An analysis of public data conducted by a Member of Parliament has found that White British students are set to become a minority in UK classrooms within a decade.
Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and Shadow Minister for Policy Renewal and Development, has noted that the impacts of decades of mass migration into Britain are set to have significant impacts on the demographic makeup of the country, and are likely to accelerate.
The lawmaker revealed his findings in an extended essay post analysing public data on jobs, births, and schools, in a bid to fill in understanding gaps that grow during the decade-long interim between national censuses and inform the debate in a country where compared to some European nations, government data on immigration and demographics can be poor.
According to O’Brien, Department of Education data shows that 2026 became the first year on record in which White British students represented fewer than 60 per cent of all pupils in UK state-funded secondary schools for the first time in history at just 59.4 per cent.
Extrapolating the trend lines, O’Brien’s model predicted that by the year 2036, White British students would become a minority in their own schools.
The MP noted that the rapid pace of change means that students who are starting their education this year will still be in school as foreigners overtake them as the majority.
This could have potentially dire consequences for such students, given that White working class students are already the most systematically disadvantaged of any group in the country.
Much of this transformation has been a result of decisions made by both Westminster establishment parties since the turn of the century, commencing in earnest under the Tony Blair government.
However, while the process began under Labour, the mass influx of foreigners hit its zenith under the supposedly Conservative government, as a result of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson drastically reducing restrictions on non-EU migrants rather than delivering on the promises of Brexit and multiple Tory election manifestos to cut migration to the tens of thousands.
Instead, Johnson’s post-Brexit migration reforms — which critically did not include an annual cap — saw net migration peak at 944,000 and a gross of around 1.47 million in 2023. Between 2021 and 2025, some 5.6 million people migrated to the United Kingdom.
Concerningly, O’Brien noted that the figures from the Department of Education did not appear to be impacted by the record breaking Boriswave following Brexit, with the MP suggesting that it is perhaps because the large number of recent arrivals may not have children of school age yet, meaning that his projections of White Britons becoming a minority in schools within a decade may be too optimistic.
The demographic transformation of the country is not merely a result of the annual influx of foreigners, however, but also as a result of differing birth rates between the native population and the migrant groups living in the country.
Indeed, according to the latest census, mothers born in Britain (of any ethnicity) had a total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.54 children, compared to a TFR of 2.03 children per non-UK-born women, meaning that migrant groups are at near replacement rate, while the local population is in demographic decline.
According to a report last year from Professor Matt Goodwin, such factors will contribute to White British people becoming a minority in the UK by 2063 and reduced to one fifth of the population by the end of the century.