History > 2008 > UK > Education (I)

Education:

Black Caribbean children held back

by institutional racism in schools,

says study

Polly Curtis, education editor
The Guardian, Friday September 5 2008
This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday September 05 2008
on p3 of the Top stories section.
It was last updated at 10:18 on September 05 2008.

Black Caribbean pupils are being subjected to institutional racism in English schools which can dramatically undermine their chances of academic success, according to a new study.

Researchers have uncovered evidence that teachers are routinely under-estimating the abilities of some black pupils, suggesting that assumptions about behavioural problems are overshadowing their academic talents.

The findings, based on a survey which tracked 15,000 pupils through their education, add weight to the theory that low achievement among some black students is made worse because teachers don't expect them to succeed.

Black education groups welcomed the evidence, calling for urgent measures to be taken to stamp out any covert racism in schools. But other experts said the study was evidence that there needed to be new efforts to tackle behavioural problems among young black Caribbean pupils.

The research examined the profile of pupils entered by teachers to take higher-tier papers in their maths and science tests at 14. Pupils can only get top marks by sitting these papers, and the tests influence the range of GCSEs they go on to take.

White pupils were significantly more likely to be entered for the top tiers than their black Caribbean, Pakistani, black African and Bangladeshi classmates.

Most of the differences were explained by the pupils' previous results or by other factors which might have put them at a disadvantage, such as the level of education reached by their mothers, entitlement to free meals, and truancy and exclusion - all strong predictors of academic success.

But for a significant proportion of Black Caribbean pupils, there was no academic explanation for them being excluded from the harder papers.

Dr Steve Strand from Warwick University, the author of the study, said: "After accounting for all measured factors, the under-representation is specific to this one ethnic group and indicates that, all other things being equal, for every three white British pupils entered for the higher tiers, only two black Caribbean pupils are entered."

He concludes that "institutional racism" and low expectations by teachers explain the missing black Caribbean students from top-tier exams.

"By 'institutional racism' I mean organisational arrangements that may have disproportionately negative impacts on some ethnic groups," he said.

He said other research suggests that teachers' judgment of pupils' academic ability could be warped by behavioural problems. "It is widely perceived that black Caribbean pupils are more confrontational. The question is, how much is real behavioural problems and how much is a problem between teachers and pupils.

"Teachers might say it is about pupils' behaviour. Black Caribbean parents will say it's teachers prejudicing against their kids. Others say behavioural issues are a response to low expectations from teachers ... To break the cycle, the best policy lever we have is with the teachers."

Strand's research is based on the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, managed by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. He will present his findings at the British Educational Research Association's annual conference in Edinburgh today.

Beaula McCalla, who runs the Erondu Foundation, for black Caribbean pupils in Bristol, said: "There is a problem with institutional racism in schools. It's about low expectations of pupils."

However, others questioned the conclusion. Tony Sewell, an education consultant and columnist for the Voice newspaper, said there is "a link between behaviour and academic outcome. It doesn't mean that's evidence of institutional racism. It's evidence that we need to address properly the complex reasons why black Caribbean pupils behave badly. We can't just say it's white racist teachers."

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "Since 2003, the percentage increase in the number of black Caribbean pupils achieving five good GCSEs has been almost double the national average, meaning that the gap has narrowed by eight percentage points. But we know there is more to do."

In numbers

A third of the most capable black Caribbean pupils are not entered to take the hardest papers in tests at 14

Black Caribbean and mixed white-and-black Caribbean children are excluded at rates three times greater than that for white children

In 2007 44.9% of black Caribbean pupils, and 47.3% of pupils of mixed white and black Caribbean heritage, achieved 5 or more A*-C grades, compared to 57.3% nationally

The gap between black Caribbean achievement and the national average at GCSE has narrowed by eight percentage points in four years

In 2005 there were twice as many black men in prison in the UK than in universities

Education:
Black Caribbean children held back by institutional racism in schools, says study,
G, 5.9.2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/05/raceineducation.raceinschools

Cambridge drops

foreign language requirement

Saturday March 15, 2008
Guardian
Debbie Andalo


The University of Cambridge is proposing to drop the requirement for a foreign language GCSE as part of its admissions criteria to attract more children from state schools.

Cambridge said it is the only university that still insists on a core of subjects students must have studied if they want to apply for a place at one of its colleges, which includes a GCSE level A to C in a foreign language.

But from next September Cambridge wants to scrap the system and leave it up to individual departments to specify the subjects and qualifications required.

One reason behind the change was the government's decision to drop a compulsory foreign language from the national curriculum after 14.

