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. My first concept is social class. I am going to use parental occupation as an indicator of the student’s social class. The occupations will be categorised into classes due to the amount of skill needed in the job. I believe that this is an appropriate measure due to the differences between the histories of skills teaching in each national descent. I am going to measure the concept of the student’s national descent based upon parental and grandparents birth place.
My last concept is educational achievement; I will need to relevantly measure this in order for later conclusions to be made. I am going to use 5 or more A*- C grades gained at GCSE as the standard for good educational achievement.
Method
In proving my hypothesis I aim to produce 2 sets of final percentages, 1 set reflecting the separate educational achievement of both British East African Indians and British Indians and the other reflecting the general social class, in terms of socio-economic position, of both groups. In combining and comparing these 2 sets of results I will prove my hypothesis.
In creating these 2 sets of results I am going to need to use two quantitative research methods in my proposal, 1 of primary nature and the other from a fixed secondary source.
My main primary research method is going to be a defined questionnaire asking about specific background histories and parental occupations. It is necessary for me to carry out this questionnaire in order to distinguish between both British East African Indians and British Indians, as there is no school records, to date, present defining between these specific ethnicities. It will be distributed to a fixed number (50) of students who have been recorded in school ‘Ethnic Background Record Forms’ as ‘Indian.’ The first section of the questionnaire will be asking pre-coded questions about background histories in relation to birthplace, whether pupil’s parents or grandparents were born in India, East Africa (e.g. Uganda, Kenya, Zambia etc) or other country (e.g. Britain.) There will be 2 sets of 6 tick boxes present. The first set will ask about the pupil’s father’s birthplace and grandfathers. Then 2nd set will be in relation to the pupil’s mother’s and grandmothers birthplace. By incorporating simple pre-coded boxes the information gathered will be easily comparable.
The other section of the questionnaire will be in relation to parental occupation. It will consist of a simple tick box table using the Registrar General (RG) classification, which codes for class using Social Economic Groups (SEGs). There will be 7 different boxes to choose from each offering examples of employment for simplification. From gaining details of the employment of both of the pupils parents, an approximation for the social position of the pupil’s household will be created.
My research would be carried out at 2 predominantly Asian comprehensive schools in 2 cities, which are known for their large Indian communities, London and Leicester. The set of 50 students in each school would be in key stage 4 (16 years olds) and all have been to non-selective primary schools.
My second method would be the collection of secondary data from the specific school records. The data would be of the individual GCSE results of the fixed selection of pupils. From both these and the questionnaires I will be able to create percentages of achievement for each individual pupil in relation to specific ethnic identity and class.
Potential Problems
By limiting my research solely to comprehensive schools I am not getting a normal distribution of social class as many pupils of higher social class may be in selective schooling. I may also encounter problems within my research when finding the specific number (50) of pupils in each school who fit my exact specification.
It may not always be possible to gain information regarding both pupil’s parents due to separation, divorce or bereavement. This will create problems within the measurement of social class as the exact class of a pupil cannot be fully defined unless both are accounted for. In cases of bereavement social class may not be lowered due to government benefits, however in cases of divorce social class can be heavily affected. Within my questionnaire however, I am unable to account for such cases.
Pupil’s parents may be from different social classes, with these cases accurate conclusions may not be reached in the definition of student’s class. Parents places of birth may also differ, however, whenever East African birth in stated once on any parents or grandparents history it will be counted as the pupils ethnicity.
It is possible that problems may be encountered in the understanding of the questionnaire; as it is being carried out in mixed ability schools and also by pupils who potentially have EAL and then possibly literacy problems. To overcome this problem I have tried to make the questionnaire as simple as possible. Pupils may not be aware of their parent’s occupation, this would create problems in the collection of accurate information relating to class.
I may encounter problems in the collection of my secondary GCSE data in relation to individual pupils. This would be because of individual pupil data protection act that schools must obey by. This could create problems in creating defined ethnic achievement percentages. I could overcome this problem however by creating an extra tick-box section in my questionnaire asking for the number of A*-C GCSE grades obtained.
To test out how much my research is affected by the potential problems I will carry out a pilot study and then make further assessed changes to the proposal.
References: Sociology ‘Themes and perspectives,’ Haralambos and Holborn, fifth edition. ‘Sociology in Focus,’ P.Taylor, CPL.
DFL, official Asian education statistics, 2000 published in the Guardian newspaper