Ethnicity and Achievement – Inside of School

• Archer's findings

  • Teachers saw white, middle-class pupils as the ideal pupil
  • Teachers see white, middle-class pupils as the most likely to succeed
• Connolly's findings


  • Teachers generally had stereotypical high expectations of south Asian British boys
• Wright's findings


  • Teachers assume Asian pupils have a poor grasp of English and so they would leave them out of discussions
• Racialised expectations


  Gillborn and Youdell
• Gillborn and Youdell's findings


  • Teachers are quicker to discipline black pupils than others for the same behaviour
  • Teachers expect black pupils to behave badly
• Labelling theorists are criticised for being too deterministic
• Not all students accept their label given to them
• Self-negating prophecy


  Pupils channel anger at being labelled into proving their teachers wrong, developing their own pro-education, anti-school subculture
• Pupil responses


  • Conform
  • Innovate
  • Rebelling
  • Retreating
• Sewell found boys responded in 4 different ways
• Institutional racism

  Concepts:

  Marketisation and segregation: Gillborn

  Marketisation gives schools more scope to select pupils and allows for negative stereotypes

  Ethnocentric curriculum: Troyna and Williams

  The curriculum is ethnocentric in British schools as it gives priority to white culture and English language

  Evaluation:

  There has been a massive push towards a more multicultural curriculum. One example is this is a requirement by OFSTED that schools promote cultural diversity like black history month.