ethnic differences in achievement - institutional racism

Question 1

too much focus on internal factors - evaluation

How does Sewell criticse Gillborn?

Answer 1

argues that Gillborn focuses too
much on the internal factors, and
although he doesn’t believe racism has disappeared entirely, he does argue that it is not powerful enough to prevent individuals from succeeding

Question 1

Moore and Davenport

How does marketisation and segregation impact ethnic minorities?

Answer 1

• selection procedures lead to ethnic segregation,
• with minority pupils failing to get into better secondary schools due to discrimination
• they found that primary school reports were used to screen out pupils with language difficulties
• and the application process was difficult for non-English speaking parents to understand

These procedures favoured white pupils and disadvantaged those from ethnic minority backgrounds. Thus they concluded that selection leads to an ethnically stratified education system

Question 1

Ball

How does the ethnocentric cirriculum impact ethnic minorities?

Answer 1

criticises the National Curriculum for ignoring ethnic diversity and for promoting and attitude of ‘little Englandism’ e.g. the history curriculum tries to recreate a ‘mythical age of empire and past glories’, while ignoring the
history of black and Asian people.

Question 2

locked-in equality

How does Gillborn explain insitutional racism?

Answer 2

applies the concept of ‘locked-in equality’ to education. He sees ethnic inequality as “so deep rooted and so large that it is a practically inevitable feature of the
education system”

Question 3

evaluation

The overachievement of ‘model minorities’

Answer 3

Indian and Chinese students perform better than the white majority. If these two groups do so well, then how can there be institutional racism in education, as critical race theorists
claim?

Question 4

Gillborn

How do assessments negatively impact ethnic minorities?

Answer 4

• argues that ‘the assessment game’ is rigged to validate the dominant culture’s superiority.
• Independent ‘baseline assessments’ in primary schools have been replaced by the foundation stage profile (FSP in 2003.

Overnight, black pupils now appeared to be doing worse than white pupils

• e.g. in one local authority where black pupils had been the highest achievers in 2000, by 2003 the new FSP had black children ranked lower than whites across all six developmental areas that it measured