External factors and ethnic differences in achievement

• external factors that affect ethnic pupils

  • material deprivation and class
  • cultural deprivation
  • racism in the wider population
• cultural deprivation

  • involves three main aspects
  • intellectual and linguistic skills
  • attitudes and values
  • family structure and parental support
• intellectual and linguistic skills pt1

  • seen as a major cause of underachievement for many minority children
  • they argue that many children from low income black families lack intellectual stimulation and enriching experiences
  • this leaves them poorly equipped for school because they have not been able to develop reasoning and problem solving skills
  • Bereiter and Engelmann (1966) consider the language spoken by low income black American families as inadequate for educational success
  • see it as ungrammatical, disjointed and incapable of expressing abstract ideas
• intellectual and linguistic skills pt2

  • there has also been concern that children who do not speak English at home may be held back educationally
  • however, official statistics show that this is not a major factor
  • e.g. in 2010 pupils with English as their first language were only 3.2 points ahead of those who did not have English as their first language when it came to gaining 5 GCSEs A*to C including maths and english
  • similarly Gillborn and Mirza note that Indian pupils do very well despite often not having English as their home language
• attitudes and values

  • see lack of motivation as a major cause of the failure of many black children
  • most children are socialised into the mainstream culture which instils ambition, competitiveness and willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve long term goals
  • this equips them for success in education
  • by contrast cultural deprivation theorists argue that some black children are socialised into a subculture that instils a fatalistic 'live for today' attitude that does not value education and leaves them unequipped for success
• family structure and parental support

  • argue that this failure to socialise children adequately is the result of a dysfunctional family structure
  • Moynihan (1965), argued that because many Black American families are headed by a lone mother, their children deprived of adequate care because she has to struggle financially in the absence of a male breadwinner
  • the fathers absence also means that boys lack an adequate role model of male achievement
• Murray 1984 - family structure and parental support

  • argues that a high rare of lone parenthood and a lack of positive male role models lead to the under-achievement of some minority pupils
• Scruton 1986 - family structure and parental support 


  • sees the low achievement levels of some ethnic minorities as resulting from a failure to embrace mainstream British culture
• Pryce 1979 - family structure and parental support 


  • sees a family structure as contributing to the underachievement of black Caribbean pupils in Britain
  • from a comparison of black and Asian pupils he claims that Asians are higher achievers because their culture is more resistant to racism and gives them a greater sense of self-worth
  • in contrast he argues black Caribbean culture is less cohesive and less resistant to racism
  • as a result many black pupils have low self-esteem and underachieve
• Sewell: fathers, gangs and culture

  • argues that it is not the absence of fathers as role models that leads to black boys underachieving instead he sees the problem as a lack of fatherly nurturing or 'tough love' leads to some Black boys underachieving
  • this results in black boys finding it hard to overcome the emotional and behavioural difficulties of adolescence
  • in the absence of the influence of a nurturing father, street gangs offer black boys 'perverse loyalty and love'
  • Sewell found from interview that academically successful Black boys felt the greatest barrier to success was peer pressure: speaking Standard English and doing well at school were seen as 'selling out' to the white establishment
  • argues that black students do worse than their Asian counterparts because of cultural differences in socialisation and attitudes to education
• critics of Sewell

  • Gillborn 2008 argues that it is not peer pressure but institiutional racism within the educational system itself that systematically produces the failure of large numbers of black boys
• asian families

  • while many black families have absent fathers in sewells view Indian and Chinese pupils benefit from supportive families with an 'Asian work ethic' and place a high value on education
  • Lupton 2004 argues that adult authority in Asian families is similar to the model that operates in schools
  • she found that respectful behaviour towards adults was expected from children
  • this had a knock on effect in schools since parents were more likely to be supportive of school behavioural policies
• white working class families

  • Most research has focused on minority ethnic group families, but White working-class pupils also under-achieve and have lower aspirations
  • may be the result of White working-class culture, including a lack of parental support
• Evidence to support the view that White working-class culture and lack of parental support leads to lower aspirations

