The dynamics of school attainment of England’s ethnic minorities

Abstract

Ethnic test score gap, School attainment, Education, I20, J15,

Immigration: What About the Children and Grandchildren?

“…For immigrant children for whom the language spoken at home is English the improvement of educational achievement is substantially less. Wilson et al (2011) find similar results for state school students in England. Here too, immigrant students make greater progress at school than natives.…”

A longitudinal analysis of UK second-generation disadvantaged immigrants

“…Evidence from the current education system (Wilson et al 2009) suggests that although ethnic minority children have relatively low achievement on exit from primary school, they also experience considerable catch up and indeed overtake their White counterparts during secondary school.…”

“…Firstly, Wilson et al (2009) modeled the progression of ethnic minority students (as distinct from immigrants per se) through secondary school and found that ethnic minority students make more progress than their white counterparts in today's secondary schools. A paper by Dustmann and Theodoropoulos (2008) investigated both the magnitude of the gaps in education achievement between ethnic minority students and their white counterparts, confirming that most ethnic minority groups have higher levels of education achievement than whites.…”

Efficiency in the Further Education Sector in England

“…Students from a minority ethnic background, and especially the Indian group, may work harder at college to close the achievement gap between themselves and their white counterparts to offset expected discrimination once they enter the labour market. Insofar as this greater effort leads to a lower drop-out rate and higher achievement rate amongst these groups (and there is evidence from secondary schools [21] that ethnic minority pupils make better progress (on average) in terms of their attainment than their white counterparts), the outcome is greater efficiency. Socio-economic status also has a positive effect on efficiency: an increase in the percentage of students from more prosperous home backgrounds, reflected by the percentage of students ineligible for the widening participation funding, increases technical efficiency.…”