Ethnicity and education

• Indian and chinese families - more liekly to place a higher emphasis on educational achievement and obtaining good results and a good career. Furthermore, there is higher cultural respect for elders, which means they are less likely to misbehave in class
  
• Pakistani - Usually more protective and restrictive of daughters and likely to take a distance from school process. 
• African-Caribbean - less emphasis on educational achievement. With 50% of households being single-parent households, means more boys are disruptive as they lack genuiine male role models
• Trust in the system and language barriers - studies show that ethnic parents keep their distance from schools and trust teachers to do their jobs, partially due to the difficulties of language barriers, whereas white parents are more likely to attempt to intervene.

In school processe afecting ethnic achievement

• School as being institutionally racist - schools can seem to not support different ethnicities and this is hown especially in the 'ethnocentric curriculum'. This can be seen in many ways; school holidays are based around Christina holidays e.g. Christmas and Easter, subjects like history focus mostly on European history and languages mostly focus on Western- European languages e.g. French or German. This may leave children of different ethnicities feeling excluded, possibly leading to disenchanted with school.
• Teacher-pupil relationships - Wright found that teachers perceived students differently depending on their ethnicity. Black students were percieved as disruptive and often repremanded for the same behaiviour as white students who would not be punished. One study showed that in pre-school Asian students were seen as a problem to ignore due to assumptions about language barriers; however, teachers assumed they would not cause trouble. 
• Pupil sub-cultures - Sewell found black boys were more likely to form anti-school subcultures and conform to 'urban' or 'street' stereotypes. More importance was given to bad behaiviour and being disruptive than learning. It has been argued that these subcultures are due to in-school factors, such as institutional racism.

Ethnic minorities are more likeley to live belwo the poverty line

• Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are more likely to be poor than whites
• Unemployment rates are higher among ethinic minorities and pay is lower
• Lowest achieveing ethnic minority groups are those in the lowest social classes

Racism in wider society

• There is still a great deal of discrimination in wider society. Ethnic minorities may be discriminated against in jobs and housing, leading to social exclusion, and lower pay, which effects their children's educational oppurtunities