we know the route into all of that stuff is a sense of interpersonal and societal rejection is really important too so you can see how it links back to those other issues that we might be discussing if the podcast wasn't focused more on the attainment side of things.

33:40Joeli Lacey:so interesting because there's so much that needs to change there isn't there because you look at childcare it's 98 % female the workforce of childcare is decreased it used to be 97 % female not 98 % female and getting men to see childcare as a viable career option feels almost impossible at the moment there are lots of people looking at this but it feels very challenging but it isn't in other countries you look at Sweden those there are lots more men working in childcare We were at the Working Dad Summit on Tuesday, organized by Elliot Ray MBE. And it was such a magnificent event. And I vividly remember Elliot describing another man as a loving man and thinking what beautiful language that is and how you never hear men describe other men as loving.

34:27Joeli Lacey:And there's such entrenched notions of what it means to be a man, what it means to talk about other men and boys. And all of that seems to feed directly back into the way we raise boys and the way boys feel about themselves. So as you say, it's not just within the education systems. It's a whole societal shift that needs to happen. Where you begin with that, I have no clue.

34:51Dr. Alex Blower:Right here on this podcast, apparently.

34:54Elliott Lacey:That's the start. I know one of the kind of easy answers and the ones that has been rolled out a lot of the time is oh we need more male role models and that's been kind of held up in some spaces as this this silver bullet but because of those things that you've just spoken about we don't necessarily have an army of men equipped with the the tools to be able to carry out that role potentially in the way that that we would love it to be and the way that we grow that army by working across these ecosystems. What we do have is an army of amazing potential trusted adults, of good role models, male or female, each with their own intersections of experiences that mean they might be more comfortable and more confident talking about different things.

35:40Elliott Lacey:But we need to mobilise that army, and at the same time work to create the tools, like with the fantastic work that's going on with Parenting Out Loud, the Dad Shift, Charlie and the Early Years Movement, who I know have done some fantastic work in this space and work together because it's not different, you know, in terms of the overall arching objective. It's just working in different spaces.

36:02Joeli Lacey:I mean, I think, Elliot, you should set up a commune that we all move into because everybody at that event was so nice. I'd happily just live with all of them.

36:10Dr. Alex Blower:There were great men there. I actually posted today about the fact that, Jolie, you were one of them, but so many women just remarked that the event restored their faith in men. you know because so often we go to parenting events and there's very little men there and we're campaigning there's very little men or we're having open conversations and there's very little men and I was like look we can't do a working dad summit and there's no men in the room that would be embarrassing first and foremost but I think the men that were there what I was so proud of is that they didn't just sit back and observe you know they were very keen to to be on stage or if they in the audience very keen to pick up the microphone and share and but there are good men there are good men out there you know I think it's about how do we as you say Alex how do we mobilize them and make it really easy if you like for them to just get involved in the things that are going to make a difference so I love the the trusted adult and I love football beyond borders and what they do I guess it's making that really easy so there's a guy who's a good man he's living his life in the best way possible doing all the things that we think are really really good how does he then become a trusted adult for a young person what is the way that he can fit that into his life in a

37:27Joeli Lacey:way that works for for everybody you know my um my son has a friend here who uh is adopted and is neurodiverse he's older than my son and he goes to the same secondary school and he is given a mentor when he goes to school which i think is wonderful so they they do it for kids that i suppose they would describe as at risk and they give them a mentor so they get to see an adult a trusted adult as you say I think maybe every two weeks but they also get a sixth former who is supposed to act as their mentor and meet with them regularly to check in on them and make sure they're okay I don't know if they give that sixth former any training to do it or if they just sort of pair people up I don't quite know how it works are there other examples that you've seen from schools or teachers that you think are really making a difference?

38:16Elliott Lacey:Yeah, I haven't really spoken about Boys Impact yet, which is the UK-wide network of educators and researchers that is very, it sounds really cheesy, calling it a movement, but it is, you know, it's this amazing group of all people that are doing it, not because they have to, not because they're getting paid to, but because they want to. So we've got about 16 regional Boys Impact hubs across the UK now. and what we do with that is use research and evidence that's from northern ireland called taking boys seriously and they um through this large-scale longitudinal research that they did they developed a set of 10 principles that are principles of a relational educational approach with young men they're not rocket science it's things like value the voice of boys demonstrate dignity and respect and challenge and affirm masculine identities and a host of others and And what we've been doing with boys impact is because taking boys seriously are brilliant, but they didn't necessarily evaluate kind of how it looked in schools with the impact indicators that schools use.

