Education

• Ethnicity


  People who share common history, customs, identity, language, and religion, and see themselves as a distinct unit
• Ethnicity is socially constructed, while race is often considered biological
• Ethnic groups in the UK


  • White British majority
  • Black Caribbean groups
  • African groups
  • European groups
• There exist inequalities in educational achievement of different ethnic groups
• Girls outperform boys in education, and the middle classes outperform the working classes
• Ethnicity, gender, and social class intersect and impact individual students
• The picture of ethnic differences in education is changing over time
• White working-class boys are falling behind their black and Asian peers
• External factors


  What is going on outside the classroom, school, or education system
• Internal factors


  What is going on inside the school, classroom, or education system
• Cultural deprivation


  • Lack of intellectual and linguistic skills
  • Lack of motivation
  • Dysfunctional family structure
• Cultural deprivation theorists see the black experience of slavery as culturally devastating, leading to low self-esteem in the black community
• Asian families generally have a more positive attitude to education, higher aspirations, and are more supportive of their children's education
• This could be due to a different experience of colonialism, where Asians were not always enslaved in the same way as black Africans
• Asian families promote a respectful attitude to parents and elders, which can be helpful in the school environment
• However, this support and high aspiration can also lead to stress and anxiety, particularly for Asian girls
• Minority ethnic children often aspire to attend university more than white working-class children
• White working-class children often see university as not for them, and something middle-class
• Some Asian families have a controlling attitude towards their girls and may decide to take them out of education from an earlier age or expect them to finish education just after secondary school
• Minority ethnic children often aspire to attend university more so than white working-class children
• Black, Asian, and minority ethnic children and young adults want to go to university and get a degree because they believe it is their route out of poverty and a way of improving their lives
• Many white working-class children and young adults do not want to go to university, seeing it as something for the middle-class that is outside of their reach, and they worry about fitting in and coping with the workload
• White working-class street culture amongst children and young adults is often quite brutal, with a propensity for gangs to form or subcultures to organize, and these gangs can come into conflict and be quite brutal
• Only 26% of poor white British boys obtained 5 A*-C grades at GCSE including maths and English, compared to 40% of black boys and 63% of the country as a whole
• Cultural deprivation fails to recognize positive effects of ethnicity on achievement, such as black single mothers being strong independent role models for their daughters, leading to black girls outperforming black boys
• Teacher racism may prevent black students' achievement rather than black students simply having low self-esteem or a weak culture as a product of the historical experience of slavery
• Cultural deprivation theory can be seen as victim-blaming, as it suggests black, Asian, and minority ethnic children need to work harder to overcome obstacles, rather than addressing systemic issues
• It is problematic to claim that people can be "culturally deprived" of their own culture, as that is the culture they have been brought up in
• The education system and curriculum are arguably ethnocentric, focusing on and testing understanding of white British culture, which may need to change in a multicultural Britain
• Material deprivation


  The lack of material necessities seen as normal for everyday life, such as substandard housing and poor income
• Material deprivation explanations see educational failure as a result of substandard housing and poor income
• There is generally material inequality between different ethnic groups, with some groups being materially very wealthy and others being materially poor, which is reflected in educational achievement
• Middle-class black people's educational achievement is comparatively poor compared to middle-class people from other ethnic groups, suggesting that class and ethnicity intersect in complex ways
• Racism in wider society, leading to discrimination and social exclusion, may be a key factor in the material deprivation and educational underachievement of minority ethnic groups
• Internal factors


  What goes on inside the classroom, school, or education system
• Labeling


  • Black pupils often seen as aggressive, Asian pupils as passive
• Teachers may teach, interact with, and respond differently to ethnic minority pupils
• Teachers have racialized expectations of ethnic minority pupils
• Black pupils feel teachers underestimate them and pick on them
• Black pupils more likely to be sent out of class, placed in referral units, excluded or expelled