The UK and the US have a complex relationship with race. This relationship affects all sectors in society including education. This essay will explore the various policies introduced since 1945 by the UK and US government aimed to deal with issues facing ethnic minority. And how the governments have attempted to rectify the problems that ethnic minority students face. This essay will compare and contrast policy efforts in the UK to address these issues.
Inequalities still exist with in education in the UK. Research shows that Black and minority ethnic students still continue to experience inequalities within the education system (Crozier 2012). As ethnic minorities became a more prominent part of British society the need to make them a part of the national community became clearer.
By the end of the 1960’s a report on race relations concluded that ‘the evidence for the existence of discrimination based on colour is overwhelming (Rose et al 1969). In 1948 the British Nationality Act was passed which created the status of "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" (CUKC) as the national citizenship of the United Kingdom and its colonies. It allowed citizens of colonized countries free entry into the UK.
The 1944 education act emerged out of the post Second World War initiative to create a welfare state. It introduced secondary education to 15, it soon became clear that the Act had significantly benefited middle class children. The idea that children should be separated by ability at aged 11 through one test soon became a talking point. The Plowden Report talked about the problems with establishing whether immigrant children ‘lack intelligence or is suffering from culture shock or simply from inability to communicate’ (Plowden Report1967:70). Although the 1944 Act promoted the idea of equality of opportunity regardless of race, gender or social class, the act did not promote equality of opportunity in terms of allocation of resources and curriculum. Inner city schools during the 1960’s were the poorest schools in terms of resources, they also were where the majority of immigrant children attended. There was no government policy during this time that focused on meeting the needs of ethnic minority children in the education system. Instead the government and general public voiced their concerns about the concentration of immigrants in inner cities. The 1965 White Paper on immigration discussed the ‘excessive and undesirable concentrations of Commonwealth immigrants (ibid.:18). The 1965 DES publication ‘The Education of Immigrants’. This publication recommended that immigrant students should make up no more than a third of students in a classroom. This led to immigrant students being dispersed by a system of bussing after being recommended in the 1965 government White Paper. The policy of bussing became highly criticised because there was no suggestion made that white children should be bussed. The policy of bussing was deemed to be illegal after the court case Race Relations Boards vs. Ealing LEA (1975).
In the early 1970’s the government began to acknowledge that there was a considerable discrimination against ethnic minorities. The 1975 White Paper on racial discrimination stated that the government should “ensure fair and equal treatment for all our people, regardless of their race, colour or national origins”. This was followed by the 1976 Race Relation Act which made it illegal for any education institution to discriminate on any ethnic group. The educational attainment of ethnic minority children became a key issue during the 1970’s. The Green Paper Education in Schools (DES 1977) stated the need for the curriculum to change to reflect the a more multicultural society “Ours is now a multiracial and multicultural society…the comprehensive school reflects the need to educate our people for a different sort of society” (DES 1977: para 10-11).The Green Paper written by the Labour government in 1977 also stated that “ the curriculum should reflect a sympathetic understanding of the different cultures and races that make up our society (DES 1977:41). However, the main issue was that the government gave no guidance on how the curriculum could do this.
The main focus in education policy during the 1980’s was freedom of choice. A national curriculum was introduced under the 1988 Education Act. The 1988 Education Reform Act shifted principles of education underpinned by the 1944 Education Act to competition of choice. Concerns were raised about by many about the inclusivity of the curriculum. “One of the main criticisms made against the National Curriculum is that it is predominantly Eurocentric, Anglocentric and monocultural and is consequently largely unrepresentative of a multi-cultural and multi-racial society “(Beatrice Drury1992). The book No Problem Here written by Chris Gaine in 1987 highlighted the attitudes of teachers, schools where there were very few or no ethnic minority students. He argued that these individuals believed there was issue of systematic racism in their area and considered multicultural initiatives a threat. Gaine noted that white pupils “did not listen to distinctions between Sikhs and Muslims… West Indians and Indians, because they are not interested … the important thing to them is that these people are not white” (pg86).
In the 1980’s there was an awareness that the education system needed to reform in order to accommodate the culturally diverse society. The failure of the government to adequately solve these problems in the1980’s was not due to a lack of understanding on the government part but rather a lack of willingness.
