Educational Attainment - Ethnicity

Question 1

Key trends in educational attainment and ethnicity

Answer 1

• There are noticeable differences in the attainment of each group, according to the Attainment 8 scoring system. Minority ethnic groups, such as Chinese and Indian students, achieve much higher than other groups. In contrast, Black Caribbean and White students perform worse than their peers. Black African students however perform better than the latter groups, possibly explained by the differences in culture between the two groups of BC and BA.
• C & I = overachieve in comparison to peers, B = variation between A and C, Asian students = differences in Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian achievement. White students have only slightly higher achievement than black students (as a group) but this gap is closing.

Question 2

Asian families and educational attainment

Answer 2

• Basit (2013) - Indian and Pakistani families have a culture of promoting educational capital to obtain social mobility
• Bhatti (1999) - Parents were more supportive of children’s education and hgh levels of interest in their children’s achievement
• Modood (2006) - suggests it is typical parental behaviour of all social classes, with W/C Asian families promoting staying on in education.

Question 3

Chinese families and educational attainment

Answer 3

• Chinese students: Perform significantly higher than all other groups
• Francis (2007) - suggested that this is because of the high value placed on education by both parents and children regardless of social class, and the additional resources that are provided such as money and time that are given to students to help them achieve the goal of attending university
• Modood (2004) - parental cultural capital (economic capital and educational capital are equal in importance) is passed onto children from previous occupations pushes higher achievement. Parents invest in children so they look after them in old age, and this investment includes a very good education.

Question 4

Black families and educational attainment

Answer 4

• An explanation for the differences in black achievement through parental support is that there is a greater support network of extended family and friends in black African families that promote educational achievement.
• Sewell - single parent families have created less parental support for black students (24% of black households are single parent, in comparison to 19% of mixed households and 10% of white households). The workload placed on mothers means that they cannot dedicate the time to support the education of their children; issues with this include the reliance on over generalisation, with the statistics showing that more BA families are single parent than BC families, but BA is on average higher than BC and white achievement.
• It also discounts the impact of working mothers on black girls, whose achievement is on par with their peers. It also assumes that most families in this ethnic group are W/C; however, Vincent et al (2011) suggested that black middle-class parents had high levels of interest in their children’s education. This suggests that internal factors are the issue with underachievement in some groups of black students.

Why do you need to be careful here?
There are differences in achievement between different black groups - BA achieve higher than average and higher than BC students

Question 5

Intersectionality with attainment

Answer 5

• Black girls - achieve on par with other ethnic groups in – W/C families - this could be the exposure to role models and higher ambitions that boost their motivation to achieve.
• Class also interacts with ethnicity, with middle-class black families having more interest in their children’s education.
• In some cases, even lower class of C&I families overachieve compare to the middle class students of other ethnic groups.

Do not make generalisations by lumping different Asian cultures into one band of achievement - discuss variations in broad ethnic groups. White students do not achieve better than other ethnicities, and there are attainment gaps within different White groups.

Question 6

Evaluations of these theories

Answer 6

• Intersectional nature of student’s experiences - class and gender impact achievement
• Some research (1960s and 70s) is dated and based on crude stereotypes and generalisations of ethnic groups, and because it is based on the first generation of migrants (Windrush generations) it does not help explain educational achievement in 2nd or 3rd generations who have been exposed to the norms and values of British society and socialised dually
• Despite the high achievements of some ethnic minority groups, there are still differences in life chances in society for Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black students in comparison to white, Chinese and Indian groups - e.g. unemployment, average earnings, representation at universities

Question 7

What is ethnicity? + the doll test

Answer 7

Ethnic group - People who share a common history, customs and identity, as well as, in most cases, language and religion, and who see themselves as a distinct unit.

• The “doll test” is a psychological experiment designed in the 1940s in the USA to test the degree of marginalization felt by African American children caused by prejudice, discrimination and racial segregation (Clark and Clark).
• This impacts achievement as there are ingrained stereotypes that may impact ethnic identity and a personal interpretation of a student’s ability to achieve

Question 8

Trends in attainment across ethnic groups

Answer 8

• Bangladeshi students are the ethnic group most entitled to Free School Meals.
• In all ethnic groups, W/C students underachieve in comparison to their non-FSM counterparts. However, even FSM Chinese students achieve higher than non-FSM students in all other groups, and so their achievement is different by class but they still generally as an ethnic group achieve at a certain point.
• 75% of students at Russell Group Universities are White students, with less than 5% being Black students. This shows that there is an ethnic bias in university opportunity, as despite White students underperforming in comparison to Chinese students, there are a disproportionate amount attending high class universities for their achievement level. White students are also more likely to achieve a 1st class degree than other ethnic groups.
• Chinese girls are the group with the highest achievement and attainment across all groups, with White British boys underachieving and having the lowest attainment of all groups.

