DA and Ethnicity

• DA and Ethnicity - External Factors:

  > material deprivation

  > racism in wider society

  > family structure

  > attitudes and values

  > linguistic skills
• DA and Ethnicity - Internal Factors:

  > racialised expectations

  > institutional racism

  > marketisation policies

  > ethnocentric curriculum
• External - Material Deprivation:

  > Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are 3 times more likely than white people to be homeless and work in low-paid jobs (almost half earn £7 per hour)

  > ethnic minorities may be at greater risk of material deprivation due to a lack of language skills, unrecognised qualifications or racism

  > these inequalities parallel those seen in educational achievement, suggesting a causal relationship
• External - Racism in Wider Society:

  > racism may explain why ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty and work in the lowest paid jobs

  > Wood et al - sent three fake closely matched job applications to 1000 job vacancies using names associated with different ethnic groups

  > only 1 in 16 ethnic minority applications were offered an interview, compared to 1 in 9 white applications

  > unemployment has a negative effect on child's educational prospects
• External - Family Structure:

  > Moynihan - many black families are headed by a lone mother, so children are deprived of adequate care and socialisation (lack of male role model)

  > leads to the failure of black pupils
• External - Parental Support:

  > Sewell - black boys underachieve due to a lack of fatherly nurturing (tough love), resulting in black boys finding it hard to overcome the emotional and behavioural difficulties of adolescence

  > street gangs offer 'perverse loyalty and love', but lead to a pressure to conform to anti-school black masculinity
• External - Attitudes and Values:

  > black families socialise their children into a fatalistic attitude that doesn't value education

  > Driver and Ballard - Asian families have high aspirations for their children and pass on an 'Asian work ethic'

  > Lupton - authority in Asian families is similar to the model that operates in schools
• External - Linguistic Skills:

  > children that do not speak English at home may underperform in school, for example, a fifth of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are not fluent in English

  > Berieter and Engelmann - language spoken by low-income black families is inadequate for educational success (ungrammatical, disjointed and incapable of expressing abstract ideas)
• Internal - Racialised Expectations:

  > Gillborn and Youdell - teachers expect black pupils to present more discipline problems and misinterpret their behaviour as threatening or a challenge to authority (systematically denied access to best sets and exams through educational triage)

  > Sewell - black boys' responses to racialised expectations can affect achievement (rebels, conformists, retreatists, innovators) - only a minority fit the rebel stereotype, but teachers tend to see all black boys in this way, leading to underachievement
• Internal - Institutional Racism:

  > discrimination that is built into the way institutions operate, such as schools - reinforces inequality between ethnic groups

  > Hatcher - schools place a low priority on dealing with race issues and fail to adequately tackle racist bullying
• Internal - Marketisation Policies:

  > marketisation gives schools more scope to select pupils, which allows racist stereotypes to influence admissions

  > open enrolment means the best schools (based on league tables) become oversubscribed - schools want to maintain or improve position so select students with the most potential to succeed

  > educational triage takes place - some ethnic groups are selected because they are seen as high achievers, while others are refused and have to attend lower performing schools = underachievement
• Internal - Ethnocentric Curriculum:

  > subjects, such as history, RE and English literature, can be seen as ethnocentric (give priority to white culture) - National Curriculum does not include the history of ethnic minorities and languages taught are primarily European

  > could lead to lower self-esteem among ethnic minorities, which negatively affects achievement