Children of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin in Britain have outperformed other ethnic groups to achieve rapid improvements at every level of education, but are significantly less likely to be employed in managerial or professional jobs than their white counterparts, according to a study.
A report to be published on Wednesday by the government’s Social Mobility Commission says the trend is being driven in part by workplace discrimination, particularly against Muslim women.
The commission’s chair, Alan Milburn, said the findings showed that Britain was a long way from offering a level playing field to non-white groups, and called for urgent action to break down barriers.
“The British social mobility promise is that hard work will be rewarded. This research suggests that promise is being broken for too many people in our society,” Milburn said. He argued that it was striking that people who were making the greatest advances at school were still missing out in the workplace.
The wide-ranging study, commissioned by Milburn’s group and carried out by academics from LKMco and Education Datalab, also offers stark warnings for a number of other ethnic and social groups, including the white working classes.
It found that the gap between the performance of pupils from the poorest and better-off households was widest for white British families.
Minority ethnic pupils are outperforming white working class children in English tests throughout school, with white British teenagers coming bottom of the pile in the subject at GCSE level.
Moreover, just one in 10 of the cohort go on to university compared with three in 10 for black Caribbean, five in 10 for Bangladeshi, and nearly seven in 10 for Chinese children from similar economic backgrounds.
The researchers suggest family behaviour as one factor in explaining the trend, citing evidence that white working class parents – alongside Roma, Gypsy and Traveller groups – “tend to be less engaged in their children’s education than other ethnic groups”.
There is also a warning for black families, with evidence that although children enter school achieving at an average level, they slip behind to be the worst performers at maths GCSE, the most likely to be excluded, and the least likely to achieve a good degree.
Secondary school is where black pupils’ attainment falls behind substantially, according to the report. Only 63% achieve a C in maths GCSE, compared with a national average of 68%, and for black boys the figure is worse, at 60%. This translates into strikingly low attainment in science, technology, engineering and maths A-levels.
The report says the university dropout rate among black pupils is 11%, compared with 5% for Chinese and 7% for other Asian and white undergraduates.
The report’s recommendations include:
- The government should take action to discourage schools from setting children by ability, particularly at primary level, because of evidence that it could have a profound negative impact on pupils’ future social mobility.
- Teachers should urgently act to ensure that white working class parents, and those from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups, engage more in their children’s education amid evidence that they do so far less than some minority ethnic counterparts.
- Universities should do more to reach out to white working class pupils because of the proportionally low numbers entering higher education, and take action to understand the unusually high dropout rate among black students.
- There should be targeted support from schools, universities and employers to help Muslim women achieve their career ambitions.
Loic Menzies, one of the authors of the report and director of the thinktank LKMco, said the reason the report had recommended that schools should not divide children by ability was that it hampered the worst-off children.
The study found that while there was a positive peer effect for children in the top sets, overall there was no improvement in average performance. Moreover, it found that poorer children were more likely to be placed in lower sets, creating a vicious circle.
Menzies said there could also be an issue for summer-born children who could be almost a year younger than some peers and could wrongly be put in lower sets and labelled as weaker pupils. That could then become a “self-fulfilling prophecy”, he said.
“Having been a pupil in top sets and a teacher who found it easier to teach kids in sets, its difficult to accept that this is what the evidence shows, but it does and the kids who suffer are most vulnerable,” he said.
On the issue of white working class parents being less engaged, the reports points to a number of studies, including those that suggest there could be higher “aspirations and expectations” among some minority ethnic parents for their children.
One study quoted claims that Indian children in Britain were much more likely to complete their homework five days a week and to have access to a computer at home. Another showed higher engagement among Pakistani and Bangladeshi families.
It suggested the trend could help explain why there is a much smaller gap between the school performance of the poorest and best-off in other ethnic groups.
There is also some evidence that girls and boys can perform differently depending on how they are treated, with some parents pushing female pupils towards more altruistic roles, while male pupils have expectations around power and money. One study suggests girls who reject traditional gender roles and want to delay motherhood do better at school.
Both Milburn and Menzies argued that the findings showed that for some groups – in particular Muslim women – hard work at school was not being fairly paid off.
The report’s lead author, Bart Shaw, said discrimination was part of the reason, although he also highlighted cultural norms, family expectations and geography.
“Meanwhile in education, differences arise from access to schools, teachers’ perceptions of behaviour and practices such as tiering and setting. Out-of-school factors such as parental expectations and support also play a critical role,” he said.