The 1988 Education Act had given parents the right to choose their children’s schools. Schools began in the early 1990’s to publish their schools exam result which were published in newspapers. This cause a highly competitive education “market” in which schools competed against each other to get the best results to get the best pupils. This also meant that schools removed pupils deemed to be disrupting the running of the schools. In 1992 the Department for Education found that black students made up 2% of the school population but 10% of those excluded from schools. A HMI study done in by Ofsted in 1993 found that ‘schools in disadvantaged area’s do not have the capacity for sustainable renewal… underlying social issues such as poverty, unemployment. A study done by the OECD (1994) also found that privileged individuals were more able to choose schools. As ethnic minorities on the whole tended to have a lower socio-economic position they tended to live in predominantly disadvantaged areas. Therefore the 1988 Education Reform act generated more disadvantage for ethnic minorities. Scholar Michael Apple (1999) noted that “race became an absent presence” during the 1990’ as the ignored the racial tensions most notably the murder of 18-year-old A-level student Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Although the murder of Stephen Lawrence led to an eventual inquiry the Conservative government initially refused to pursue an inquiry. His death eventually led to the Macpherson Report (1999) the report led to the reality of institutionalized racism becoming clear. The report made many recommendations some which concerned education it also influenced the Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000). The Act place the responsibility on public institution such as the police and education to look at racial equality.
In the late 1990 – early 2000’s there began to be a wider acknowledgement that the Uk was now a multicultural society with different histories, religions ect that could no longer be brushed under the carpet. However, Goring (2004) stated that by the 2000’s some black parents were so discouraged by the education system that they were sending their children back to the Caribbean to attend secondary school The New Labor government elected in to power in 1997 began to develop strategies in order to help disadvantaged children. A Social Exclusion Unit was set up by the Cabinet office in 1997. The Unit aimed to tackle social inequality concentrating on school exclusion. Another programme introduced to help those living in disadvantaged areas was Education Action Zones. Education Action zones which eventually became part of the Excellence in Cities programme aimed to improve schools and achievement through collaboration between business, schools and the community to increase funding. A Sure Start Programme was set up in 1999 the aim of the programme was to bring to together services such as midwives, play worker and more. The intention of the Sure Start programme was to provide a service to the most disadvantaged areas of the country which included many ethnic minority individuals. Education and childcare policies that aimed to alleviate disadvantaged faced by many including ethnic minorities never truly evaluated how these policies affected ethnic minorities. Policy maker seemed unwilling to look at how the marketisation of education had led to an increase in social, economic and racial tensions. The DfES (2004) acknowledged in its five-year plan that ‘we fail our most disadvantaged children”.
The of history education policies since the 1940’s is one of various governments attempting to deal with the longstanding issues of racial inequality. Despite the claims of diversity and equality being entrenched in the education system, the more complex issues of school hierarchy and the unequal distribution of social and economic capital has meant that many ethnic minority students have unequal chances to enter into the best school’s universities and in turn the best jobs
The USA is an incredibly diverse country. However, the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination has influenced the structure of the education system and educational policies. Even decades after slavery was abolished the education system remained deeply segregated.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s the civil rights movement challenged the legal basis for segregation and inequality. Before this education was deeply segregated and black students typically attended schools that were inferior. As a result, education civil rights campaigners challenged the inequalities that remained in the education system in part due to the ruling on the case Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) that facilities could be “separate but equal”. The case Brown vs Board of Education (1954) ended the legal segregation of facilities. Despite this ethnic minorities still suffered unequal access to education. The progress to fully desegregate schools was slow and Black students encountered many barriers in the coming decades. This according to Rury (2005) was particularly true in the South where resistance to desegregation was at times violent. One of the most well-known cases is in 1957 where President Eisenhower had to send military tools to protect the Black students attempting to attend Little Rock High School. In 1964 the Federal Civil Rights Act banned federal programs from discriminating based on race, color this allowed the Department of Justice from withholding funds from school districts that actively discriminated against black students. During 1964 the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights was established in order to enforce the promotion of civil rights in education. In 1968 Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act that established programme to meet the needs of children with limited English skills. However, school participation was voluntary and so not all schools participated or provided services. Despite these changes, many schools continued to experience segregation.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s racial integration was ensured through a process of bussing similar to that in the UK. As a result, schools became more integrated from 1960- 1980 In 1974 passed the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (1974) which mandated that no state could deny educational opportunities based in race and requires states to take action to ensure equal participation amongst students. It has been argued by many researchers that this integration of schools has declined in recent years. Research done by Orfield, Frankerberg and Lee (2002) explored the increase in racial segregation in education. They found that the average White students attended schools with a school population that is nearly 80% white by comparison they found that the average black student attends a school where less than 33% of students are white. These issues continued into the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
