Equality Of Education

8 Pages 1982 Words

An unequal level of achievement in schools is one of the most familiar aspects of the British education system. As rule schooling in Britain is a white middle class patriarchal institution and those who do not fit into those categories often find themselves underachieving, much of the time through no fault of their own. The group that this study will concentrate on is the ethnic minority population in Britain, and through the examination of materialist and cultural explanations will hopefully gain a further understanding of why many capable ethnic minority pupils do not reach their full potential in the British school system. One of the most popular arguments put forward for this is that the system fails the pupils and that there is inherent racism in the education system. Although this is certainly a factor, it is a simple one level explanation and the different layers involved in this explanation must be further examined before an adequate account is obtained.

The case of ethnic minority underachievement in schools is a complex one as there are many overlapping inequalities with other groups, for example most ethnic minority children live in poor areas and face many of the same disadvantages as working class children such as poor resources within schools and a shortage of teachers. Therefore in this case it is very important to distinguish between equality of outcome, which has been concentrated on most in recent years, and equality of opportunity. If children in poor areas regardless of colour have overcrowded classrooms and fewer resources to learn with then it is almost inevitable that their quality of education will be poorer than those with better opportunities. Therefore in many cases it is not simply a case of ethnic minority pupils underachieving but working class pupils underachieving and comparison with white middle class children is unfair as it gives a skewed analysis which has no real relation to ethnic backgrou...