External ethnicity

• Define ethnic groups

  • Ethnic groups are defined as ‘people who share common history, customs and identity, in most cases language and religion and who see themselves as a distinct unit’. 
• Patterns and trends in educational achievement by ethnicity

  • Over the past 20 years, minority ethnic pupils have bee gaining group on white British people in the education system.
  • In the 1990s white British pupils were more than 2x as likely than Bangladeshis to achieve 5 or more GCSEs grade A*-C.
  • But by 2006 Bangladeshis had overtaken the white British pupils. 
• Black African Caribbean intellectual and linguistic skills

  • Bereiter and Englemann found that language spoken by low-income black families is inadequate for educational success.
  • This is dependent on these families lacking intellectual stimulation and enriching experiences which leaves these students poorly equipped for school as they haven’t developed reasoning and problem-solving skills.
  • Families often used disjoined language, making their language deficient.
• Family structure and parental support/education

  • The contribution of parents to supporting a child’s learning is significant and a stable home provides a supportive context for children to complete homework.
  • There are many types of family units which can provide this type of support, but key is the need for stability and resilience. 
• Black family structure - Charles Murray

  • Murray argues that one parent black families are part of a underclass that is not committed to mainstream values and consequently fail to value education.
• Black family structure - Daniel Moynihan

  • Moynihan argued that black African Caribbean underachievement in boys has been linked to the large number of female-headed, one parent families in this community.
  • As a result, their children are deprived of adequate care because she struggles financially due to the absence of a male breadwinner.
  • Boys are disruptive in the classroom because of the lack of authoritative fathers/role models to control their behaviour. 
• Black parental support/education

  • Vincent found that black middle-class parents were actually involved with their children’s education. This included enrolling them into extracurricular activities and extra tutoring.
  • Despite this, Vincent felt that teachers still viewed these parents as being ‘less’ than white middle class parents even though they had similar qualifications.
  • Many teachers continued to make assumptions based on prejudice and viewed parents of ethnic minorities to be less interest in education.
• Black family structure evaluation - Driver

  • Driver criticises cultural deprivation theory for ignoring the positive effects of ethnicity on achievement.
  • He shows the African Caribbean families provides girls with positive role models of strong independent women.
  • Driver argues that this is why black girls tend to be more successful in education than black boys. 
• Black subculture - Chris Arnot

  • Arnot believes that the absence of cohesive family structure can lead in turn to young black teenagers using media-inspired role models of an anti-school black masculinity, who’s ideal may be ‘ultra-tough ghetto superstar’.
  • This is often reinforced through music videos and rap music.
• Black subculture - Tony Sewell

  • Sewell interviewed successful black African Caribbean boys and they said the biggest barrier was pressure from other boys.
  • Black boys struggle to achieve strong life chances because of a lack of strong father figures.
  • Boys then rejected the authority of teachers and do not take schoolwork seriously as this is seen as a ‘mugs game’ compared to the ease with which you can earn money by committing gang related crime.
  • They may also turn to other fatherless boys who join street gangs and in turn offer an example of ‘perverse loyalty and love’.
• Black subculture evaluation - Gillborn

  • Gillborn who believed that Sewell is blaming black culture for educational failure when the real cause lies within the inadequacies of the education system (institutional racism). 
• Asian intellectual and linguistic skills - Gillborn and Mirza

  • Note that Indian pupils do very well despite often not having English as their first language.
• Asian family structure - Driver and Ballard

  • Found that Asian family structure bring educational benefits as Asian parents have more positive attitudes to education and higher aspiration of children’s futures, therefore being more supportive.
• Asian family structure - Ruth Lupton

  • Argues that adult authority in Asian families is similar to the model that parents in schools.
  • She found that respectful behaviour towards adults was expected from children. 
• Asian family structure and parental support - Basit

  • Studied Indian families and found all the participates, including grandparents, parents and children, place high value on education and saw few state schools as a ‘blessing’ because it generally offered more opportunities than were available in their countries of origin.
  • They put considerable effort and resources into helping their children. Parents expected the children to work hard.
  • Basit believed it was clear that families viewed education as capital that would transform the younger generations lives.
• Asian parental support - Bhatti

