Reasons for Ethnicity Differences in Education

• Rex - Racism leads to people feeling socially excluded impoverished and discriminated inside and outside of the classroom
• Noon - Experiment which sent identical letters to 100 UK companies 

              - Half were signed 'Patel', the other half 'Evans'

              - Got more replies and information for 'Evans'

• Islamophobia is growing, so racism is still a factor 
• Hate crime acts and equal opportunity policies (although they don't always work as they are hard to enforce)

• Compensatory Education - Policies to help even the playing field for working class e.g. Pupil Premium - money set aside
• Education Action Zones - Money put into rebuilding schools in deprived areas
• Sure Start - Offered classes and programmes for under-privileged families

• Flaherty - Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are 3x more likely to be unemployed (Links to Douglas - Social class explains differences between ethnic groups)

• Douglas - Low income/unemployment

                  - Overcrowded homes

                  - Poor diet

• Pupils of any white background achieve the national level
• Pupils of any black background achieve below it
• Pupils of any Asian background achieve above it - Chinese pupils are the highest achieving (20% better)
• Since 1992, Bangladeshi students have improved the most, white students have improved the least

• As white children get older, they make less progress
• If current trends continue, white students will be the lowest achieving ethnic group in the UK

• Intellectual and linguistic skills - Sociolinguistics (Bernstein - see class differences)

                                                      - Bowker - Standard English is a barrier for immigrants

• Attitudes and Values - Hyman and Sugarman - Subcultural values (See class differneces)

                                      - Negative anti-school role models, particularly for black students ('Ghetto Superstar Issue')

• Family structure and parental support - Scruton - Ethnic minorities fail because they refuse to accept British culture.

                                                                 - Pryce - Asian cultures do better than balck cultures because they are less affected by racism.(Lupton - Asian families are stricter which matches the school rules e.g. Amy Chua) 

• Relies on generalisation
• Keddie - Victim blaming
• Driver - Afro-Caribbean girls do well
• More multiculturalism

• Becker - Labelling; Rosenthal and Jacobson - Self-fulfilling prophecy; Hargreaves - Halo effect
• Gillborn and Youdell - Teachers hold racialised expectations - misinterpret behaviour from black pupils as anti-authority (2000)
• Bourne and Foster - Black boys are more likely to be placed in lower sets and streams
• Wright - Asian pupils are more likely to be left out of discussions and have their names mispronounced - links to marginalisation

• Fuller & Mac an Ghail - Studied black girls in Year 11 in London who were in lower streams 

                                       - They did not conform to the values of the school, but they did value education success

• Mirza - Teacher racism

         - Overt racist - teachers who feel that black pupils are are inferior

         - Liberal chauvinist - believe that black pupils are deprived and have lower expectations

         - Colour blind - ignore the fact that black and white pupils have different challenges

• Ethnocentric curriculum - Troyna & Williams - National curriculum focuses only on white culture, literature and music. 

                                           - Ball - Little Englandism - Curriculum focuses on Britain's triumphs and ignores history of Black and Asian people

• Institutional racism - Ethnocentric curriculum 

                                   - Racist behaviour unchallenged or ignored

• More training and awareness of these issues
• David Cameron wanted to have English students study exclusively British authors

• Selection policies - Gillborn - Marketisation of education has led to cream skimming and silt shifting

                                 - Commission for racial equality - Racist bias in enrolment interviews, lack of information available in minority languages

• More training and awareness of these issues