Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of differences in educational achievement between ethnic groups (30 marks)

Last Updated on October 27, 2026 by Karl Thompson

An A-level sociology essay for AQA Paper 1 (7192/1), Education with Theory and Methods. This is the 30-mark question from the June 2019 paper (Question 04), answered in full using the PEAC system (Point – Explain – Analyse – Criticise). A short version, in essay-plan form, follows the full essay.

You might like to review these revision notes before reading the essay:

• Ethnicity and education: cultural factors
• Ethnicity and educational achievement: in-school factors
• Ethnicity and education statistics

The question with Item

Read Item B below and answer the question that follows.

Item B

All levels of the education system show differences in achievement between ethnic groups. When explaining these patterns, some sociologists focus on the role of the home and family life in promoting educational achievement for some ethnic groups.

However, other sociologists suggest that factors within schools are more important in explaining differences in achievement between ethnic groups.

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of differences in educational achievement between ethnic groups. [30 marks]

Source: AQA A-level Sociology, Paper 1 (7192/1), June 2019, Question 04.

The mark scheme

What the top band needs

All AQA 30-mark questions are marked in five levels. To reach the top level (25–30), an answer needs sound, conceptually detailed knowledge of a range of relevant material; it has to apply Item B well; and it needs explicit, relevant analysis and evaluation leading to a conclusion. In practice, for this question, that means:

• Use both of the Item’s hooks. Item B gives you the debate: ‘the home and family life’ versus ‘factors within schools’. Structure the essay around it.
• Note the Item’s wording: home and family life promote achievement ‘for some ethnic groups’. That’s a nudge to explain why some groups do well, not just why some do badly.
• Be specific about which groups. ‘Ethnic minorities’ as one group won’t do: Chinese, Indian, Black African, Black Caribbean and Gypsy/Roma pupils have very different results.
• Evaluate each explanation, using the other side of the debate, the statistics, and the limits of the studies.

The essay

Introduction

As Item B says, there are differences in achievement between ethnic groups at all levels of the education system. At GCSE, Chinese pupils have the highest average results (an Attainment 8 score of 65.5 in 2022/23, against a national average of 46.3), followed by Indian pupils (59.4). Most minority groups, including Bangladeshi and Black African pupils, score above White British pupils (44.9). However, Black Caribbean pupils (40.0) and especially Gypsy/Roma pupils (20.3) score well below average.

Sociologists explain these patterns in two broad ways. Some focus on factors outside school, especially cultural differences in home and family life, but also material deprivation. Others focus on factors within schools, such as teacher labelling, setting and the ethnocentric curriculum. In this essay I will evaluate both, and argue that home factors explain the high achievement of some groups better, while in-school factors play a bigger part in explaining the lower achievement of Black Caribbean pupils.

Home factors: parental expectations and aspirations

Point: The first explanation, as Item B says, focuses on the home and family life, which may promote educational achievement for some ethnic groups.

Explain: Some ethnic groups have higher parental expectations and stronger educational aspirations, which encourage their children to work hard. Steve Strand’s (2007) analysis of a national survey of over 15,000 Year 9 pupils found that Indian pupils were the group most likely to do homework five evenings a week, and that Indian and Black African parents were the most likely to say they always know where their child is. 98% of Black African parents and 95% of Indian parents wanted their child to stay in full-time education after 16, compared with 77% of White British parents.

Analyse: This would explain why Indian and Chinese pupils achieve so highly: their families treat education as the main route to success. Tehmina Basit (2013) found that three generations of British South Asian families all saw education as a kind of ‘educational capital’ that would bring upward social mobility. One reason may be the ‘immigrant paradigm’: recent migrants tend to be optimistic about education as a way for their children to get on in a new country. This could also help to explain why Black African pupils, two-thirds of whom were born outside the UK (2011 Census), do better than Black Caribbean pupils, whose families have mostly been in Britain longer.

Criticise: Cultural explanations risk stereotyping. Francis, Mau and Archer (2017) point out that the parenting styles praised as typically ‘Chinese’ are common among White middle-class families too. They also found that even successful British-Chinese pupils experience ‘hidden racisms’ from teachers, so home culture doesn’t protect pupils from everything that happens in school. And cultural explanations can’t easily explain the gender gap within groups: Black Caribbean girls score almost 8 points more than Black Caribbean boys at GCSE, despite sharing the same family culture.

Home factors: family structure and street culture

Point: A second home-based explanation focuses on the lower achievement of Black Caribbean boys, and on family structure and peer culture.

Explain: Tony Sewell (1997) argued that some Black Caribbean boys, often growing up without a father at home, are drawn into a street culture of ‘hyper-masculinity’ that sees schoolwork as unmanly. This brings them into conflict with teachers and lowers their achievement.

Analyse: This fits the statistics on gender: Black Caribbean boys have one of the lowest average GCSE scores of any large group (36.0 in 2022/23). It also explains why the problem seems to affect boys more than girls.

