Gender and Ethnicity in Education

Gender and Ethnicity in Education

Gender and ethnicity significantly shape educational experiences and outcomes. The gender gap has reversed over the past 40 years, while persistent ethnic inequalities remain a major concern.

Gender and Achievement

The Gender Gap: Key Trends

• Since the early 1990s, girls have outperformed boys at every level from KS1 to degree level
• The gap is widest in English and languages; narrower in STEM subjects
• Girls are more likely to attend university (57% of UK undergraduates are female)
• However, subject choice remains heavily gendered: boys dominate physics, computing, and engineering; girls dominate English, psychology, and sociology

External Factors Explaining Girls' Improvement

The Impact of Feminism:

• McRobbie (1994): compared girls' magazines from the 1970s and 1990s — earlier magazines emphasised romance and marriage; by the 1990s, they stressed independence and career ambitions
• Feminism has changed girls' aspirations — education is now seen as a route to financial independence, not just a waiting room before marriage
• Sharpe (1994): repeated her 1976 study and found girls' priorities had shifted from "love, marriage, husbands" to "job, career, being able to support myself"

Changes in the Family:

• Rising divorce rates mean girls are less likely to see their future as dependent on a husband
• Increase in female-headed lone-parent families provides role models of independent women
• More mothers in paid employment gives girls higher aspirations

Changes in the Labour Market:

• The expansion of the service sector has created more traditionally "female" jobs (nursing, teaching, retail)
• The Equal Pay Act (1970) and Sex Discrimination Act (1975) broke down formal barriers
• The glass ceiling is cracking — more women in senior professional roles

Internal Factors Explaining Girls' Improvement

Feminisation of Education:

• Mitsos and Browne (1998): schools have become more "girl-friendly" — coursework assessment (which girls excel at) has replaced some exams
• The proportion of female teachers has increased, providing positive role models
• Literacy-based assessment advantages girls, who develop language skills earlier

Teacher Interactions:

• Swann and Graddol (1988): boys dominate classroom talk, but teachers' attention to boys is often negative (discipline), while girls receive more positive academic attention
• Archer (2010): found that schools' focus on achievement creates a culture that advantages girls' socialisation into working hard and being conscientious

Why Are Boys Underachieving?

Epstein (1998): working-class boys construct a laddish anti-learning culture where academic work is seen as "feminine" and "uncool"

Sewell (2006): argues boys need more structured environments and male role models in schools — the "boy-friendly" debate

Francis (2006): found that while boys are more likely to be disruptive, labelling all boys as underachievers is a moral panic — most boys do achieve, and the class gap is much wider than the gender gap

Factor	How It Helps Girls	Key Study
Feminism	Changed aspirations	Sharpe (1994)
Labour market	More female-friendly jobs	Service sector growth
Coursework	Suits organised, sustained work	Mitsos & Browne (1998)
Teacher expectations	More positive attention	Swann & Graddol (1988)

Subject Choice

Despite closing the attainment gap, subject choice remains gendered:

• Kelly (1985): science is seen as "masculine" — textbooks, examples, and imagery reinforce this
• Paetcher (2998): gender identity shapes choices — subjects are part of performing masculinity or femininity
• Gender domain theory: pupils see certain subjects as belonging to one gender and avoid crossing these boundaries for fear of peer ridicule
• GIST (Girls Into Science and Technology) and WISE (Women Into Science and Engineering) campaigns had limited success

Ethnicity and Achievement

Key Trends

• Chinese and Indian pupils consistently achieve the highest GCSE results, outperforming White British pupils
• Black Caribbean and Pakistani/Bangladeshi pupils historically underperform compared to White British pupils, though the gap is narrowing
• Black Caribbean boys are the lowest-performing major ethnic group
• Gypsy/Roma/Traveller pupils have the lowest attainment of all ethnic groups
• Within every ethnic group, social class has a powerful effect — middle-class minority pupils outperform working-class White pupils

External Factors

Cultural Deprivation Explanations:

• Sewell (2009): argues that the absence of positive male role models in many Black Caribbean families (high rates of lone-parent households) contributes to underachievement among Black boys
• Driver and Ballard (1981): South Asian family structures (close-knit, high educational aspirations) can be a positive cultural factor that promotes achievement
• Lupton (2004): studied schools in disadvantaged areas and found that behaviour was worse in the White working-class school than in ethnically diverse schools, suggesting cultural factors around aspiration

Criticism: Lawrence (1982) and Keddie (1973) argue cultural deprivation theory is victim-blaming and ethnocentric — it judges minority cultures against White middle-class norms

Material Deprivation:

• Many underperforming ethnic groups experience higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and poor housing
• Flaherty (2004): Pakistani and Bangladeshi households are three times more likely to be in poverty than White households
• However, material deprivation alone cannot explain ethnic differences — Indian pupils face deprivation but still outperform White British pupils

Internal Factors

Labelling and Teacher Racism:

• Gillborn and Youdell (2001): found that teachers had racialised expectations — Black pupils were disproportionately placed in lower sets, regardless of ability, and were more likely to be entered for Foundation rather than Higher tier exams
• Wright (1992): observed primary classrooms and found Asian pupils were marginalised (excluded from discussions, spoken to in simplified language) while Black pupils were disciplined more harshly
• Connolly (1998): found teachers perceived Black boys as aggressive and Asian boys as passive — both labels disadvantage

Institutional Racism:

• The Macpherson Report (1999): defined institutional racism as the collective failure of an organisation to provide appropriate service through "unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping"
• Gillborn (2008) — "Racism and Education": argues the education system is institutionally racist — policies like the National Curriculum, testing, and setting systematically disadvantage Black pupils ("locked-in inequality")
• Coard (1971): argued that the British education system made Black children become ESN (Educationally Sub-Normal) through Eurocentric curricula and low expectations

Pupil Responses and Identities:

• Sewell (1997): studied Black boys in a secondary school and identified four responses to schooling: conformists (accepted school values), innovators (pro-education but anti-school), retreatists (kept a low profile), and rebels (rejected school, adopted street culture)
• Only a minority were "rebels," but teachers often assumed all Black boys were part of this group
• Fuller (1984): studied Black girls in a London comprehensive who refused to accept negative labels — they worked hard but maintained an outwardly anti-school attitude. This demonstrates that labelling does not always lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Mirza (1992): studied Black girls and found they were ambitious and hardworking despite facing racism from teachers — they developed strategies to avoid racist teachers while still succeeding

The Intersection of Class, Gender, and Ethnicity

The best sociological analysis recognises that these factors interact:

• A White working-class boy and a Black middle-class girl have very different experiences
• Strand (2011): found that once social class was controlled for, ethnic differences in achievement largely disappeared — suggesting class is the primary driver
• However, Gillborn argues this statistical approach masks the role of institutional racism

Exam Tip

A top-band essay on ethnicity and education must go beyond listing factors. Show how internal and external factors interact (e.g., material deprivation leads to living in areas with under-resourced schools, where labelling further disadvantages minority pupils). Always evaluate cultural deprivation theory as potentially ethnocentric — this is essential AO3.