The change in the curriculum has been significant, the university said. In 2000 80% of all school students - from both the private and state schools - took a foreign language at GCSE, but that has now fallen to below 50%. The number of state schools where students are required to study a foreign language after 14 is now around 17%, the university said.

Geoff Parks, director of admissions for Cambridge colleges, said: "This change would remove something which has, unfortunately, become a significant barrier impeding access to Cambridge."

Dr Anne Davidson Lund, director of policy research at CILT, the National Centre for Languages, said: "This is only one university - all the other universities have taken out the requirement of a modern language some time since." She said a trend of modern languages only being studied by pupils in the independent sector or at grammar schools after the age of 14 was creating a culture of "elitism in languages".

    Cambridge drops foreign language requirement, G, 15.3.2008, http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2265585,00.html

Leading Article:

Guard against a climate of fear

Published: 21 January 2008
The Independent

The idea that airport-style scanners will be fitted to hundreds of Britain's toughest schools in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham in a clampdown on knives will horrify most people. The Government, with the backing of teaching unions, leaked the news that it is planning exactly that at the weekend. There is talk of issuing stab-proof protective vests to teachers, and more.

No one would deny our teachers the protection they need, but a word of caution is necessary. The first is to wonder whether the cure might be worse than the disease. Knife crime in schools is still comparatively rare. Though there is common talk about "a spate of knife crimes", those who reach for examples must go back to the fatal stabbing of Kiyan Prince, 15, outside a west London school 18 months ago or that of Luke Walmsley, 14, in the corridor of his school in Lincolnshire in 2003. Tragic though these cases were, they are highly exceptional, and the latter did not occur in one of the "tough" inner-city areas but in a rural backwater. Are knife-screening scanners to be installed that far and wide?

The second caveat concerns who should decide on installation. That decision should be left to the headteachers and governors of individual schools, and be kept far from the officious busybodies of local authority education departments who love nothing more than a new government initiative to impose.

There are clearly resource implications. Scanners cost £5,000 each, and many schools would need several to avoid airport-style queues on the way into lessons – and there will be added costs in terms of manning these, either to teachers' time or in terms of hiring security staff. But there is a more fundamental consideration. The philosopher Onora O'Neill has written on the issue of trust in modern society. She noted how the culture of suspicion in which we now live tries to put in place evermore stringent rules and forms of control. But these often serve only to reinforce the fears they set out to allay.

Schools are places which emphasise relationships and morality far more prominently than the rest of our society. There are real dangers in replacing relationship-based solutions by insisting on technological ones. They may heighten fears as much as reduce them. For a school day to start with the fractured symbolism of each individual being scrutinised, and perhaps searched, rather than with the community-building signal of a school assembly, sends out entirely the wrong message. In that handful of schools where knife-culture has got out of hand, scanners may be unavoidable. But heads and governors should think carefully. For the vast majority of our schools there are far better solutions to be employed.

    Leading Article: Guard against a climate of fear, I, 21.1.2008, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article3356180.ece

Dr Anthony Seldon:

'Enough of this educational apartheid'

On the eve of a landmark ruling
on the role of public schools in British life,
the headmaster of Wellington College
delivers a devastating attack on our two-tier education system

Published: 15 January 2008
The Independent

By the end of the 20th century, the independent sector had emerged pre-eminent in the British education system but the only vision the independent sector has today remains entrenched in the 20th century – dedicated to excellence and carrying on as we are in splendid isolation, detached from the mainstream national education system, thereby perpetuating the apartheid which has so dogged education and national life in Britain since the Second World War.

It is not right for any longer for our schools to cream off the best pupils, the best teachers, the best facilities, the best results and the best university places. If you throw in the 166 remaining grammar schools, which are predominantly middle class and private schools in all but name, the stranglehold is almost total.

Independent schools defend themselves by pointing to the numbers of bursaries they offer to those of lesser means, and many children from non-privileged backgrounds are indeed given a leg-up. But they also pluck children out of their social milieu as well as taking them away from their state schools, depriving those schools of their best academics, musicians, sportsmen and women and future stars. Bursaries can be, at very best, only a small part of the way forward.

We need a new vision for the independent sector in the 21st century and currently no one, and certainly neither government nor the sector itself, is providing it. Disastrously, governments of both right and left let both sectors drift apart over the past 60 years. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been prepared to do anything about it and, indeed, their policies encouraged the apartheid. The ending of the direct-grant system was one of many fatal errors.

