Ethnic Differences in Achievement

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What is an Ethnic Group?
- - Ethnicity refers to a shared culture, identity and history. An ethnic group is a group of people who see themselves as a distinct group based for example on religion, geography or language -An ethnic minority group may be of a different skin colour from the majority population, but not necessarily so. However, in the case of Britain, the largest minority groups are non-white: African, Caribbean or South Asian origin - Deciding who is in which ethnic group is a problem. Should all 'Asians' be classified together when this covers many different nationalities, religions and languages?
- Explaining differences in achievement: there are two sets of factors - internal factors within schools and the education system and external factors e.g. home and family background
- Ethnic differences in achievement: patterns of ethnic achievement are complex, cross-cut by gender and social class. For example: - Black and Pakistani pupils do worst; Chinese and Indians do best. White pupils are very close to the national average, but this is because they form the great majority of the school population.

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