Institutional Racism (Internal)

Critical Race Theory

• Racism is an ingrained feature of society.

• Gillborn argues because it is so locked-in “it is an inevitable feature of the education system”.

Marketisation and Segregation

• Moore and Davenport’s American research shows how selection procedures lead to ethnic segregation, with minority students failing to get into better secondary schools, due to discrimination.

• They found that primary school reports were used to screen out students with language difficulties, while the application process was hard for non-English speaking parents to understand.

• These procedures favoured white pupils and disadvantaged those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

• They argue this leads to minority students going to lower achieving schools.

• This is supported by the 1993 Commission for Racial Equality that identified racial bias in school interviews.

• However, not all schools are the same.

The Ethnocentric Curriculum

• The term ‘ethnocentric’ describes an attitude or policy that gives priority to the culture and viewpoint of one particular ethnic group.

• Many sociologists see the ethnocentric curriculum as a prime example of institutional racism because it builds a racial bias into the everyday workings of the school.

• Ball criticises the national curriculum for ignoring ethnic diversity by trying to re-create a ‘mythical age of empire’ whilst ignoring black and Asian history.

• Coard argues the ethnocentric curriculum may produce underachievement. This is because in British history the image of black people as inferior undermines black children’s self-esteem and leads to their failure.

Assessment

• Gillborn argues 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 re-engineer failure.

• When tested at the beginning of school, black pupils were doing very well.

• When primary school assessments were replaced in 2003, black pupils immediately began doing worse than white pupils.

• There is much supporting evidence to show that where teachers assessments are used black pupils in particular underperform.

• It can be argued this isn’t to deliberately disadvantage black pupils but by making changes to advantage white pupils it then disadvantaged others.

Access to Opportunities

• The ‘Gifted and Talented’ programme was created with the aim of meeting the needs of more able pupils in inner-city schools.

• Gillborn argues that the official statistics show that white pupils are over twice as likely as black Caribbean pupils to be identified as gifted and talented, and five times more likely than black Africans.

• This was often because black pupils had been placed in lower sets.

• The effect is that they can only gain a C grade at best.

• However, there are many contextual programs that prioritises disadvantaged ethnic groups.

• Some could argue that tier entry is done by exam results rather than teacher recommendation so it’s objective.

The ‘New IQism’

• Access to opportunities relies heavily on teacher assessments and this works against black pupils.

• Teachers set students based on academic ability but also behaviour and attitude.

• Teachers expect black students to behave badly so set accordingly.

• Gillborn argues that teachers and policymakers make false assumptions about the nature of pupils ‘ability’ or potential.

• Gillborn argues these tests do not measure potential and is a snapshot.

• This there is blaming the teacher underachievement and not taking into account student behaviour and motivation.

General Evaluation

• Sewell rejects this view, as although he does not believe that racism has disappeared from schools, he argues that it is not powerful Enough to prevent individuals from succeeding.

• In Sewell’s view We need to focus on external factors such as boys anti-school attitudes, the peer group and the nurturing role of the father.

• Critics argue that although there is underachievement of groups such as black boys, there is also overachievement by other model minorities. For example, Indian and Chinese students perform better than the white majority.

• Therefore, institutional racism does not explain why these ethnic minorities perform so well.

• Evans claims that when examining black children’s achievement, sociologists tend to look at culture and ethnicity, but rarely their class.