Assess whether those from ethnic minorities achieve less in education than those from other ethnic groups

Despite the Swann report 1985 indicating positive results for ethic minorities, evidence also shows that the Asian group of Bangladeshi origin did particularly badly. In the study of 5,196 Caribbean and Asians and 2,867 whites, results showed that Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani people were least well qualified. In the 2002 Youth Cohort Study, evidence showed that 51% of all students achieved 5 GCSE's at grade C or above, apart from Pakistani and Bangladeshi, who still fell behind. The study also showed that Pakistani and Bangladeshi 18 year olds were less likely to have A/AS level qualifications or to be studying for degree level qualifications. Evidence in one study that compared those who were born in Britain or were less than 15 years old when they moved here and those who migrated here after the age of 16, showed that overall, second generation achievement was much better than the migrants generation. However, the results showed that Pakistanis and Bangladeshis had made the least progress.

However it is important not to generalise, as males and females from different ethnic groups experience different levels of success, suggesting that gender is an important factor within ethic groups. In a study by Mahood 1997, despite the performance of Caribbean's being generally lower than whites, the results showed that a substantial number of Caribbean men had vocational qualifications, suggesting they may be more practical than academic. Caribbean women in the same study wee shown to be more likely to have an A level/below degree qualification than white women. This is a typical example that general results do not always the reality. Although in the study the levels of success were low, it is not necessarily because they are less capable, but possibly due to their culture, different areas of education are more important to them than other ethnic groups. Other evidence suggesting that gender is important within ethic groups is that Pakistani and Bangladeshi women appear to perform worse than anyone else. In one study, Bangladeshi women were the least educationally qualified. In another study, Mahood noted that ethnic minorities were more likely to stay on in post compulsory education, except for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women. It is important to recognise that both these ethnic groups are Muslims and tend adopt a very religious lifestyle. Women are treated very differently to men within these two origins and this may therefore be a reason for their under achievement. This suggests that gender and also religion are important factors for different educational achievement within different ethnic groups.

There have been many suggestions as to why different ethnic groups produce different levels of achievement. Some commentators have attributed differences in levels of achievement between whites and blacks to genetically inherited levels of intelligence. Hernstein and Murray 1994 tentatively suggest genetic rather than environmental factors when looking at levels of achievement. However, this idea has been strongly opposed and Pilkington 1997 in particular dismisses the idea of a genetic basis for IQ differences between ethnic groups because race as a biologically meaningful concept is questionable. Bodmer 1972, instead points to over 200 years of prejudice and discrimination preventing an equalisation of environment.

When considering cultural and material factors, despite Drivers and Rogers 1981 suggesting that language speaking competence was not a factor in levels of achievement, Mahood found that the lack fluency of the English language was a problem for some groups, especially the older age groups. He also found that amongst the low achieving Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, 16% Pakistani and 20% Bangladeshi were not fluent English speakers.

Family life does not appear to contribute to the under achievement of certain ethnic groups, as the majority of evidence shows the families of ethnic minorities to be supportive, close knit and encouraging. There is only a small piece of evidence suggesting otherwise. Pryce 1979 argued that family life for West Indians in Bristol was turbulent and lacked group identity, suggesting this could be a contributing factor to the poorer educational results of ethnic minorities.

Social class however does appear to have a significant impact on the difference in achievement within and between ethnic groups. Gilborn and Mirza 2000 used data from the Youth Cohort Study to analyse class, ethnicity and educational achievement between 1988 to 1997. They found that in all ethnic groups, children from non-manual backgrounds tend to be considerably more successful than children from manual backgrounds. This evidence shows that social status does contribute, as well as ethnicity to the differences in educational achievement. However, the study showed that even black children form non-manual backgrounds did relatively poor in GCSE's. This indicated that despite social class being an important factor, it does not override the influence of ethnic inequality, as concluded by Gilborn and Mirza.

When considering whether racism is a contributing factor to the differences in educational achievement, Swann noted that only a tiny majority of teachers were racist but there was evidence of 'unintentional' racism. Coard's 1971 found that West Indian children developed low self image and low expectations as a result of teachers expecting them to fail, due to their way of speaking, images in books and attitudes in the playground. Wright 1992 also found evidence of discrimination in the playground. Asian girls for example were invisible to the teachers and Afro-Caribbean boys were on the receiving end of a lot of the teachers' negative attentions. There was also evidence of discrimination in the playground from white children against Asians and Afro-Caribbean children. However Miza 1992 found that black girls in her study had positive self-esteem and were willing to work hard but were held back and misguided by well-meaning teachers. This shows evidence that not all racism that exists is intentional. It is argued that racism continues to play an important part in disadvantaging ethnic minorities and schools fail to help students from certain ethnic minorities to achieve their full potential. There is also evidence that when students take an aptitude test for teachers to use an indicator of likely performance in GCSE's, black pupils are more likely to be placed in lower sets with lower priority. This highlights the importance of racism in educational achievement. There is also some evidence to suggest that gender affects racism. In studies such as those carried out by Connolley, evidence showed that black boys and girls were generally viewed negatively by teachers. They were usually on the receiving end of the majority of the teachers' negative attentions. However, South Asian boys, due to ties with aspects such as religion were viewed as immature rather than deviant. The majority of their behaviour was unnoticed and they were seen as passive, almost passive and were excluded by other boys. They had difficulty obtaining male status, although teachers had high hopes of their academic work. South Asian girls were viewed as being even more obedient and hard working despite showing the same types of mixed behaviour as their other female peers. Teachers tended to spend more time with these girls as their hopes for them high. This highlights the importance of gender combined with race, not just one or the other, when looking at the differences in educational achievement. However it must also be acknowledged that not all pupils passively accept label's given to them and it can therefore be argued that racism is not as influential in educational achievement as some consider it to be.

It is clear from numerous sources of evidence that the educational achievement of different ethnic groups is very mixed. Although some studies indicate an improvement in the performance within certain ethnic minorities and even indicate that some ethnic minorities perform better than whites and other ethnic groups, there are still some which prove be behind in their achievements. However, this fact cannot be generalised as being due to one particular factor. As evidence has shown, many factors such as ethnicity, social status and gender all combine to affect the achievement of individuals within all ethnic groups and not just one factor is completely responsible for the differences and inequalities within different ethnic groups.