'Indian achievement in Britain is dependent upon social class based upon specific national histories.'

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Sociology Research Proposal

Hypothesis/Aim

The term ‘Asian’ covers a variety of national, cultural and religious heritages. Within education ‘Asian’ is used widely to generalise the many groups represented within the term, especially in relation to educational achievement. For example, government statistics in 2000 stated that 49% of ‘Asian’ students gained 5 A*- C GCSE’s. I believe that by generalising these groups in education, the exact reasons behind underachievement are masked leading to the neglect of particular ‘Asian’ underachieving groups. I predict that once these generalisations are broken down and specific ethnic histories are understood, underachievement will be able to be laid down to reasons of class. Therefore my hypothesis is- ‘Indian achievement in Britain is dependent upon social class based upon specific national histories.’

Context/Concepts

The term ‘Asian’ represents 4 majors groups: East Asian, Pacific Islander, South East Asian and South Asian. The Indian subgroup derives from the major ‘South Asian’ group that also includes Pakistani’s and Bangladeshi’s.

The deep neglect of ‘Asian’ groups can be seen visibly when government statistics are broken down further to represent the groups classed within ‘South Asian.’ When the stated 49% of Asian students receiving 5 or more A*- C grades (government statistics 2000 published in the Guardian newspaper) is actually broken down, it is seen that 62% of students of Indian origin received 5 or more A*- C grades whereas by contrast only 30 % of students of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin gained the same. Reasons of national history and social class can account for these differences. The contemporary divisions and formation of the states of Pakistan followed by Bangladesh and therefore the migration patterns to Britain could have lead to differences in the social classes of the groups and therefore can be counted as direct reasons for the achievement inequalities.

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D. Smith and S. Tomlinson’s study ‘ The School Effect’ (1989) concluded that the differences between ethnic groups, in terms of exam results ‘are small’ but by comparison the differences between classes are large. I am going to be building on this context when looking into the educational achievement differences between Indian ethnic classes and defining these classes upon national descent.

I am going to further breakdown the term ‘Indian’ into those of direct Indian descent and those of direct East African descent. By doing this I am enabling differences in national history to define for the social class inequalities. ...

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