Warning over unconscious bias against working-class pupils in English schools

Lee Elliot Major said the subject of social class had become a taboo in many schools. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Schools in England must do more to challenge unconscious bias in the classroom against children from working-class backgrounds, according to the UK’s first professor of social mobility.

Lee Elliot Major, writing in a new book, blames a mindset in education that treats working-class children as “inferior” and requires them to become “middle-class clones” in order to succeed in school.