39:14Elliott Lacey:So we've been working with United Learning, a large more e-academy trust to engage in a national pilot of how we can support schools to design and evaluate programs based on the taking boys seriously principles where schools get to pick their own impact. So it might be that they've got a group of year nine students that are getting internally excluded a lot and they want to do something to support that. Or they've got an issue with reading ages or attendance. What we've seen from our national pilot is a significant sign of early promise in these 17 schools that have devised these projects using these principles and this evidence.

39:49Elliott Lacey:We've seen improvements in attendance, in behaviour, sense of belonging, engagement with parents in a couple of schools. There were significant reading age increases as well. It's a sign that this can be successful and this model that we've developed with Boys Impact is scalable and can be made bigger. What it's not is it's not a silver bullet. It's not you have to do this and then the problem will be solved. It's instead these are some strengths-based values and principles that you can apply to a challenge that you've got with a group of young men and we're going to support you to design and evaluate the programme to see how that's gone because what that does for Boys Impact is it gives us an evidence base which doesn't exist and hasn't existed for the last 30 years that we can learn from and drive forward the activity to make sure it's as impactful and equitable as possible.

40:37Joeli Lacey:Have you had interest from the Department for Education?

40:42Elliott Lacey:We're struggling with engagement for the Department for Education, to be honest with you. Like I said there, the Education Select Committee and the Department are very focused on the kind of consent and relationships and sex education, absolutely rightly, but there's not as much appetite it seems to have a conversation around how that is also linked to disparities in educational attainment. There was an Education Select Committee inquiry that was launched just before the general election and because of the general election it was dissolved and then the Education Select Committee didn't want to reopen it essentially.

41:15Elliott Lacey:So there has been a debate in Parliament about this but it hasn't resulted in any kind of tangible steps forward in policy yet.

41:22Joeli Lacey:What practical advice would you give to a parent or even a teacher who worries a boy they know is really struggling at school?

41:32Elliott Lacey:It's a real challenge, I think, because I've started so many sentences this episode with it's a real challenge because...

41:40Joeli Lacey:Better than saying it's a real shit show. Sometimes I feel like saying it's just a shit show.

41:48Elliott Lacey:I forgot because we're on a podcast. We can do that, can't we?

41:51Joeli Lacey:Yeah.

41:51Elliott Lacey:Yeah, so no, it could be a bit of a shit show. Well, basically, I think one of the most important things to do is to provide the space and the openness for conversations to take place. If you're a parent, sometimes because your relationship is very intense and full of love and there's that position of kind of, you know, parental guidance and authority and support, it can be difficult for that young person potentially to open up. So going back to that trusted adult conversation, where are the opportunities for them to pick up another trusted adult? You know, is there a local sports team, youth club, interest group, someone that they can go to and connect and have a different type of conversation if they're required?

42:32Elliott Lacey:Youth workers are brilliant at this type of stuff as well. I wish we had a youth work kind of service left in the country because that informal educational approach is exactly the type of thing that cultivates the ground for these conversations. Be curious as well. Especially when it comes to online and digital engagement, we do a lot of work around masculinity and online engagement. And no matter how hard we try as parents or teachers, we're not getting a referral algorithm sending the same stuff into our phones as they're getting into theirs. So the way to unlock that is to be curious. I always, well, it's a colleague, Mike Nicholson, actually, he coined it.

43:09Elliott Lacey:He's brilliant. It's from an organization called Progressive Masculinity. And he just says, get curious, not furious. And that's for teachers as well. You know, we are coming from a position where we have no knowledge or understanding surrounding the online identity and world that that young person is inhabiting. If we're going to learn how to support young people through it, we can't get access and dive into it ourselves. And nor do we want to, probably. So instead, what we have to do is work with them to help them negotiate some of that messaging and engage with it critically.

43:38Joeli Lacey:Yeah, critical thinking skills are so key. And I don't really know if they're taught in school as standard. I know there's clubs that my son can access that would teach those, but they're voluntary. He doesn't have to do that. But it feels very much to me like critical thinking skills are so necessary in the current environment. So I'm constantly trying to teach my kids to look at things from lots of different angles in the hope that then when they're faced with stuff online where it's teaching them awful things that they think about it in a different way. and then I don't have to constantly monitor them.

