Poverty 'has biggest impact' on White British pupils

Poverty has a much bigger impact on the educational performance of white British pupils than on any other ethnic group, according to studies out today.

Poor white British pupils are falling far behind their richer classmates from the same background at primary school and in their GCSE results, they show.

The researchers conclude this gap may be partly because parents from poor white British backgrounds put less emphasis on education as those from other ethnic groups.

The first study, by Professor Steve Strand at Warwick University investigated pupil performance in Lambeth, south London.

The findings show socio-economic status has little impact on a pupil's achievement in the last four years of primary school for most minority ethnic groups, with both richer and poorer pupils making similar progress.

But among white British pupils, children from richer families make "substantially more" progress than their classmates from poorer backgrounds.

It says: "White British pupils are the ethnic group most polarised by the impact of socio-economic disadvantage. White British pupils are simultaneously both the lowest and the highest attaining ethnic group, depending on the level of disadvantage experienced."

Prof Strand said the reasons for this gap are not clear cut.

But he added: "White families of high socio-economic status have more resources to be able to invest in education, such as buying tutors for their children, and they might be a bit more savvy about ensuring that their children go to schools with similar pupils and good results.

"In terms of families of low socio-economic status, more recent immigrant groups such as the Portuguese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities often see education as the way out of the poverty they have come from.

"By contrast, if you've been in a white working class family for three generations, with high unemployment, you don't necessarily believe that education is going to change that. All of these factors may combine to make the effect of socio-economic status remarkably strong for white British kids."

A second study, by academics at the Institute of Education and Queen Mary, University of London, examined the GCSE results of pupils from differing ethnic backgrounds across England and Wales between 2003 and 2007.

It reveals that there is a 32 percentage point gap between the proportions of white pupils on Free School Meals (FSM) - a measure of poverty - and the proportions of white teenagers who are not eligible for FSM getting five C grades including English and maths,

Among boys and girls separately, this gap is 30 and 33 percentage points respectively.

This gap is wider than other ethic group, the paper says.

Overall, black Caribbean pupils have the worst results, while Chinese and Indian pupils have among the highest results.

Report author Professor Ramesh Kapadia said: "A new finding from our research is that African and Bangladeshi girls have improved their performance markedly at GCSE in the last few years.

"This may be linked to cultural aspirations and expectations, as well as parental support for education - as appears to have been the case for Indian and Chinese pupils for many years."

Both studies will presented at the British Educational Research Association's annual conference at Warwick University this week.