Question 9

External factors that affect the achievement of ethnic groups - Material deprivation

Answer 9

Strand (2015):

• Longitudinal study of 15,000 students in England
• Analysed the differences in attainment of various ethnic groups
• The attainment gap due to social class was twice as large as the biggest ethnic gap and six times as large as gender
• Other factors also need to be consider

Question 10

External factors that affect the achievement of ethnic groups - Parental, Student and School factors

Answer 10

• Parental attitudes and behaviour were ‘significantly associated with attainment’. Parents expectations that students would continue their education after the age of 16 were particularly important as were providing a computer for their children and a private tutor.
• In general, ethnic minority parents were more likely than White British parents to have positive attitudes and behaviour towards education.
  Strand -
  Student factors - Strand divides student factors which encourage high attainment and risk factors which reduce attainment levels
  1. High attainment - Resilience factors include a strong academic self-concept, a positive attitude towards school, planning for the future, hoping to continue education after age 16 and completing homework every evening, ethnic minorities were likely to have higher levels of resilience factors than White British students.
  2. Risk factors include special educational needs, having been excluded from school (high for Black Caribbean students) extended absence from school (high for Pakistani students), truancy, involvement with police, welfare and social services, and overall risk factors were most likely found in White British groups.
• School factors - In general, the quality of the school appeared to have only a moderate effect on educational attainment except in the case of Black Caribbean students where factors such as teacher’s expectations might make a difference.
• Ethnocentric curriculum
• Lupton (2004) argues that adult authority in Asian families is similar to that of school = respectful behaviour.

Question 11

External factors that affect the achievement of ethnic groups - Class, gender and ethnicity

Answer 11

• White students attainment more affected by class than others.
• Ethnic subculture (negative and positive) play a part
• White w/c at the bottom for both genders. The gender gap is bigger in Black Caribbean and Bangladeshi students in favour of girls
• Modood (2004) - class affects White students more than other groups

Question 12

External factors that affect the achievement of ethnic groups - Recent immigration

Answer 12

• Strand suggests that recent immigration may be a factor in explaining the relatively high performance of low-income minority ethnic groups compared to low income White working-class student.
• Strand 2008 - ‘More recent groups often see education as a way out of the poverty they have come from. By contrast, if you’ve been in a White working-class family for 3 generations, with high unemployment, you don’t necessarily believe that education is going to change that.’
• Multi-language students perform better than students who have English as a first language, motivation to work hard to get out of poverty

Question 13

External factors that affect the achievement of ethnic groups - Ethnic group subcultures

Answer 13

• Parents from all social classes placed a very high value on education, as did their children. Working Class parents with little formal education were ‘passionately committed to providing their children with the opportunities they lacked’. Both middle and working class parents saw university as ‘a must’. All 80 students interviewed said they wanted to go to university.
• Parents invested considerable time, energy and money in their children. Monitored children’s progress; education was a ‘family project’. A family’s standing in the community was partly related to educational performance of their children, children appreciate their parents high expectations, encouragement and support - applied to both middle and working class.
• The high value placed on education is due to Chinese subculture. The high attainment of Chinese Students may be partly the result of their subculture.
• Evans - Street culture for White w/c is brutal and power games of intimidation exist; schools are places where this is further acted out through disruption where they gain status
• Louis Archer and Becky Francis (2007) - semi-structured interview with 80 14 to 16 year old British Chinese students, 30 Chinese parents and 30 Chinese teachers from London schools with Chinese students.

Question 14

External factors that affect the achievement of ethnic groups - Cultural Capital

Answer 14

• Chinese and Indians have the largest proportion of middle-class members and the highest attainment. Their attainment may result in from having the largest amount of cultural capital.
• Many members of minority ethnic groups have more cultural capital than would be expected from their present class position. This may be because their jobs after migrating to the UK were lower in pay and prestige than their previous job.
• Bourdieu’s idea of of cultural capital may help to explain the educational attainment of some ethnic minority students.
• However Tarqid Modood (2004) states that those who have low cultural capital should not be achieving as much as they do.

