Ethnic differences in achievement

General differences

According to percentage of pupils achieveing 5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE 2013 - Chinese do best (about 80 perc), Gypsy/Roma do worst - 15 perc, also black caribbean pupils usually do worse. (50 perc)

Cultural deprivation - external

Inadequate socialisation at home.

Cultural deprivation - external (Intellectual + Linguistic skills)

Low-income black children lack intellectual stimulation and enriching experiences, leaving them poorly equipped for school. Bereiter + Engelmann - See their language as ungrammatical, disjointed, and incapable of expressing absract ideas. / Also some children may not speak english at home.

Cultural deprivation - external (Attitudes and values)

May have lack of motivation, due to the mindset they are socialised in. Usually children are socialised into a competitive, willing mindset, but they are socialised into a fatalistic, ‘live for today’ mindset

Cultural deprivation - external (Family structure and Parental support)

Failure to socialise = dysfunctional family structure. Moynihan - Black families headed by lone-parent female, meaning children deprived of adequate care as mother struggles financially withour breadwinner. Also, boys have no male role model to motivate. This is a cycle, these children go to school then become these dysfunctional families. Pryce - Black people less resistant to racism, leading to less self-esteem and motivation, compared to asians who are resistant, due to colonialism, asians didnt lose their culture to this

Cultural deprivation - external (Sewell - Fathers, gangs, and culture)

Not lack of fathers that lead to underachievement, but lack of ‘tough love’ and fatherly nurturing(firm, fair, respectful), results in black boys finding it hard to navigate adolescence. In this absence, gangs offer this love, which these boys are subject to as he found their biggest pressure was their peers. These gangs are anti-school (obvi). Asians do better as they are socialised into ‘Asian work ethic’

Cultural deprivation criticisms - external

Driver - Ignores positive effects of ethnicity on achievement. Black female families provide girls with an independent, head strong female role model. / Lawrence - Black pupils underachieve due to racism, not lack of self esteem. / Keddie - Victim blaming.

Material deprivation - external (Palmer)

Lacl of physical necessities essential for today’s society. Substandard housing and low income. Almost half of ethnic minority children live in low-income households, also twice as likely to be unemployed, and around three more times likely to be homeless. Reasons:Economically depressed areas with low wage rates, cultural factors, language skills, discrimination in work market.

Racism in wider society - external

Rex - Racism leads to social exclusion, in housing, ethnic minorities likely to be forced into subtsandard housing, while white people of the same class arent. And in employment aswell.

Black pupils and discipline - internal (Gillborn + Youdell

Teachers quicker to discipline black pupils than others for same behaviour. This is a result of ‘racialise expectations’, where they assumed black pupils will have behaviour problems, mininterpreting their behaviour as a threat or challenge to authority, leading to more conflict as pupils will respond negatively, feeling ‘picked on’. Bourne - Likely to see black pupils as a threat and exclude them.

Black pupils and streaming - internal

Foster - Bad stereotypes likely to have them placed in lower streams, leading to SFP, and teachers focusing less on them as they may not recieve A*-C grades at GCSE.

Pupil identities - internal (Archer)

Teachers dominant discourse(way of seeing smth) determines pupils identities. Ideal pupil identity - White, M/C, masculinised, normal sexuality achieves in ‘right’ way. Pathologised - Asian, ‘deserving poor’,achieves in ‘wrong’ way feminine, asexual or oppressed sexuality, seen as conformist who forces overachievement. Demonised - Black/White, W/C, hyper sexual, underachiever. Black usually deemed as challenging, loud, overly sexual.

Pupil responses and subcultures - internal (Fuller

Untypical Black girls who achieved in yr 11, london school. Recieved neg labels, but channeled anger into educational success. Didn’t seek approval from teachers, deemed them as racist, got approval from achievement. Only conformed to schoolwork. Pupils still succeeded w/o conforming, and didnt conform to neg label.

Pupil responses and subcultures - internal (Mizra

Ambitious black girls who faced teacher racism, discouraging them through advice about careers and options. Colour-blind - Believe in equality but dont challenge racism. Liberal chauvinists - Low expectations of black pupils as sees them as culturally deprived. Overt racists - Discriminate towards black people and see them as inferior. Girls spent time trying to avoid racism, e.g not taking part in lessons and avoiding certain teachers, making them do worse.

Pupil responses and subcultures - internal (Sewell)

Rebels - Often excluded, rejected school as a whole, fed into racist stereotype. Conformist - Keen to succeed, accepted school as a whole, not part of subculture to avoid stereotypes. Hated by rebels. Retreatist - Disconnected from both school and black subcultures. Hated by rebels. Innovators - Pro-education but anti-school, valued school but didnt show it, associated with rebels to maintain symbolic capital.

Institutional racism - internal

Racism that is built into education, discriminating against ethnic minorities. Critical race theory - Racism is ingraved in society. Gillborn - So deep rooted, and so large that it is inevitable.

Marketisation and Segregation - internal (Gillborn / Davenport + Moore)

Marketisation allows stereotypes to affect school admissions. / Ethnic pupils get placed in worser secondary schools due to discrimination. e.g primary school, used language screening in application to spot pupils with language difficulties, making it difficult for ppl that english is second lang. Commission for racial equality 1988 - Found racial biases, e.g in interviews for schools, reports from primary schools stereotyping pupils

The ethnocentric curriculum - internal

A curriculum that gives priority to a particular culture and ethnic group, disregarding others, building racial bias into people. Lan, lit, music - Troyna + Williams, schools teach european languages rather than asian. History - Ball - Ignores ethnically diverse history and focuses on english, focusing on empires and colonialism, putting blacks as inferior, lowering self esteem of children.

Assessment - internal (Gillborn)

Rigged to validate dominant cultures superiority. If black children succeed as a group, it is re-engineered to promote failure, e.g primary schools used to use bassline assessments, when blacks became highest achievers, it was switched to foundation stage profile, which made them do worse than whites. Due to FSP being based on teacher judgements, and FSP being done at end of year(FSP), as opposed to start.(bassline)

Access to opportunities - internal

Gifted and talented - Meets needs of more able pupils, gillborn - whites over twice as likely to be picked over black caribbeans. Exam tiers - Tikly - Blacks likely to be placed in lower tiers,bc placed in lower sets, but not based on ability, also based on teacher opinions.

New IQism - internal (Gillborn)

Teachers make false assumptions about a pupils ability/potential, which is a fixed quality, easily measured, and doesnt move. Once measured, put in ‘right’ set/stream. However no genuine measure of ability, just what someone has learnt.