  • Found that parents were very supportive and had a high level of interest in their child’s education.
  • However, many Asian parents did not know how to approach school or teachers so avoided it unless it was essential.
  • Their own level of education/lack of English language skills meant they were sometimes unable to help their children with schoolwork as much as they would have liked.
• Homework - Steve Strand

  • Indian students are the ethnic group most likely to complete homework 5 evenings a week.
• Whiten British parental support - Ruth Lupton

  • Studied 4 working class schools: 2 white, 1 Pakistan and 1 ethnically mixed.
  • She found that teachers reported poorer levels of behaviour and discipline in the white working-class schools despite the fact they had fewer children on FSM which is a common measure of poverty.
  • Teachers blames behaviour on lower levels of parental support and the negative attitude that white working-class parents had towards education. In contrast, ethnic minorities saw education as a ‘way up’ in society. 
• White British subculture - Evans

  • Argues that street culture in white working-class areas can be brutal.
  • Therefore, young people have to learn how to withstand intimidation and learn how to intimidate others.
  • School can become a place where the power games the young people engage in on the street are played out again, bringing disruption and making it hard for pupils to succeed.
• Immigrant paradigm - Koa and Thompson

  • Suggests that recent immigrant devote themselves more to education that the native population because they lack financial capital and see education as a way out of poverty.

   
• 15% of ethnic minority households live in overcrowded conditions compared with only 2% of white households.
• 12.5% of white British children are entitled to FSM compared with 25.2% of black Caribbean students.
• Pakistanis are nearly 2x as likely to be in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs compared to whites. 
• Ethnic minority households are under 3x as likely to be homeless.
• Almost half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers under £7 an hour. 
• Material deprivation - Flaherty

  • Study showed that Pakistanis are over 3x more likely than whites to be in the poorest fifth of the population; as well as around 1/3 of black Caribbean living in poverty compared to one in five white British people.
• Material deprivation - Guy Palmer

  • Found that almost half of all ethnic minority children live in low-income households, as against a quarter of white children.
  • Deprivation is targeted at ethnic minorities leading them to have less chance of reaching educational achievement. 
• Material deprivation - Modood

  • Many ethnic minority families have more cultural capital than is typical for their income or class position.
  • This could be explained by the fact that some will be recent migrants to the UK and may not be able to get jobs in line with their skills, experience or qualifications due to discrimination or a lack of transferrable qualifications recognition/language/cultural barriers.
  • However because they are more highly educated than a lot of many white British parents of similar social class background, they can provide ore help to their children. 
• • Indian and Chinese pupils who are materially deprived still do better than most in school.
  • Only 9.7% of Indian students are entitled to free school meals offering evidence that poverty does not run in hand with all ethnic minority groups.
  • Minority ethnic groups are achieving higher with a smaller percentage of them being on FSM compared to white British and/or gaining any money from the government for having a lower wage job in the family.
• Material deprivation - Gillborn and Youdell

  • Looked directly at the effects of social class in the education system.
  • Argued there was a strong relationship between social class and achievement in all ethnic groups.
  • In all groups children from middle class backgrounds did better than those from working class backgrounds, however they concluded that material factors don’t override the influence of ethnicity because when we compare pupils of the same social class but different ethnic origins, we still find differences in achievement. 
• Racism in wider society - John Rex

  • Showed how racial discrimination leads to social exclusion and how this worsens the poverty faced by ethnic minorities.
  • He found in housing, that racial discrimination means that minorities are more likely to be forced into substandard accommodation compared to white people of the same class. 
• Racism in wider society - Wood

  • In employment Wood found evidence of direct and deliberate discrimination in the workplace when analysing job applications from different ethnic groups.
  • Only 1 in 16 ethnic minority applications were offered an interview against 1 in 9 white applicants. 
• Racism in wider society - Lawrence

  • Believes black pupils fail because of racism in wider society.
  • He is a critic of compensatory education because he sees it as an attempt to impose the dominant white culture on children who already have a coherent culture of their own.
  • He suggests alternatives of a multicultural education and an anti-racist education