Criticise: However, Sewell himself found that only a minority of black boys, the ‘rebels’, adopted this anti-school identity; most were conformists or innovators who valued education. The family structure argument also struggles against the statistics. In the 2011 Census, Black African households were more likely to be lone parents with dependent children (20.2%) than Black Caribbean households (16.6%), yet Black African pupils score much higher. Critics argue that Sewell blames Black culture and ignores racism in schools; and Sewell’s own study found that confrontations were often sparked by teachers’ handling of the boys, which points to in-school factors.

Material deprivation

Point: A third external explanation is material deprivation: some ethnic groups are more likely to be poor, and poverty lowers achievement.

Explain: Pupils eligible for free school meals score lower than other pupils in every ethnic group. Poorer families can’t afford the hidden costs of education, home resources such as computers, or a quiet place to study.

Analyse: However, poverty affects different groups very differently. In 2022/23, White British pupils on free school meals scored just 30.9, while Bangladeshi pupils on free school meals scored 47.7 and Chinese pupils on free school meals scored 60.3, higher than better-off pupils from most other groups. Steve Strand’s (2021) analysis found that once family background was taken into account, no ethnic minority group scored substantially below White British pupils at low or average socio-economic status, and many scored well above.

Criticise: This suggests that material deprivation can’t explain the ethnic pattern on its own. Groups with higher rates of poverty, such as Bangladeshi pupils, often do better than White British pupils. Something else must be protecting some poor minority pupils from the effects of poverty, which takes us back to cultural factors, or perhaps to the immigrant optimism discussed above. See material deprivation and ethnicity.

In-school factors: teacher labelling

Point: On the other hand, as Item B says, other sociologists suggest that factors within schools are more important. The first is teacher labelling.

Explain: Interactionists argue that teachers label pupils on the basis of ethnic stereotypes, and that this can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cecile Wright (1992) studied four inner-city primary schools and found that teachers expected African Caribbean pupils to behave badly and gave them a lot of negative attention, while Asian pupils were often left out of class discussion. David Gillborn (1990) found that teachers in a secondary school saw African Caribbean pupils’ behaviour as a challenge to their authority, even when none was intended, and disciplined them more.

Analyse: If Black Caribbean pupils are disciplined more, they lose learning time and may lose trust in school. They are also excluded more often: in 2022/23 the permanent exclusion rate for Black Caribbean pupils was 0.18 per 100, and for Mixed White and Black Caribbean pupils 0.24, against 0.13 for White British pupils. Paul Connolly found that this reputation could be built as early as reception class.

Criticise: However, labels don’t always produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. Heidi Safia Mirza (1992) found that the Black girls in her study rejected their teachers’ negative labels, kept high self-esteem and did relatively well, although their strategies for avoiding unhelpful teachers had costs. Many of the labelling studies are also small-scale and over 30 years old. And labelling can’t explain why most minority groups now outperform White British pupils.

In-school factors: setting, tiering and institutional racism

Point: A second in-school factor is the way schools organise pupils, which some sociologists see as institutional racism.

Explain: Gillborn and Youdell found that schools under league-table pressure practised ‘educational triage’, concentrating on pupils judged able to reach a C grade and writing off others. Black pupils were more likely to be judged less able: in one school, only 2 Black pupils (5.6%) were in the top ability band, compared with 99 white pupils (33.2%).

Analyse: Placement in lower sets limits the grades pupils can get, through lower-tier exams and lower expectations, so this would directly lower Black pupils’ results. More recent large-scale evidence supports this. Steve Strand (2012) found that Black Caribbean pupils were less likely to be entered for the higher tiers of tests at age 14 than White British pupils with the same prior attainment and family background. Because this is a pattern built into school routines rather than individual prejudice, Gillborn argues it is institutional racism.

Criticise: This is strong evidence for the importance of in-school factors in explaining the Black Caribbean gap, because Strand’s analysis controlled for home background. However, it doesn’t explain why Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi and Black African pupils do so well in the same schools. If schools were institutionally racist against minorities in general, we would expect most minority groups to do worse, not better.

In-school factors: the ethnocentric curriculum

Point: A third in-school factor is the ethnocentric curriculum.

Explain: An ethnocentric curriculum reflects the culture of the majority ethnic group and marginalises others: for example, history taught from a white European point of view, and European languages offered rather than Asian or African ones. As far back as 1971, Bernard Coard argued that the British school system offered West Indian children no positive image of themselves, which lowered their motivation and achievement.

Analyse: If minority pupils don’t see their history and culture reflected in what they are taught, they may feel that school is not for them, which could reduce motivation.

Criticise: However, it is hard to argue that the ethnocentric curriculum is a major cause of underachievement when most minority groups taught the same curriculum now do better than White British pupils. The debate today is more about inclusion than achievement; in 2022, a campaign led by the footballer Troy Deeney called for Black, Asian and minority ethnic history to be compulsory, arguing that it would help minority pupils feel included.