A new vision, however, is at hand. With the academy and trust school programmes, independent schools are at last being offered the opportunity to enter into a new relationship and we must all seize this vision for this century. Forget charity commissioners and whatever they may or may not demand. Independent schools, many of which were founded with high-minded moral or religious ideals, should jump at the opportunity of starting an academy or taking part in a trust as a way of rededicating themselves in the 21st century.

Indeed, I believe every single independent school should either be founding an academy or taking part in a trust or federation. To fail to do so is to deprive pupils, teachers and schools at large of opportunities for giving and sharing.

It is no longer tenable in 2008 to retain 20th-century apartheid thinking. We need leaders in our sector with the imagination to seize this opportunity.

Independent schools are the most successful in the world and we have something very significant to offer the rest of the British education system. We must aspire to bring all schools up to the level of the independent sector and allow them to operate with the freedom of independent schools. At the same time, we have much to learn from the state sector, too.

Never again must both sectors be allowed to continue operating separately. Any move to facilitate co-operative working is to be encouraged.

Governments of both left and right must also remember that independent schools are full of children from backgrounds where parents make huge sacrifices to pay the fees while also paying for state education via their taxes.

Many independent schools operate with tight margins. A just and enduring vision of the sector for the 21st century must take full cognisance of this fact.

    Dr Anthony Seldon: 'Enough of this educational apartheid', I, 15.1.2008, http://news.independent.co.uk/education/education_news/article3339046.ece

Large schools blamed

for poor pupil behaviour

Thursday January 3, 2008
EducationGuardian.co.uk
Anthea Lipsett


The number of children taught in schools with more than 2,000 pupils has trebled since Labour came to office, according to figures published today.

The Conservatives attacked the government's "pile 'em high approach" to schooling, claiming that more pupils are excluded from large schools - more than 9% of pupils compared with 3.7% in smaller schools. The party believes reducing the size of schools is the key to tackling bad behaviour.

The shadow schools secretary, Michael Gove, said the government was letting down some of the most disadvantaged pupils.

"All the evidence is that some of the toughest problems with discipline are found in the larger schools.

"In America, cities like New York and Chicago have significantly improved behaviour and standards by encouraging smaller schools where it is easier to foster respect and the headteacher is able to know the name of every pupil."

The Tories would require local authorities with existing, failing large schools to look at dividing them into smaller, autonomous schools using existing facilities. New academies would also operate as smaller entities.

The number of pupils taught in large schools of more than 2,000 pupils has trebled to 47,540 since 1997. Nearly one in seven pupils (488,900) in England is now educated in a school of more than 1,500 pupils - 200,000 more than in 1997.

Nearly two thirds of secondary pupils (61%) are now taught in schools of more than 1,000 pupils, up from 46% in 1997, despite evidence of the benefits of smaller schools.

A spokeswoman from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, however, said it was "far too simplistic" to say that discipline problems are worse in larger schools.

"There are many different factors at play and many large schools are in challenging inner city areas where you would expect more issues of this sort.

"British evidence is that achievement can increase as school size increases, up to a certain point."

She added that assumptions that larger schools mean lower standards of behaviour was not supported by evidence from Ofsted inspections.

Schools with more than 1,000 pupils inspected in 2005 and 2006 were more likely to be judged to have outstanding standards of behaviour and less likely to be judged inadequate than smaller schools.

The schools minister Lord Adonis said schools had increased in size not by accident, but because parents want their children to go to them.

"Labour has actively encouraged the expansion of popular and successful schools, so that more parents can choose to send their children to them. "The Conservatives will create a huge parental backlash and rightly so if they are proposing to stop successful schools from growing and admitting more children when they wish to do so." Adonis accused the Tories of "manipulating statistics to no useful purpose".

"The actual number of schools with over 2,000 pupils is very small. The great majority of secondary schools are far smaller," he added.

Adonis said the government would continue to encourage small schools - including the new studio schools offering vocational education announced in last month's Children's Plan - in areas where this is wanted by parents.

Teachers said that school leadership was more important than size.

The general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Steve Sinnott, said: "It's completely naïve to think simply eliminating large schools will get rid of bad behaviour.

"If the Conservatives want to find a magic trick to reduce unacceptable pupil behaviour simply by deconstructing large schools - that won't happen. It's falling into the trap of simple solutions to complex problems."

He said good leadership in large schools can stop children feeling overwhelmed. Larger schools can also offer a wider range of subjects and good sixth-forms, he added.

Large schools blamed for poor pupil behaviour, G, 3.1.2008, http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2234555,00.html