Ethnic Inequalities in Education

Cultural Deprivation

AO2- Ethnic minorities can be held back with a lack of reasoning skills, a lack of problem solving aswell as poor language skills. For example, spoken and written communication can be ungrammatical, disjointed and lack abstraction- restricted code.

AO3- However, Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi students are outperforming British students in GCSES.

Moynihan Vicious cycle of cultural deprivation

Inadequately socialised children> Fail at school> Don’t value the education system> Become Inadequate parents.

New right argument to black underachievement

• The new right argue that black underachievement is due to:

  • Lack of male role models

  • Failure to embrace meritocratic British culture.

  • Less resistant to racism and lack self esteem leads to failure.

Family set up for 50% of Afro- Caribbean families

• lone parent, with 90% being female dominated.

• This can lead to:

  • Financial struggles (hidden costs of free education)

  • Lack of father figure means a lack of role models (in terms of achievement)

  • Lack of disciplinarian/ instrumental male leading to misbehaviour at school.

  • “single parent families breed delinquents”- Patricia Morgan

What does fatalism refer to?

Black students are more confident to place success or failure in exams Dow to the teacher to the exam questions, neglecting their agency or free will to affect the outcomes of the exams.

Sewell and Black Male failure:

• Lack of tough love- firm and fair parenting that mirrors schools authority.

• Lack of father figure means boys fail to overcome the emotional and behavioural difficulties with adolescence

• Street and gang culture offers an alternative form of love and status through anti school subcultures

• Peer pressure at school to not conform to the ideal pupil but TV and music representation of the idealised self i.e. that promoted by rap and other niche music.

Material Deprivation

Ethnic minorities are more likely to face poverty and low income housing, which affects:

• Diet and health

• Access to educational resources

• Space to study at home

Palmer 2012- Nearly half of ethnic minority children live in low income households compared to a quarter of white children.

Explains part of the gap in achievement

Rex- Argues that discrimination in housing and employment leads to social exclusion and poor living conditions, reinforcing educational disadvantage

Labelling and Teacher Racism

Gillbourn and Youdell - Rationing education

• Found that teachers were quicker to discipline Black pupils due to “racialised expectations”

• Teachers saw black students as threatening or disruptive, leading to more exclusions.

Wright- Ethnic minorities in the classroom

• Found that Asian girls were often overlooked and received less attention from teachers.

• Teachers assumed they had poor English, even when they didn’t, showing subtle bias.

Pupil subcultures and responses

Sewell- Four responses of Black Boys;

1. Conformists- Majority, keen to succeed

2. Innovators- Pro-education but anti-school

3. Retreatists- Disconnected from school and peers

4. Rebels- Rejected school rules

Institutional racism

Gill born- Critical race theory in Education

• Argues that schools are institutionally racist.

• Black students are under represented in top sets and gifted and talented programmes due to teacher bias, even when academically able.

Evaluation of Ethnic inequality explanations

Strengths:

• Highlights institutional processes and subtle forms of racism.

• Considers multiple factors: both in-school and out of school

• Supported by quantitative data (achievement stats) and qualitative research (interviews and observations)

Criticisms

• Some explanations like cultural deprivation are seen as blaming the victim

• Deterministic as it assumes all minority students internalise negative labels.

• Ignores positive experiences and resistance- e.g. many minority students succeed despite being disadvantaged.

• Overlooks gender and class- which can intersect with ethnicity in complex ways.