English teacher (in England, to avoid ambiguity). Ten years in West and South East London, state schools and academies as classroom teacher, head of department and low-level senior management.
The wellbeing of the school's status is far more important than the education of the kids. It's especially true in the academies, which are hateful, cynical numbers-playing fraudulent moneygrabbing schools of fuckery. Here are some of the highlights:
Schools' most valued statistic is 5 A star to C with English and Maths. We'd be ordered to locate the C/D borderline kids, escort them to additional lessons after school, teach them again, and as soon as they were comfortable Cs, ditch them and go get a new lot. No further support. Kids who wanted to attend weren't allowed unless they were identified by the stats and approved by the principal.
D grade kids were only allowed extra support after the C/D borderlines had been given theirs, even though if they'd had more time and more access, they would have improved too. They were less important, because they wanted to bank as many as possible before taking more of a risk on a less able student.
The kids that needed the most support (straight Es and lowers) were just ignored. They weren't going to pass anyway, and were therefore useless to the school's statistics. I was told on a number of occasions, not to worry about them and let them tank it.
Certain students - disadvantaged for one or another reason - are called Pupil Premium kids. They received extra support because (you guessed it) the school got paid more for their success. Other students who weren't on this list, no matter how much help or support they needed, were never offered the same.
The academies are still proving their political worth. One chain (a major one that I can't disclose as a result of an NDA) had training on how to game inspections every single week. Inspections are once every four years. This is time that could have been spent actually improving learning.
This is r/worldnews, so I guess the focus is going to be immigration (which requires greater variety of teaching methods which is a fucking pain, but isn't the cause of failure), but in my experience, /u/probablyironic is absolutely spot on. The students it was profitable to care about were supported. All others were not.
It's also worth remember that working class white boys are the lowest achievers at the moment. It used to be Black British boys when I started, but it's not any more.
TL;DR: Schools (double for academies) only care about kids who'll improve their statistics. Everyone else - especially those who need it most - are left to rot.