  • Lupton (2004) studied four working-class schools with different ethnic compositions. Teachers reported poorer levels of behaviour and discipline in the White working-class schools, which they linked to lower levels of parental support and the negative attitudes of White working-class parents towards education.
  • Evans (2006) argues that street culture in White working-class areas can be brutal and is brought into school. The result is a strong pressure to reject education.
  • McCulloch (2014) found that minority ethnic group pupils are more likely to aspire to go to university than White pupils.
• compensatory education

  • An educational policy that aims to counter the effects of and tackle cultural deprivation, e.g. Operation Head Start in the USA was to compensate children for the cultural deficit they are said to suffer because of deprived backgrounds
• criticisms of cultural deprivation theory

  • Driver 1977 criticises the CD theory for ignoring the positive effects of ethnicity on achievement
  • he shows that the black Caribbean family far from being dysfunctional provides girls with positive role models of strong independent women
  • he argues that this is why black girls tend to be more successful in education than black boys
  • Lawrence 1982 challenges Pryces view that black pupils fail because their culture is weak and they lack self-esteem
  • he argues that black pupils underachieve not because of low self-esteem but because of racism
  • Keddie sees CD as a victim blaming explanation
  • she argues that ethnic minority children are cultural different not culturally deprived
  • they underachieve because schools are ethnocentric
• compensatory education critique

  • critics oppose compensatory education because they see it as an attempt to impose the dominant white culture on children who already have cultures of their own
  • offer two main alternatives
  • multi-cultural education - a policy that recognises and values minority cultures and includes them in the curriculum
  • anti-racist education - a policy that challenges the prejudice and discrimination that exists in schools and wider society
• material deprivation

  • the lack of those physical necessities that are seen as essential or normal for life in todays society
  • WC people are more likely to face poverty and material deprivation
  • see educational failure as resulting from factors such as substandard housing and low income
  • ethnic minorities are more likely to face these problems
• Palmer 2012

  • Almost half of minority ethnic group children live in low-income households as against a quarter of white children
  • ethnic minority groups are almost twice as likely to be unemployed compared to whites
  • ethnic minority households are around 3x more likely to become homeless
  • almost half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers earned under £7 per hour compared with only a quarter of white British workers
• reasons why ethnic minorities may be at greater risk of the material deprivation that results from unemployment, low pay etc

  • many live in economically depressed areas with high unemployment and low wage rates
  • cultural factors such as the tradition of purdah in some Muslim households which prevents women from working outside the home
  • a lack of language skills and foreign qualifications not being recognised by UK employers
  • asylum seekers may not be allowed to take work
  • racial discrimination in the labour marker and housing marker
• inequalities and children

  • the inequalities are reflected in the proportion of children from different ethnic groups who are eligible for free school meals
  • argues that such class differences explain why Pakistani pupils tend to do worse than Indian and white pupils
• does class override ethnicity

  • if we fail to take the different class positions of ethnic groups into account then there is a danger that we may over-estimate the effect of cultural deprivation and under-estimate the effect of poverty and material deprivation
  • however even those Indian and Chinese pupils who are materially deprived still do better than most
  • e.g. in 2011 86% of Chinese girls who received free school meals achieved 5 or more higher GCSEs compared to only 65% of white girls who did not receive free school meals
  • this suggests that material deprivation and social class factors do not completely override the influence of ethnicity
• Rex 1986 - racism in wider society

  • shows how racial discrimination leads to social exclusion and how this worsens the poverty faced by ethnic minorities
  • in housing for example discrimination means that minorities are moe likely to be forced into substandard accommodation than white people of the same class
• Wood et all 2010

  • in employment too there is evidence of direct and deliberate discrimination
  • he sent three closely matched job applications to each of almost 1000 job vacancies
  • these came from fictitious applicants using names associated from different ethnic minorities
  • from each job one application appeared to come from a white person and two from members of minority groups
  • found that the only one in 16 ethnic minority application were offered an interview as against one in nine white applications
  • this helps to explain why members of ethnic minorities are more likely to face unemployment and low pay and this in turn has a negative effect on their childrens educational prospects