In 2002 the Bush administration introduced an Education Bill entitled “No Child Left Behind’(NCLB) with the aim of improving the education of students typically left behind in the American education system i.e. ethnic minority children. The main aims of NCLB where to raise the achievement of all students thus closing the gaps in attainment between race and class. However, one of the main criticisms of NCLB is that it failed to address the inequalities in the delivery of education both across the Unites States, between states and even school districts. As Darling- Hammond (2004) states schools serving large numbers of students of colour have larger class sizes, fewer teachers and lower quality courses and a lack of materials. One of the key issues with NCLB was that the law focused on improving school quality through testing without examining in detail what resources were needed to in order to do so. One of the effect of encouraging schools to focus on test schools was that as number of studies have found it created a system in which schools encouraged low achieving students to leave schools (Haney 2000). A study done in Texas found that test scores were boosted as a result of pushing many students out of the testing figures and as a result thousands of students disappeared from school (Dobbs, 2003). These students were mostly students of colour. In 2014-115 the dropout rate for African American was 20.8% who made up 12.5% of the student population compared to 18.1% for white students who made up 29.3% of the student population. A consequence of this is that there is an increasing number of student who leave school without any qualifications or skill needed to get a job. This causes what Wald and Losen (2003) called the ‘school to prison pipeline’. According to Darling Hammond (2004) more than half of prison inmates are functionally illiterate. In this way although NCLB aimed to solve the issues of inequality of achievement it could be argued that it did more harm than¬¬ good.
In the UK and US, the Second World created an environment for which the movement for betterment of educational provision. In the UK and US this began to come to fruition in the 1960’s. In the US it began as part of President Johnson’s war on Poverty. Education was seen as a key part of solving the problem of poverty by raising standards to move people out of poverty. In the UK there was a similar commitment to education through the welfare state and the idea of education for all. By the late 1980’s it seems as if both the Uk and US had reformed the education system in different ways. In the Uk the introduction of the national curriculum was meant to raise standards and eradicate educational inequalities in terms of the standard of delivery. In the US the federal government had introduced numerous policies that aimed to ensure that all states promoted social equality and equality of opportunity. Unlike the UK the UK the US government did not introduce a national curriculum but instead “a far more decentralized set of governmental arrangements for education” (Guthrie and Pierce 1990).
A key similarity between the UK and US is the continued lack of diversity in the curriculum and the lack of government policies that deal with this problem. In both the UK the lack of diversity in the curriculum has in many ways reinforces the ideas of white superiority. “The continuing strength of multicultural education does tend to reside outside of England in the United States but the issue of diverse and citizenship-based education systems tend to provide opportunities for culturally diverse education.” (Race, 2011 p,114) This had led to many students feeling excluded from the curriculum and could account for the number of students in the US who drop out and those in the UK who choose not to go to university.
The most obvious difference between the UK and the US is that racial inequalities are more far more obvious due in part to the sheer size of the US and also the racial tensions that exist in part due to the legacy of slavery and segregation. In the US before the 1960’s there was a legal basis for the exclusion of ethnic minorities from education. This legacy has a had major impact of the structure and delivery of education. In comparison segregation was never a legal policy in the UK and so although the UK holds some obvious biases they are a result of a lack of government policy as opposed to because of policies that actively discriminate against ethnic minorities. The education system in the UK is shaped in such a way that the government has a far more active role in the education system. Therefore, policies introduced by the government are for wider reaching than those in the US. In the US the curriculum varies from state to state and even within school districts. Although the Federal government supervises education through the Department of Education regulation of schools is done by each state. As a result, the quality or even quantity of policies that address the issues facing ethnic minorities varies from state to state.
In conclusion the efforts by the US and UK government to ensure that ethnic minority students receive the same education as their white peers has been over the years fairly ineffective. The continued inequalities facing ethnic minorities in education are proof that the governments of both countries need to work further to ensure that the issues facing ethnic minorities are properly dealt with in the future.