Internal Factors (2): Institutional Racism

What do Troyna and Williams argue?

That, to explain ethnic differences in achievement, we need to go beyond simply examining individual teacher racism. We must also look at how schools and colleges routinely and even unconsciously discriminate against ethnic minorities.

What do Troyna and Williams make a distinction between?

• Individual racism.

• Institutional racism.

What is individual racism?

Racism that results from the prejudiced views of individual teachers and others.

What is institutional racism?

Discrimination that is built into the way institutions such as schools and colleges operate.

What does critical race theory see racism as?

An ingrained feature of society. This means that it involved not just the intentional actions of individuals, but more importantly, institutional racism.

For critical theorists such as Roithmayr, what is institutional racism?

A ‘locked-in inequality‘, The scale of historical discrimination is so large that there no longer needs to be any conscious intent to discriminate - the inequality becomes self-perpetuating: it feeds on itself.

What does Gillborn apply the concept of locked-in inequality to?

Education. He sees ethnic inequality as ‘so deep rooted and so large that it is a practically inevitable feature of the education system‘.

What does Gillborn argue?

That because marketisation gives schools more scope to select pupils, it allows negative stereotypes to influence decisions about school admissions.

What do Moore and Davenport’s show?

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

What do selection procedures favour?

White pupils and disadvantages those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

What do Moore and Davenport conclude?

That selection leads to an ethnically stratified education system.

What did the Commission for racial equality identify?

Similar biases in Britain, it noted that racism in school admissions procedures means that ethnic minority children are more likely to end up in unpopular schools.

What did the report by the commission for racial equality identify as the reasons for ethnic minority pupils ending up in unpopular schools?

• Reports from primary schools that stereotypes minority pupils.

• Racist bias in interviews for school places.

• Lack of information and application forms in minority languages.

• Ethnic minority parents are often unaware of how the waiting list system works and the importance of deadlines.

What does the term ethnocentric describe?

An attitude or policy that gives priority to the culture and viewpoint of one particular ethnic group, while disregarding others.

What is the ethnocentric curriculum?

A curriculum that reflects the culture of one ethnic group - usually the dominant culture.

What do many sociologists see the ethnocentric curriculum as a prime example of?

Institutional racism as it builds a racial bias into the everyday workings of schools and colleges.

What do examples of the ethnocentric curriculum include?

• Languages, literature and music Troyna and Willams note the meagre provision for teaching Asian languages as compared with European languages. David describes the National Curriculum as a specifically British' curriculum that largely gnores non-European languages, literature and music.

• History, Ball (1994) criticises the National Curriculum for ignoring ethnic diversity and for promoting an attitude of 'little Englandism'. For example, the history curriculum tries to recreate a 'mythical age of empire and past glories' while ignoring the history of black and Asian people.

What does Coard explain?

How the ethnocentric curriculum may produce underachievement. For example. in history, the British may be presented as bringing civilisation to the ‘primitive‘ peoples they colonised. He argues that this image of black people as inferior undermines black children’s elf-esteem and leads to their failure.

Is it clear what impact the ethnocentric curriculum has?

No, for example, while it may ignore Asian culture, Indian and Chinese pupils’ achievement is above the national average.

What does Stone argue?

That black children do not in fact suffer from low self-esteem.

What does Gillborn argue?

That ‘the assessment game‘ is rigged so as to validate the dominant culture’s superiority. If black children succeed as a group, ‘the rules will be changed to reengineer failure‘. For example, primary school sin the past used ‘baseline assessments‘ which tested pupils when they started compulsory schooling. However, these were replaced in 2003 by the foundation stage profile.

What was the result of the change from the baseline assessments to the foundation stage profiles?

Overnight, black pupils now appeared to be doing worse than white pupils. For example, in one local authority where black children in 2000 had been the highest achievers on entry to school, by 2003, the new FSP had black children ranked lower than whites across all six areas it measured.

How does Gillborn explain the reversal in black pupils achievement?

As a result of two related institutional factors:

• The FSP is based entirely on teachers’ judgements, whereas baseline assessments often used written tests as well.

• A change in the timing: the FSP is completed at the end of reception year, whereas baseline assessments were done at the start of primary school.

He argues that both of these factors increase the risk f teachers’ stereotyping affecting the results.

What did Sanders and Horn find?

That where more weighting was given to tasks assessed by teachers rather than by written exams, the gap between scores of different ethnic groups widened.

