Ethnicity and educational achievement

• Material deprivation

  • Can prevent a child gaining a good education because parents are less able to meet the Hidden costs of education such as finding money for school trips and home resources such as computers
  • Material Deprivation also means a family is more likely to live in a deprived area with worse schools
  • Lack of money impacts negatively on family dynamics, especially parental involvement in education, and have the effect of lowering educational aspirations
• Ethnic differences in household wealth


  • White and Indian – £300 000
  • Pakistani households – £250 000
  • Black Caribbean – £80 000
  • Chinese – £70 000
  • Bangladeshi – £60 000
  • Black-African £40 000
• Inequalities by Ethnicity and Income


  • White and Indian – 42% and 41% in top 40% of income earners
  • Chinese 34%
  • Black – 20%
  • Bangladeshi – 10%
  • Pakistani – 10%
• Indian and White children have similar levels of wealth and income but Indian children beat White children at GCSE by 11%
• Chinese children are poorer than both Indian and White children but Chinese kids get the best GCSE results of all
• Black African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani children are poorer than white children and yet get better exam results
• Black Caribbean children have relatively high household wealth, yet poor income and underachieve slightly compared to white children
• Higher rates of poverty among ethnic minorities


  Might explain the higher take up rate of FE
• Relatively higher income for White, Indian and Chinese children


  Correlates with being more likely to get three As at A-level
• Lower incomes for Pakistani, Black and Bangladeshi students


  Correlates with being less likely to achieve three As at A-level
• Ethnic groups and educational achievement compared to white peers when factoring in social class


  • Indian and Other Asian (including Chinese) do exceptionally well
  • Black African pupils do better than average
  • Black Caribbean pupils do worse than average
  • Pakistani children do worse than average
• There is no correlation between educational achievement, ethnicity and material deprivation at GCSE
• There is more of a correlation at Further and Higher Education, but even here the correlation isn't perfect
• Cultural factors


  Parental attitudes, peer-group pressure, language barriers and student aspirations
• Cultural factors that may explain educational achievement by ethnicity


  • Parental control and expectation
  • Single parent families
  • Peer group pressure and an anti-school 'street' culture
  • Language barriers
  • Student aspirations to go on to higher education
• Parental control and expectation


  Indian and Chinese families have higher levels
• Strand's (2007) analysis found Indian students are the ethnic group most likely to complete homework five evenings a week and the group where parents are most likely to say they always know where their child is when they are out
• Francis and Archer (2007) found a high value is placed on education by Chinese parents, coupled with a strong cultural tradition of respect for one's elders
• Basit (2013) found all generations of British Asian families placed a high value on education and the grandparents especially saw free state education as a 'blessing'
• Single parent households


  The New Right argues they fail to 'provide a home environment conducive to learning'
• Historically Caribbean households had the highest proportion of lone parent households, but this is no longer the case
• 20.7% of Black African households are lone parent with dependent children, compared to only 16.6% of Black Caribbean households
• Black African children do better at GCSEs than Black Caribbean children (48% compared to 30% get 5 GCSES grades A*-C including English and Maths)
• Anti-school black masculinity


  Black Caribbean boys may experience pressure to adopt norms of an 'urban' or 'street' subculture, giving more importance to unruly behaviour than high achievement
• Acting white and acting black


  Notions of 'acting White' or 'acting Black' become identified in opposition to one another, so acting Black implies not doing well in school
• Crozier (2004) found Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents 'kept their distance' from their children's schools due to lack of confidence in English and lack of translators
• Research by Connor et al (2004) found year 13 students from all ethnic minority groups had stronger aspirations to go onto higher education than white children
• Over 90 per cent of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean and Black African families want their child to stay on at school at age 16, compared with 77 per cent of white families
• Immigrant paradigm


  First generation immigrants are enthusiastic about education, seeing it as an opportunity, but this enthusiasm wears off for second and third generations
• 66.7% of Black Africans are 'optimistic' first wave immigrants, while only 39.8% of Black-Caribbeans are first wave immigrants
• Bagguley and Hussain (2007) found aspirations to higher education for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women were often complicated by cultural pressures around marriage and family honour
• Indian students often had the option to leave home for university, unlike Pakistani and Bangladeshi students
• In-school factors that may explain differential educational achievement by ethnicity


  • Teacher labelling
  • Pupil subcultures
  • The A-C economy
  • The ethnocentric curriculum
  • Institutional racism
• Teacher labelling


  Can be both positive and negative (high and low expectations depending on the ethnic group)
• Teacher labelling research


  • Cecile Wright: labelling in primary schools
  • David Gilborn: African-Caribbean children as a threat
  • Tony Sewell: Teachers threatened by Black masculinities
  • Connolly: Stereotyping of Asian students
• Many of the teacher labelling studies are now 30 years old and focus on labelling of black-boys. There is much less evidence that teachers negatively label black boys today.
• 2015 PREVENT policy has required teachers to monitor extremist behaviour in schools, leading to some evidence of Muslim children being labelled as potentially radicalised.
• Pupil subcultures

  • Anti-school subcultures among black boys may be responsible for their historic underachievement
  • Pupil subcultures can be a response to teacher labelling
• Pupil subculture research


  • Tony Sewell: A culture of anti-school black masculinity
  • Mac an Ghail: Young, Gifted and Black
  • Mirza: Black Girls' Responses to Teacher Labelling
• Banding and streaming


  • Some minority pupils being overrepresented in lower sets
  • Teachers make decisions about banding and streaming, so teacher labelling is to blame