Not again! I groaned when I heard the news on Radio 4: another survey telling us how ethnic minority pupils are performing in our schools, and how their achievements compare with those of white children (Educational Inequality: Mapping Race, Class and Gender).

This time, the research was financed by OFSTED, who are anxious, no doubt, to display their post-Macpherson, ‘anti-racist’ credentials. And we have the usual educationalists telling us something has to be done about the fact that academic outcomes vary with ethnic group, ie, some groups do better than others. The fact that all pupils, whatever their racial origins, do not hit the finishing line at the same time inevitably gives the egalitarian theorists who carried out this survey a profound sense of foreboding. If this state of affairs continues, then we can expect the educational roof to fall in. Curiously, this commitment to the desirability of equal outcomes appears not to apply to ‘gender’; girls do better than boys in every ethnic group, including whites, but this causes the survey’s authors no concern whatsoever – one must not upset the feminists.

Being specific, they are most concerned about the fact that black, ie Afro-Caribbean, pupils do less well than all other groups, though Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils are not far behind them. In order to point the finger at ‘racism’ as the cause of these disparities, there is, throughout the report, the usual confusion between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

Now the first thing to be said about this is that there is absolutely nothing new in it. Variations in educational outcomes according to ethnic group have been known about for decades. And there have been innumerable surveys, reports and theories trotted out to account for this. Findings have often been complex, sometimes contradictory, and almost always controversial. But one thing has remained pretty consistent: the comparatively poor performance of black pupils. With occasional blips on the graph, this finding has stubbornly refused to go away. This is despite the fact that all sorts of policies have been implemented to combat alleged teacher racism, particularly in areas with large ethnic minority populations, such as Bradford and Inner London.

The "teacher expectation" theory

Many researchers, including the present ones, have sought to make play with the notions of teacher expectation and stereotyping as the causes of black underperformance. Black pupils do less well than they could because teachers expect them to do so. Teachers generalise from the irrelevant matter of skin colour and make erroneous judgements about pupils’ potential. Now this really is flogging a dead horse. For many years, ‘anti-racist’ zealots have been asserting that teachers are the real problem. Yet the whole theory of teacher expectation has been thoroughly discredited.

It all began when two psychologists, Rosenthal and Jacobson, published Pygmalion in the Classroom in 1961. They alleged that teachers who had been told that their pupils varied in terms of IQ varied their expectations accordingly – and pupil achievement was in accordance with teachers’ expectations. The less teachers expected, the less they got, and vice versa. This sort of explanation of pupil performance chimed perfectly with the environmentalist spirit of the times. The book became a bestseller and its findings dominated teacher training for many years – and they still do in many institutions.

But subsequent work failed to replicate the original findings. In The Limitations of Social Research, Martyn Shipman, a sociologist, states: "Once Rosenthal and Jacobson had provided their data for analysis, and their methods were scrutinised, a thorough demolition job was published…nine attempts to replicate R & J’s work failed…Indeed public confidence in psychological research could have been undermined by this episode".

Egalitarian assumptions

However, if allegations about teachers’ expectations fail to explain ethnic variations, what is the cause? The short, honest answer to this is this: we do not know. But there are certainly other ways of thinking about race and education.

For instance, and here I enter politically incorrect territory, the notion that all pupils ought to achieve broadly at the same level is no more than an egalitarian assumption. For instance, if we produce two groups of pupils with the same characteristics except that Group A has a higher average IQ than Group B, then the average academic score of Group A will be higher than that of Group B, since IQ has been shown to be a good predictor of academic performance. Now, we have known for many years that black children on the average perform less well on IQ tests than their white or Asian counterparts, so we can expect them to do less well in school than white pupils, at least in academic subjects. But this is not because of stereotyping. No-one doubts this. What causes controversy is why this is so. Why is there this racial variation? I repeat, we do not know. What we have is a scientific quarrel: whilst a distinguished group of biologists insist that IQ differences are not of genetic origin, and have nothing to do with race (some biologists claim that race is a false myth), a group of equally distinguished psychologists argue that race is a reality and is associated with average group intelligence – and so long as this factor persists, then whites and Asians will always outperform blacks in school.

