To what extent does ethnicity affect educational attainment?

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Samia Rashid

To what extent does ethnicity affect educational attainment?

This essay will be discussing the correlation between ethnicity and educational attainment. Whether your race affects your life chances or if other factors are involved as well. It will be looking at different ethnic minorities and how well they are doing in school.

Although most schools are seen as multicultural, you can see clear differences between ethnic minorities. Statistics show that clearly some ethnicities are doing poorer than others. At the moment Black Caribbean boys are achieving the least amount of GCSE A*-C grades whereas more than 50% of Chinese girls are achieving the most GCSE’s. There are many factors as to why some ethnicities do better than others. Ethnicity can have a major affect on your achievement but other things like- social class, gender and location can also play a part in how well you do.

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Success or failure can be influenced by what happens within the school and classroom. If teachers have low expectations of an ethnic minority it may affect the actual progress of a pupil. This is known as the self fulfilling prophecy. If a teacher labels most Bangladeshi boys as ‘not very bright and able’. The teacher has labeled the group and made a prediction about them. Because the teacher has low expectation, he/she will except below average homework. Also teachers will not encourage the pupils as they are already labeled as ‘failures’. As the teacher has not helped the Bangladeshi ...

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