Ethnicity & achievement

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Cultural deprivation

  • Cultural deprivation - Engelmann; language spoken by low-income black American families are inadequate for educational success. There is also a lack of intellectual stimulation & enrichment activities in MEG'S homes. 
  • Criticism - Driver; Indian pupils do well despite English not being their home language. 
  • The Afro-Caribbean home life is more stressful because of low income in a matrifocal household, Murray; black mums can't handle teenage boys bc there is no male role model. 
  • Sewell; black fathers are not nurturing to boys & practice 'tough love' which creates boys who find it hard to overcome emotional & behavioural difficulties. He argues that peer pressure from their black peers also encourages them to engange in stereotypical anti-school masculinity, rap music also has an impact on image. 
  • However as Sewell; notes Indian & Chinese pupils benefit from supportive families that have an 'Asian work ethic', placing high value on education. 
  • Lupton; studied white w/c schools & found that teachers reported poorer levels of behaviour, which they blamed on the negative attitude parents had towards education. Evans; believes white w/c street culture can be brutal so it reflects in education through distruption. 
  • Crticisms - Driver; the black Caribbean family is far from dysfunctional & provides girls with positive role models of strong independent women.
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Material deprivation

  • Almost 1/2 of all ethnic minority children live in low-income households, compared to  1/4 white children. As they are  3x more likely to be at home &  2x more likely to be unemployed.
  • 15% of MEG'S live in crowded conditions, compared to 2% of white people. 
  • Indian pupils who have above average achievement are usually able to afford private education, they attend these schools 2x more than whites.
  • Living in lower socio-enomic estates means MEG'S face an increase in violent youth gangs, that have a negative impact on educational success for boys.
  • Criticisms - Material deprivation & social class do not completely override the influence of ethnicity, Modood; while children from low-income families generally did less well, the effects of low income were much less for other ethnic groups than for white pupils. 
  • Racism - Wood; only 1/16 ethnic minority applications were offered an interview, compared to 1/9 white applications. Rex; minorities may be forced into more substandard accomodation than white people of the same class, due to racial discrimination that leads to social exclusion, worsening the effects of poverty on education. 
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Internal factors

  • Labelling theory - Gillborn; teachers negatively label black students behaviours as threatening or a challenge to authority, due to 'racialised expectations' & create SFP. Osler; black pupils are more likely to suffer from unnofficial exclusions & 'internal exclusions' when they are sent out of class, limiting their acccess to their national curriculum. 
  • Sewell; black boys may respond to institutional racism & absent fathers through 'machismo' behaviour, they believed black men should feel superior in sexual experience. 
  • Fuller; however black girls, did not accept negative labelling from teachers & sought out to prove them wrong, it did not become their 'master status'. 
  • The ethnocentric curriculumBall; it promotes an attitude of 'little Englandism', history tries to recreate a 'mythical age of empire & past glories'.
  • Blair; there is a lack of black role models in British schools.
  • Marketisation - Increase in 'A-C' economy, Foster; teachers' stereotype black pupils & place them in lower sets if they're badly behaved. Material deprivation could mean that in some ethnic groups they're less able to move into an expensive catchment area. 
  • Davenport; selection procedures lead to ethnic segregation, e.g, primary school reports screenout students with language difficulty & applications are in English which some parents don't understand. Thus, they are excluded from good secondary schools.
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