Conclusion

In conclusion, neither the home nor the school explains differences in achievement between ethnic groups on its own. Home factors, especially parental expectations and the optimism of recent migrants, offer the best explanation of why Chinese, Indian and Black African pupils do so well, and why poverty affects them less than it affects White British pupils. But home factors can’t fully explain the lower achievement of Black Caribbean pupils. Here the evidence from within schools is stronger, especially Strand’s finding that Black Caribbean pupils are less likely to be entered for higher-tier tests than White British pupils with the same attainment and background. So the factors outside school may shape the patterns, but processes within schools can widen the gaps for some groups.

Short version of this essay

Point	Key evidence	Main criticism
Parental expectations and aspirations (home)	Strand (2007): Indian homework, parental aspirations 98% / 95% v 77%; Basit (2013); immigrant paradigm	Stereotyping (Francis, Mau and Archer 2017); can’t explain the gender gap within groups
Family structure and street culture (home)	Sewell (1997): hyper-masculinity; Black Caribbean boys 36.0	Only a minority of ‘rebels’; Black African lone-parent rate is higher but results are better
Material deprivation (outside school)	FSM pupils score lower in every group	Poor Chinese and Bangladeshi pupils outscore poor White British pupils; Strand (2021)
Teacher labelling (school)	Wright (1992); Gillborn (1990); Connolly; exclusion rates	Mirza: labels can be rejected; dated, small-scale studies
Setting, tiering and institutional racism (school)	Gillborn and Youdell (5.6% v 33.2%); Strand (2012) tier entry	Can’t explain why most minority groups do well
Ethnocentric curriculum (school)	Coard (1971)	Most minority groups do well on the same curriculum
Conclusion	Home factors explain high achievement; school factors matter more for the Black Caribbean gap; the two interact

KT’s Commentary

The biggest trap with this question is treating ‘ethnic minorities’ as one group that underachieves. That was the debate in the 1980s, and the statistics haven’t supported it for a long time. If you open with “ethnic minorities do worse than white pupils”, an examiner will know straight away that you haven’t looked at recent data. Name the groups.

The second trap is ignoring the Item. Item B hands you the structure: home and family life versus factors within schools. Use its words, especially ‘for some ethnic groups’, which is AQA telling you the question is about why some groups do well as much as why some do badly.

For evaluation, the most effective move is to use each side of the debate against the other: home factors can’t explain why Black Caribbean pupils are entered for lower tiers than White British pupils with the same attainment; school factors can’t explain why Chinese and Indian pupils thrive in the same schools. That’s the kind of evaluation that gets into the top band, rather than “this study is old”.

Other AQA questions on this topic

• June 2017, Q01: Outline two cultural factors that may affect ethnic differences in educational achievement. [4 marks]
• June 2021 (sat November 2021), Q03: Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which teaching and learning in schools may affect the educational experiences of minority ethnic groups. [10 marks]. Worked answer
• AQA specimen paper, Q03: Applying material from Item A, analyse two reasons why pupils from some minority ethnic groups achieve above average results in school. [10 marks]

For a 30-mark essay on cultural factors across class, gender and ethnicity, see evaluate the importance of cultural factors in explaining patterns of educational achievement (30 marks). For a practice essay on in-school factors across all three groups, see factors and processes within schools (30 marks).

Sociology of Education Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle, written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.

Signposting

This post has primarily been written for students of A-level Sociology preparing for the education section of Paper 1: Education with Theory and Methods.

For further links to ethnicity and education topics, please see my sociology of education page. For further examples of practice questions, please see my exams, essays and short answer questions page.

Sources

• AQA (2019) A-level Sociology Paper 1, 7192/1, June 2019: question paper and mark scheme.
• Basit, T. N. (2013) ‘Educational capital as a catalyst for upward social mobility amongst British Asians’, British Educational Research Journal, 39(4).
• Coard, B. (1971) How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System.
• Francis, B., Mau, A. and Archer, L. (2017) ‘The construction of British Chinese educational success’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(14).
• Gillborn, D. (1990) ‘Race’, Ethnicity and Education.
• Gillborn, D. and Youdell, D. (2000) Rationing Education.
• Mirza, H. S. (1992) Young, Female and Black.
• Sewell, T. (1997) Black Masculinities and Schooling.
• Strand, S. (2007) Minority ethnic pupils in the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, DCSF RR002; (2012) ‘The White British–Black Caribbean achievement gap’, BERJ, 38(1); (2021) Ethnic, socio-economic and sex inequalities in educational achievement at age 16.
• Wright, C. (1992) Race Relations in the Primary School.
• Ethnicity facts and figures: GCSE results (Attainment 8), 2022 to 2023; Permanent exclusions, 2022 to 2023; Families and households (2011 Census).