What are the issues surrounding ethnic minority attainment?
The researchers point out that until the 1980s, research tended to report on the achievements of ‘minority ethnic pupils’ as a single group, without recognising crucial differences in performance between different ethnic minority groups. It took the Swann Report in 1985 to reveal that while Asian pupils as a whole were achieving on a par with their white counterparts, pupils of Bangladeshi origin were performing considerably less well than their peers. Subsequent research reinforced this finding. According to the authors of this study, we have yet to find an adequate explanation as to why these differences exist in secondary education. They suggest that traditional explanations have sought cultural, religious and linguistic reasons, which ignore the existence of other factors such as social class. Differences in attainment are not only seen at secondary level. In some minority groups they exist in the earlier schooling years, and persist beyond compulsory education. The qualifications
