There are many stories of how inspirational teachers have changed pupils’ lives for the better. There are also stories of teachers failing particular groups of pupils, having low expectations of what they can achieve and hindering fulfilment of their potential. In this paper, we examine this proposition for ethnic minority pupils in England. We test whether there are systematic differences between objective and subjective assessment measures, across ethnic minority and white pupils. We have access to five annual censuses of all state school pupils in England, providing a large sample for most minorities. This study relates to the on-going debate around the educational performance of some ethnic groups (particularly pupils of Black Caribbean, Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnicity), and the implications of this for their future life chances. One of the contributions we aim to make with this paper is the provision of large scale, representative and contemporary evidence on this issue. |