Why was the ‘gifted and talented programme‘ created?

With the aim of meeting the needs of more able pupils in inner-city schools. While this might seem to benefit bright pupils from minority groups, Gillborn points out that official statistics show whites are over twice as likely as Black Caribbeans to be identified as gifted and talented, and five times more likely than Black Africans.

What did Tikly et al. find?

That in 30 schools in the 'Aiming High' initiative to raise Black Caribbean pupils' achievement, blacks were nevertheless more likely than whites to be entered for lower tier GCSE exams. This was often because black pupils had been placed in lower sets. The effect is that they can only gain a grade C at best.

What did Strand find?

That there was a white-black gap in achievement in maths and science tests at age 14. He found this to be the result of black pupils being systematically under-represented in entry to higher tier tests.

What does Strand suggest?

That ethnic differences in entry to test tiers reflect teachers’ expectations, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What did access to opportunities such as higher sets or the gifted and talented programme depend heavily on?

Teachers’ assessments of pupils’ ability. This heavily disadvantages black pupils.

What do teachers place students in sets on the basis of?

Not only prior attainment, but also on disciplinary concerns and perceptions of their ‘attitude‘.` As Gillborn and Youdell found, teachers had radicalised expectations that black pupils would pose more discipline problems

In what Gillborn calls the new IQism, what does he argue?

That teachers and policymakers make false assumptions about the nature of pupils’ ‘ability‘ or ‘potential‘. They see potential as a fixed quality that can be easily measured, and one a pupils’ potential has been measured, they can be put into the ‘right‘ set or stream, onto the gifted and talented programme, and so on.

What do Gillborn and Youdell note?

That secondary schools are increasingly using old style intelligence (IQ) tests to allocate pupils to different streams on entry. For Gillborn, however, there is no genuine measure of ‘potential‘. All a test can tell us what a person has learnt already or can do now, not what they may be able to do in the future.

From his analysis of school assessment methods, programmes for gifted children and attempts to measure pupils’ potential, what foes Gillborn conclude?

That the education system is institutionally racist, creating an environment in which ethnic minority pupils are routinely disadvantaged.

What do criticisms of Gillborn’s view that ethnic differences in achievement are the result of institutional racism focus on?

Two issues:

• The underachievement of some minority groups such as black boys.

• The ‘overachievement‘ of Indian and Chinese pupils.

What does Sewell argue?

Although he does not believe that racism has disappeared from schools, he argues it is not powerful enough to prevent individuals for succeeding. Rather, in his view, we need to focus on external factors such as boys’ anti-school attitudes, the peer group and the nurturing role of the father.

What do critics to the idea that the education system is institutionally racist point out?

To the fact that, as well as the underachievement of black boys, there is also ‘overachievement‘ by other, ‘model minorities‘.

How does Gillborn respond to critics of institutional racism?

He esponds by arguing that the image of Indians and Chinese as hardworking 'model minorities' performs an ideological function. It conceals the fact that the education system is institutionally racist:

• It makes the system appear fair and meritocratic - that Indians and Chinese succeed because they make the effort and take advantage of the opportunities offered to them.

• It justifies the failure of other minorities, such as blacks - that they fail because they are unable or unwilling to make the effort, due to their 'unaspirational" home culture.

• It ignores the fact that 'model minorities' still suffer racism in schools. For example, Chinese students report similar levels of harassment to Black Caribbeans.

What does Evans argue?

That, to fully understand the relationship between ethnicity and achievement, we need to look at how ethnicity interacts with gender and class.

What does Connolly show?

Connolly shows how pupils and teachers construct masculinity differently depending on a child's ethnicity. Teachers saw black boys as disruptive under-achievers and controlled them by punishing them more and by channelling their energies into sport. The boys responded by seeking status in non-academic ways, such as playing kiss-chase and football

By contrast, teachers saw Asian boys as passive, conformist, keen and academic; when they misbehaved, they were seen as immature rather than threatening. Other boys picked on them to assert their own masculinity and excluded them from playing football. Both teachers and pupils saw Asian boys as more 'feminine', vulnerable and in need of protection from bullying

What does Connolly note?

That there is an 'interactions effect': class and gender interact differently with ethnicity depending on which ethnic group we are looking at. For instance, there is a bigger gap between the achievements of white middle-class and white working-clas pupils than there is between black middle-class and black working-class pupils.