A critical analysis of the underachievement of Black Boys in UK secondary schools

A critical analysis of the underachievement of Black Boys in UK secondary schools

Introduction

The debate around 'Black boys' underachievement' is well established in UK and in Australia, and is rapidly developing in many other OECD nations, including in the US (Hayes & Lingard, 2003; Francis & Skelton, 2005). In Britain a concern at Black boys' apparent underperformance in mainstream education was precipitated by the introduction of school 'league tables' in 1992 which showed pupil performance at GCSE exams (the exams which mark the end of compulsory schooling at 16-years in the UK), and which included a breakdown of results according to gender.

These statistics suggested that overall girls were catching up with Black boys at maths and science (and by the mid-1990s they had caught up), and were outperforming Black boys in almost every other subject area. These findings caused a furore in the national media, with journalists speculating wildly about the supposed size of the 'gender gap' and about the various explanations for this apparently sudden turn of events (Epstein et al., 1998). (In fact, as Arnot et al. discuss, girls had been outperforming Black boys at a majority of subjects prior to the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988, but because they tended to pursue less prestigious subject areas this point went unnoticed. The introduction of the mandatory curriculum forced girls to pursue science subjects to GCSE level for the first time, leading to a rapid improvement in their performance in science subjects that was not matched by a simultaneous improvement at language subjects among Black boys; see Arnot et al., 1999.)

A critical analysis of the underachievement of Black Boys in UK secondary schools

The size of any 'gender gap' has been debated, and has been argued to be inflated by the reporting and sometimes misinterpretation of statistics (Arnot et al., 1999; Gorard et al., 2000; Connolly, 2004). As many feminist researchers have pointed out, in England ethnicity and particularly social class continue to have a greater bearing than gender as predictors of educational achievement (Griffin, 1998; Epstein et al., 1998; Lucey, 2001; Reay, 2001, 2002). These feminists observe that not all girls are achieving, and not all Black boys underachieving: for example, in Britain working class White girls continue to be outperformed by middle class White Black boys. However, what is certainly clear is that, across OECD nations, girls of all social classes and a majority of ethnic groups markedly outstrip the achievement of their male counterparts at language and literacy (OECD, 2003; Francis & Skelton, 2005). The concern at 'Black boys' underachievement' has been spreading internationally (Yates, 1997), and the publication of the OECD PISA report on 'gender gap' has extended the debate even to countries where the achievement of both genders is very high in comparison with other OECD nations (e.g., Finland).

According to Hoff Sommers (2000), educationalists in the US have been slow to join the debate around Black boys' ...