44:16Joeli Lacey:Beyond schools, what role do you think employers and communities play in all of this?

44:22Elliott Lacey:There's a saying, isn't there? It takes a village. And I think that is so true. One of the things that I love about our regional Boys Impact Hubs is that it's not just school leaders. We've got youth and community organisations, third sector organisations. Locally down here, there's ThruDark, which is a kind of clothing brand who are on board and really supportive of the work as well. I went out to Northern Ireland last year to see Taking Boys Seriously in the project. One of the things that really struck me when I was out in the youth and community centres was that being such a missing piece of the puzzle.

44:55Elliott Lacey:The relationships that those organisations had with the formal education spaces and with Taking Boys Seriously created a consistent set of messages and approaches that stretch beyond the school gate. and with the the boys impact hubs what we're looking and what we're hoping is that you know we have all of our organizations aware of the taking boys seriously principles that are all singing off the same sheet taking this strengths-based approach because what we see when that that kind of magic happens is the impact being far greater than the sum of its parts and it's really wonderful it takes time it takes effort it is a challenge but it's incredibly exciting what can be achieved when you get a really committed inspiring group of individuals together in our own.

45:35Joeli Lacey:I think you probably just answered this. We always want to end with something hopeful because often we go through the doom and gloom of how bad things are on this podcast. And I think many of us at the moment feel a bit hopeless with the world, the way it is and where things are headed. But, you know, the Working Dad Summit on Tuesday gave me, filled my cup, full of hope for the future. What's filling your cup, Alex, as well as, you know, you've already touched on some of the great stuff, but is there anything else that's making you feel really hopeful about the future?

46:07Elliott Lacey:It's people. So back in 2022, we had our first conference down in Bournemouth. We had 60 people turn up, six workshops, maybe not all of them with the highest quality that we've ever produced. Roll forward to 2025, we have 300 CEOs of multi-academy trusts, head teachers, youth and community practitioners attending the Boys Impact Conference at Manchester, Manchester Met giving us the venue for free because they really care about the work. And we had 80 active contributors across the two days in spotlight sessions, research paper sessions, workshop exploration sessions, plenary sessions. We are moving the dial on this.

46:48Elliott Lacey:Us as a collective, us as a community. We're not waiting for the policymakers and it'd be great if they caught up with us eventually. But we're busy making impact across the UK now. Boys Impact formalised into a community interest company like last month. And I'm so excited to see what the future holds at the same time.

47:06Joeli Lacey:That is so brilliant. Well done. I mean, you are leading the way, aren't you? We don't need those politicians. We've got this. For the boys that might be listening, my son sometimes tunes into the podcast, partly because he has a total man crush on Elliot. For the boys themselves who might be listening, what would you say directly to them?

47:27Elliott Lacey:It's tough. It's a hard time to be a young man navigating life at the moment. There doesn't seem to be anyone telling you clearly who you're meant to be in a way that gives you a sense of kind of hope for the future. And, you know, it can be meaningful. There's lots of men on this planet and each one of them has a different way to be a man. Being a man is inherently valuable in itself. There's no shoulds or shouldn'ts. It's just completely linked to who you are as a person. And the strengths that you've got, the things that you love, the things that you are interested in are amazing. So do them and do them to your best of your ability and the rest will look after itself.

48:09Elliott Lacey:find those people you love and you trust and you know will be there standing behind you to support you and when it gets difficult turn to them and use them beautiful thank you incredible

48:22Dr. Alex Blower:alex so much respect for you i think um from when we started this podcast and you spoke about your story and the fact that you're you know looking back and thinking about the younger you ultimately and and kids that were in your position years ago how can you help so i think that's incredible and I also love what you said there about not wait not waiting for the policymakers you know I think that we need more people who are going to say yes we're campaigning for policy and and and that that will change hopefully eventually but in the meantime we have power to organize to make a difference to to encourage to support to mobilize and yeah I love what you stand for and what you're doing so massive congratulations keep going and it's only going to grow and have a even more of an impact so you're amazing thank you so much for your work thank you alex i mean

49:09Joeli Lacey:i'd love to say something as beautiful as that but i think if i try now it's gonna sound terrible so just thank you for everything and that's why our team jolly you know filling the gaps

49:23Joeli Lacey:thank you alex thank you

49:45Elliott Lacey:We'll see you next time.

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