[2] A 2019 UCL Institute of Education report found an achievement gap in areas such as Reading and Writing (in English) between Eastern European students and those of a white British background.
Publication also shows much less pronounced differences in Math and suggests that the lower attainment could be due to factors such as: economic and social disadvantages, lack of fluency in English and prejudice (and racism) of the teachers.
The month after the EU referendum, Under-Secretary of State Karen Bradley spoke in the House of Commons to address the issue of Eastern Europeans receiving xenophobic abuse in the aftermath of the result.
[17] Increasing living standards back home have been suggested in media as an explanatory driving force for the return of Eastern Europeans to their birth nations in 2019.
[19][20] Representative of the polarising nature regarding the issue of immigration from the region, in 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's election campaign was reported to be negatively affected when he called a member of his party a "bigoted woman", after the Labour supporter raised the topic of Eastern Europeans arriving in Britain.
[21] In 2013, Romanian diplomat Ion Jinga suggested that "inflammatory rhetoric" in politics was increasing the risk of physical attacks on Eastern Europeans resident in the country.
[5] In 2014, University College London's Dr Julia Halej published study which analyzed perceptions created by national media; how Eastern Europeans within the country occupied the social boundary of "whiteness" in Britain, being variously portrayed as "‘valuable’, ‘vulnerable’ and ‘villainous’".
"[2] A 2018 research by Dr Magdalena Nowicka, published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies, detailed data-studies which revealed how some people within the group aspired for, or achieved, increased social status by embracing the meritocratic values of the white British class.