Question 15

Black-Caribbean achievement - The background and policies + key words

Answer 15

Marketisation - Schools are organised like a business
League Tables - Ranking of school results
Ethnocentrism - A belief that one culture is more superior than another
Institutional Racism - Racial prejudice and discrimination that are part of assumptions and operations of institutions

The background -

• 1980s-1990s; focus on Black Caribbean male ‘underachievement’
• Racism in schools - no policies were developed to address this
• Black subculture was said to be causing this underachievement

Policies -

• The focus is changing from the 1990s to help black achievement
• (2003) - Department of Education’s Aim High - African Caribbean Achievement Project
• This showed that students experienced lower expectations by schools and schools were asked to address this, although made no real difference to achievement levels at KS3 and KS4
• However, ethnocentrism continues National Curriculum, with black people being excluded almost entirely from the primary curriculum and only appearing as slaves or refugees in secondary

Question 16

Black-Caribbean Achievement - Racism in the classroom

Answer 16

Gillborn and Youdell -

• studied two London comprehensive schools over a two-year period, using lesson observation, analysis of documents and interviews with students and teachers, and the study was based on students in KS4 (14-16) with a particular focus on GCSEs
• This was a time of increasing concern with examination success, league tables and the marketisation of schools, and because of this ‘some students are sacrificed to the more important goal of raising attainment in league table statistics’ and these students tended to be working class and Black Caribbean
• These students were seen as ‘less able’, and placed in lower sets, with higher setted students having more experienced teachers and were given more teacher time, support and effort and students in lower sets were ‘systematically neglected’
• Gillborn and Youdell - widespread inequalities of opportunity are endured by Black children, and teachers have an expectation of Black students will generally present disciplinary problems and they therefore intended to feel that control and punishment had to be given higher priority than academic concerns
• Most black students felt they were disadvantaged by their treatment in schools, but they are expected to be blamed for disciplinary problems and they expected teachers would underestimate their future achievements and in these circumstances it is not surprising that Black Caribbean students ended up doing less well than White students attending the same schools
• Gillborn and Youdell - teacher’s perceptions and behaviour towards Black Caribbean pupils as racist, but most teachers are unaware of this, with many actually being passionately committed to challenging the very inequalities that they participate in reinforcing, and their racism takes the form of institutional racism, part of the taken for granted operation and assumptions of schools

Question 17

Black-Caribbean Achievement - Black masculinities and schooling

Answer 17

Sewell -

• questions the view that Black underachievement is based on racism in schools, and in an article he stated that teachers are unlikely to be directly or indirectly holding back black students, but rather it is the inability of students to break away from anti-education peer group that loves the street culture rather than the classroom
• Studied Black-Caribbean boys aged 11-16 in a comprehensive school

Street culture and Black Masculinity -

• A high proportion of BC boys are raised in lone parent and matrifocal families, and as a result many lack a positive male role model and the discipline that can be provided by a father figure and this therefore makes them more vulnerable to peer group pressure according to Sewell
• 2001 - 57% of BC families were lone parent, compared to 25% of White families
• Some young men are drawn into gangs that emphasise an aggressive, macho form of masculinity and members demand respect, reject authority figures such as teachers and police, and focus on current street fashion and music, and this form of Black masculinity is reflected and reinforced by the media, with gangsta rap and hip-hop fashions and news reports emphasising black street crime and gun culture
• According to Sewell, this subculture of Black masculinity provides a comfort zone for many BC men, and acceptance and support from the peer group pressure compensate for their sense of rejection by their fathers and by a society and education system that they often experience as racist
• In schools, this version of Black masculinity can lead to opposition to the authority of teachers, a rejection of academic achievement and a definition of hard work as effeminate, but Sewell’s research indicated that only a minority of BC boys adopted this approach

Question 18

Sewell cont. - Four types of students

Answer 18

Sewell identified four main groups of black students in the comprehensive school he studied -

1. Conformists - the largest group (41%) who saw education as the route to success and conformed to the norms and values of the school
2. Innovators - (35%) also saw education as important but they rejected the process of schooling and the demands they saw it making on their identity and behaviour, and despite being anti-school they tried to stay out of trouble
3. Retreatists - (6%) were loners and kept themselves to themselves, many had special educational needs
4. Rebels - (18%) rejected the norms and values of the school and the importance of education, with many seeing the educational qualifications as worthless since racism would disqualify them from high-status, well-paid jobs; the rebels reacted aggressively to racism in school, acting confrontational and challenging, adopting macho masculinity and demanding respect

