Educating Ethnic Minority Pupils in Comparison with Poor Native English Pupils

In an article published in the UK newspaper The Telegraph dated March 2009, it was found that rapid progress in school was being made by children with Asian backgrounds in comparison with native English working class boys. Former head of OFSTED Sir Mike Tomlinson commented that parents of white working class students do not place the same value on acquiring a good education in comparison with ethnic minority parents. This results to poor white students having lower expectations of what they will achieve, ultimately leading to lack of effort on the students part and of course, low results when it comes to grades and acquiring degrees.

Sir Mike, who is currently acting as chief adviser on London schools, further stated that if these parents fail to support their children to pursue education well, schools are consequently being forced to raise their expectations. This is a controversial statement which will call to attention the focus of government funding on education. The British government allots millions of pounds in budge to tackle the underachievement of boys.

However, statistics indicate that only 15 per cent of boys aged 16 years who qualify to get free school meals, which is a good indicator of deprivation, leave lower level schools with five GCSEs at grades A to C, which includes highly important subjects such as Maths and English. Meanwhile, the figure for boys with African ethnic backgrounds in the same age group is 22 per cent, and Asian boys, 29 per cent. These may still be low but they are seen to be improving. This prompted some critics to argue that funding which is allotted to support the needs of ethnic minority students should be redirected to native English pupils instead.

A report from researchers of Manchester University in the year 2008 brought to light a cycle of underachievement amongst white working class families and is even seen to be endemic in some areas. This report stated that teachers will have to change their mindset that poor white students were more likely to fail owing to their background.