A second possible factor is the influence of the peer group. This has a considerable effect with all groups of youngsters, particularly at adolescence when the tendency to challenge teacher authority is at its height. I suspect that this tendency is probably stronger in black than white pupils, since, being in a minority, blacks feel they need the support of their ethnic fellows more than whites do. Now there is some evidence that black groups express their hostility towards authority in terms of delinquent behaviour, and in victimising black pupils who espouse the school’s values and seek to do well. (A disproportionate number of black pupils are expelled or suspended from school for serious bad behaviour, and they are over-represented in crime figures.)

Given this, blacks are sure to do less well, on average, than other groups who do support authority, and keep out of trouble. It may be of some significance that the best performing pupils are those of Indian origin, who are anxious to do well and are rarely in trouble with the teacher.

Home truths

More generally, the cultural climate and values in the house have been shown to correlate positively and consistently with school achievement. If a child comes from a united, supportive home with high standards of behaviour, then that child will outperform the child from a broken home, with a mother struggling to cope.

Sadly, there are variations in this factor in relation to ethnic group: black children, and this term includes children of mixed racial origin, are significantly more likely to come from a broken home than are white children. As I say, this is a very unfortunate fact, but not something for which schools can be blamed. Now, having taught black children for many years, I believe this is a really critical factor. However, the significance of this factor has been underplayed, or ignored, by those who insist that racism, of one variety or another, is the whole explanation.

This brings us to the Swann Report (1985). This was the report of a committee of enquiry set up by the government to consider the education of ethnic minority children in English schools. Realising the importance of home background and culture, the committee, in accordance with its result, set up an appropriate research strategy. A distinguished academic was appointed, a research assistant engaged, and a suitable grant allocated.

But when the research strategy was seen to include an enquiry into West Indian homes, the research was suppressed, owing to pressure from certain ‘anti-racist’ groups. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that it was thrown out because its findings would almost certainly have undermined the ‘racism’ explanation of comparative black education failure. However, despite this blow to disinterested, objective research, the committee felt able to state: "…the reasons for the very different school performances of Asians and West Indians seem likely to lie deep within their respective cultures". That is, home culture is a significant element in this story. Unfortunately, this salutary lesson has not been learnt – and is never likely to be so long as the present, post-Macpherson, ‘anti-racist’ hysteria persists.

Language and attendance

There are two further factors to consider: language and schools attendance. The first relates to the fact that many black children come from homes where the medium of discourse is some sort of West Indian dialect, whereas the language of formal education is standard English. This linguistic conflict may well interfere with the black child’s progress in school. Asian children may well suffer from the fact that a high proportion of their mothers speak little or no English. Asian children, too, undoubtedly suffer from the fact that their parents send them on family holidays to the Indian subcontinent in term time. They can be away from school for weeks or even months on end, and their progress, inevitably, is hindered.

The relevant authorities have known about this latter practice for many years and have failed to put the matter right, despite the fact that it is almost certainly unlawful. The truth is, of course, that educational authorities are terrified of upsetting the race relations lobby by requiring of Asian parents what they demand of white parents in relation to school attendance. What happens is that LEAs and the DfEE make noises from time to time, then let the matter drop.

The latest fatuous gesture has come from the School Inclusion Division of the DfEE. On 30 September 1998, they issued a pamphlet in several Asian languages which stated as follows: "Children who miss school for six weeks or more fall behind in their school work by a full term. Many children who visit Bangladesh have missed two full terms of schooling by the age of 11. Some of these children never catch up and do badly in their exams as a result".

The important fact about all this is that the authors of the report to which I referred at the beginning of this article make nothing of the factors that I believe have crucial effects on the education of black and Asian children. The whole drift of their rhetoric is towards ‘racism’ as the explanation of ethnic variations in outcome. So long as the world of education is dominated by this sort of race relations discourse, then so long will we fail to produce clear thinking and appropriate policies. Yet this report will undoubtedly form the basis of OFSTED’s approach in future.

Perhaps the biggest educational handicap our ethnic minority children have to suffer is self-interested chatter about racism from those with an axe to grind.

Ray Honeyford is an educationalist and author