Labelling

• According to Gillborn and mirza in one local education authority, black children were the highest achievers on entry to primary school 20 percentage points above the local average. However, when it came to GCSE times they had the worst results of any ethnic group 21 points below the average.
• Strands analysis of the entire national cohort of over 530,000 7–11-year-olds shows how quickly many black pupils fall behind after starting in School. He found that black Caribbean boys not entitled to free school meals, especially the pupils made significantly less progress than the white counterparts.
• If a group can begin that compulsory schooling has the highest achievers in yet finish it at the lowest achievers. This challenges, the assumption made by cultural deprivation theories that black children enter School and prepared. It suggests that factors internal to the education system itself may be playing in major part and producing ethnic differences in achievement.
• Labelling and teacher racism


  Interaction focusses on the different label's teachers' gift to children from different ethnic backgrounds. Their study shows that teachers often see black and Asian pupil as being far from the Ideal pupil.
• Negative labels


  May lead teachers to treat ethnic minority pupils differently, disadvantaging them, and may result in their failure.
• Gillborn and Youdell found that teachers were quicker to discipline black pupils than others for the same behaviour. They argue that teachers expected black pupils to present more disciplines problems and misinterpreted their behaviour as threating or as a challenged to authority, pupils respond negatively, and this resulted in further conflict.
• They conclude that much of the conflict between white teachers and black pupils stems from the racial stereotype's teachers hold, rather than the pupil's actual behaviour.
• Bourne found that schools tend to see black boys as a threat and to label them negatively. This leads eventually to exclusion, exclusions affect achievement, as only one in five excluded pupils achieves 5 GCSE.
• Osler Black pupils are more likely to suffer from on recorded unofficial exclusions and from internal exclusions where they are sent out of class. They are also more likely to be placed in pupil referral units and excluded from accessing mainstream curriculum.
• Gillborn and Youdell found that in the 'A-to-C economy', teachers focus on those students who they believe are most likely to achieve a grade Cat GCSE – a process the authors call 'educational triage' or sorting. As a result, negative stereotypes about black pupils' ability that some teachers hold means they are more likely to be placed in lower sets or streams.
• Foster found that teachers' stereotypes of black pupils as badly behaved could result in them being placed in lower sets than other pupils of similar ability. Streaming black pupils based on negative stereotypes about their ability or behaviour can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy of underachievement.
• Wright's study of a multi-ethnic primary schools shows that Asian pupils can also be the victim of teacher labelling. Despite schools' apparent commitment to equality, teachers still held the vie that British culture and standard English was superior.
• Asian pupils felt isolated when teachers expressed disapproval of their customs or mispronounced their names. Teacher did not view them as a threat but rather a problem they could ignore.