Question 19

Evaluations of Sewell

Answer 19

• Critics attack his perceived blaming of Black Caribbean students for their underachievement, and his research has diverted attention from what they see as the real cause of Black underachievement, which is a racist society, a racist education system and economic deprivation
• Sewell supporters reject this criticism, stating that he is simply attempting to describe and explain rather than allocate blame, and Sewell provides a possible explanation for the decline in attainment of many Black-Caribbean boys during secondary education, and his research also rejects the stereotype of the young aggressive black male personified by the Rebels by showing they only performed a relatively small minority of Black-Caribbean boys in the school he studied

Question 20

Black-Caribbean Achievement - Young, Female and Black (1992)

Answer 20

Mirza -

• describes the results of a study of 198 young women and men, including 62 Black women aged 15-19 who were the main focus of the study, who all attended two comprehensive schools in London
• The myth of underachievement - Mirza argues that this exists for Black women, as the girls in her sample did better in exams than Black boys and White students at the school, and believed that in general the educational achievements of Black women are underestimated
• Mirza also challenges the labelling theory of educational underachievement, as despite evidence of racism from some teachers, she denies that it had an effect on undermining the self-esteem of black girls, as when they were asked whom they most admired, 48% of Black girls named themselves and over half named someone who was also Black
• Overall, Mirza found that Black girls in her study had positive self-esteem, were concerned with academic success and were prepared to work hard

Fuller -
- Girls channel their anger about negative labelling into educational success, despite acting as though they reject schooling

Question 21

Black-Caribbean Achievement - Law et al

Answer 21

More recent research has focused on success for this group rather than failure, mainly due to their attainment having steadily increased over the past 20 years

Law et al - 2014

• In a study of 15-year-old Black Caribbean and Black African students in three northern England schools, Law et al studied their success despite being placed in low sets and being taught by inexperienced staff with low expectations of their achievement
• To some extent, they experienced a negative impact from gang and ‘gangsta’ culture and racial stereotyping, and tended to feel their work was undervalued and behaviour unfairly responded to, but they still saw racism in school of minor importance
• They found no clear or strong link between being young, black and male and having low educational or career aspirations across all ethnic groups, with 70% intending to continue their education past GCSEs
• Many Black students had a positive self-concept, a strong sense of self-reliance and a belief in hard work and the value of educational achievement, with many hoping to go to university and obtain professional jobs as architects, accountants and engineers
• Had strong parental support and largely insulated themselves from barriers and constraints they experienced in school and in wider society

Question 22

Black-Caribbean Achievement - An ethnocentric curriculum

Answer 22

Tikly et al (2006)

• The UK school curriculum is considered ethnocentric as White British culture and ethnicity are presented as superior and dominate the curriculum whilst ethnic minority cultures are largely excluded from history, literature, art and music
• A study based on interviews with 84 African-Caribbean students provided evidence to support this view, finding that a significant number of African-Caribbean students noted their invisibility in the curriculum and were exasperated by the White European focus, and when Black history was included, many pupils reported a frustration at its focus on slavery
• Year 11 pupil - ‘It’s like they don’t know about the good things. Whereas for us, yeah, slavery is only a small part of our history. But it’s the baddest.’
• Tikly et al argue that Black-Caribbean students have a need for curriculum inclusion so they do not feel marginalised or excluded, suggesting that this can only be done by including Black-Caribbean history, culture and experience across the curriculum
• While a feeling of inclusion is desirable, it is not clear how it might affect attainment, as the highest attaining students are of Chinese and Indian heritage yet they are also largely excluded from the curriculum

Question 23

General statistics for British Asian students

Answer 23

• British Chinese students have the highest GCSE grades (and highest of FSM group)
• Cultural capital - Chinese and Indian students are more likely to be middle class
• Cultural capital - Pakistani and Bangladeshi achieve higher than their social class suggests
• Resilience factors are high
• Positive impact from parents “family project”
• Avoid using the term ‘Asian’

Question 24

The experience of British Asian Students - Louise Archer

Answer 24

• Examined how Muslim boys saw themselves, their schooling and their gender and their future in a sample of 31 Muslim boys aged 14-15, using discussion groups led by three interviewers; Archer herself and two British women of Pakistani heritage
• The boys were mainly of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, and her main aim was to see how they ‘constructed and negotiated their masculine identities’
• Main issues - Archer is female, White and Middle-Class, making her personal experience different to the boys and causing bias, as well as the issues that may arise with social desirability from this method

