Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Ethnic differences in achievement - Coggle Diagram
Ethnic differences in achievement
General trends in ethnic differences in achievement
White pupils' achievements are very similar to the national average - as they account for about four fifths of all pupils.
According to a
DfES (2010)
study, only 23% of White boys on Free School Meals - a common measure of low income - gained 5 A*-C grades at GCSE.
Chinese, Indian and Asian students consistently perform above National average at GCSE.
Black Carribean students, especially boys, often perform below below national average - Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups are also a concern.
Cultural deprivation
The claim that some minority ethnic group children underachieve due to their own deficiencies as a result of inadequate socialisation by their parents, through: language, attitudes and values, family structure and parental support.
-Parental attitudes and support-
Pilkington
suggests that children from some ethnic minority groups get greater parental support than others, eg: Asian families are stereotyped to have supportive attitudes towards academics more than Black Caribbean families.
-
Moynihan
suggested that high-levels of female-headed, lone-parent Black families mean that children are not given adequate support in education because there is simply not time with the financial struggle that their mothers face.
EV/Alternatively,
Moon and Ivins
conducted a large-scale, representative study of 1500 EM parents and concluded that there was in fact greater parental involvement in education amongst EM compared to the population as a whole.
-
Sewell
discusses how absent fathers can explain the underachievement of Black boys - he argues that rather than the absence of a role model, it is the absence of 'tough love' which leads many Black boys to have difficulties in their upbringing. The absence of fatherly love and guidance leads some of these boys to join street gangs that present a negative role model of anti-school Black masculinity. Black students underperform in comparison to Asian students as a result of differential socialisation and a poor attitude towards education.
Language-
Bereiter and Engelmann (1966)
claimed that the language spoken by low-income Black American families is inadequate for educational success, arguing that it is ungrammatical and disjointed.
However, critics strongly reject this claim.
Labov
found that Black American speech was perfectly logical.
Baker-Bell
sees views such as that of
Bereiter and Engelmann
as examples of ‘anti-Black linguistic racism’, labelling them as inferior.
Baker-Bell
argues that they are equally valid but that ‘White mainstream English’ dominates the education system and wider society - ‘linguistic violence’.
-
The Swann Report
suggested that linguistic skills could possibly hold back children, although it was concluded that for the majority, this was not the case. These language difficulties may cause problems between pupils and teachers where a difficulty in communication could be mistaken for a difficulty in ability, potentially leading to the SFP.
Language may not be as important in explaining underachievement as some claim.
Dernie and McLean
ranked different reasons for the underachievement of Black Caribbean pupils in order of importance, finding that language barriers and literacy levels came well behind internal factors such as teachers’ low expectations, stereotyping and institutional racism.
Attitudes and values- Cultural deprivation theorists argue that some minority ethnic group children are socialised into a subculture that instils a fatalistic attitude that does not value education and leaves them unequipped for success.
-However, studies show that EM pupils tend to have high aspirations - using large-scale, nationally representative data,
Platt and Parsons
found that among 7-14 year olds, EM girls and boys had higher career aspirations than their White counterparts and were more likely to aspire to highly-paid jobs - gap was large between EM girls and White girls.
EV-
Driver
criticises cultural deprivation theory for ignoring the positive effects of ethnicity on achievement, eg: Black Carribean families provide girls with positive role models of strong independent women.
**Keddie sees cultural deprivation as a victim-blaming approach - EM groups are not culturally deprived, but culturally different.
Material deprivation
One experience shared by EM families is material deprivation.
-Palmer (2012)-
Around 50% of EM children live in low-income households, meaning that differences in achievement may result from factors like poor diet, health and housing.
-Gillborn and Mizra-
EM are more likely to be unemployed and therefore unable to afford some of the ‘hidden costs of schooling’ as suggested by
Bull
. According to
Gillborn and Mizra
, social class can be seen as the main factor in explaining DEA, but this cannot be considered alone as other factors and inequalities between ethnic groups exist.
Structure of the family
Lupton
finds that the reason for Asian children's greater performance in education is the result of the Asian family structure - finding that Asian children are very respectful towards authority in the family and believed that this had an impact on schooling, as parents were more likely to support teachers in disciplining their children.
Lupton
found that teachers reported greater disciplinary problems with White WC pupils and often cited a lack of parental interest in education as a reason for this.
Modood
found that differences in support persist into further education, as EM students are now more likely to enter HE than their White counterparts.
Racism and race discrimination
Rex
suggests that racism itself can explain why many EM suffer from material deprivation, believing that EM are forced into poor quality housing as a result of discrimination.
Wood et al
highlighted the effect of discrimination by sending fictitious job applications to companies - for each job, they sent in three different applications: one apparently from a White person, and two which appeared to be from members of EM groups. Result revealed direct discrimination with a much larger percentage of 'White' applicants offered the chance at an interview despite the applications from EM being almost identical. This racism in wider society is likely to lead to material deprivation and impact the educational success of many ethnic minority children.
White WC Underachievement
McCulloch
found that EM pupils are more likely to aspire to go to University than White pupils - low aspirations could stem due to parental support.
Lupton
studied 4 WC schools: two predominantly White, one majority Pakistani and one from an ethnically mixed community. It was found that behaviour and discipline was poorer in White schools despite few children on FSM. Teachers blamed this on lower parental support and negative parental attitudes towards schools.
EM groups were more likely to see schooling as a 'way up in society'.
How is cultural deprivation solved?
Main Policy- Compensatory education: Giving extra resources and support for schools in deprived areas. EV- Often criticised for imposing the dominant culture on individuals who already have their own.
Multicultural education is suggested - a policy that recognises the values of the minority culture and includes them in the curriculum.