Question 25

Louise Archer - Muslim and Black Identities

Answer 25

• All boys identified themselves as Muslim, seeing this as a positive masculine identity, and being proud of belonging to a local and global Muslim brotherhood, seeing it as a strong masculine identity as opposed to traditional stereotypes of a ‘weak and passive’ Asian masculinity
• Although most boys were born in England, they did not feel they belonged in England or the countries of origin for their parents or grandparents, who were mainly from Pakistan or Bangladesh
• Despite seeing themselves as Muslim, many were not particularly religious in their behaviour
• When constructing their identities, they drew partly on Black-Caribbean and African-American, styles of masculinity, and they sometimes referred to themselves as Black in comparison to the White majority but their black identity was ambiguous as Black ‘gangsta’ forms of masculinity were drawn on rather than forming the basis of their identities

Question 26

Louise Archer - Gendered Identities

Answer 26

• The boys gender identity as male was constructed in relation to girls as they were aware of boys’ supposed underachievement and girls superior achievement, complaining that teachers unfairly favoured girls, responding with laddish comments seeing it as typical of a macho masculinity
• This response probably also reflected their class position as well as their gender - most of the boys came from working class families
• The boys saw part of their gender identity as deriving from their Asian Muslim subculture, where men are the breadwinners, having freedom and autonomy, power and control and it is their duty to ensure woman’s behaviour is appropriate
• Women are primarily concerned with domestic matters as housewives and mothers, and so they are subservient
• The boys admitted that in certain respects gender roles were unfair but believed that this was part of their religious / cultural tradition and therefore they should abide by it
• However, they recognised that the gender relations above did not reflect in their everyday experiences, with Muslim girls refusing to do as they were expected - the boys saw them as ‘out of control’

Question 27

Louise Archer - Education and the breadwinner identity

Answer 27

• The boys saw themselves as future breadwinners and saw education as a means towards successfully performing this role, holding a strong belief in the value of education for obtaining a well paid job and getting ahead
• Most of the boys expressed an interest in continuing their education beyond GCSE and so were encouraged by their parents to do so
• Despite this view of education, some of the boys felt the value of their qualifications were reduced by racism, believing it was made more difficult for them to translate qualifications into appropriate occupations; and so some fell back on family businesses which do not require qualifications as an alternative route
• The boys described their family lives in overwhelmingly positive terms, viewing home as a source of warmth, love and security and saw the adult Muslim masculinity as involving a breadwinner providing for his family, caring for his parents in old age and supporting relatives locally and ‘back home’ in Bangladesh or Pakistan
• Successfully performing this role was a source of pride and a symbol of masculinity and education was the means to this end

Question 28

Louise Archer - Evaluations

Answer 28

• Important study for illustrating the complexity and fluidity of identities, how they derive from different sources, change according to social context and are always in a process of construction and reconstruction
• E.g. the boys shifted across and between Muslim, Black, Asian, Bangladeshi/Pakistani, English and British identities selecting one or more depending on the situation, context or topic of conversation
• The boys’ ethnicity, class, gender and experiences of family life also heavily influenced their identity, and their attitudes towards and experience of education must be seen in terms of this fluid and complex social context
• Archer’s insistence on the importance of social context may indicate weakness in her research method; the origin of the data from small discussion groups led by two British Pakistani women and one White middle-class British woman, whereby each boy had an audience consisting of one of the boys in the group and one of these women
• Each boy’s projection of particular identities will reflect his perception of the audience, and Archer recognises this - however, it places limitations on her data e.g. what would the boys say in the presence of parents, siblings or peers and so wider sources of data drawn from different contexts would provide better data

Question 29

Basit - British Asians and Educational Capital

Answer 29

• Basit (2013) studied a group of 36 Indian and Pakistani students (Hindu, Sikhs and Muslims) and their parents and grandparents
• Students were aged 15-16 born in the West Midlands, with W/C grandparents and others were middle class, with the research being based on individual interviews and focus groups
• Whatever the ethnicity, age, religion or social class, it was clear that education was seen as a capital that would transform the lives of the younger generation, and parents and grandparents impressed on young people the importance of a good education and how it would lead to a well-paid job and a high standard of living
• Basit - Migrants and their children always have aspirations of upward social mobility and this is a key attribute of peoples who leave their country of origin in search of a better life for themselves and their future generations
• Students, both girls and boys, accepted the advice of their elders

Question 30

Key ethnic experience studies - British Asians

Answer 30

Archer -

• Discussion groups/interviews
• Muslim and Black identities
• Gendered identities
• Education and the breadwinner identity

Basit -

• Interviews and focus groups
• Education seen as capital
• High aspirations
• Students accepted the advice of elders

Racism in schools - Articles

• https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/25/there-is-absolutely-systemic-racism-bame-headteachers-share-their-views
• https://www.theguardian.com/education/raceineducation
• General areas; appearance, behaviour, inability of teachers to achieve leadership roles