Racism in Schools and Ethnic Differentials in Educational Achievement: A brief comment on a recent debate

Whether schools are racist continues to be the subject of intense debate in Britain. Those writing from an avowedly anti-racist stance argue that schools are responsible for the differential treatment of African-Caribbean pupils and that it is incumbent on them to reflect on their existing practices, while their critics writing from an expressed apolitical stance argue that perfectly appropriate professional practices result in badly behaved pupils receiving differential treatment, that African-Caribbean pupils only receive such treatment because they are more likely to misbehave and that there is no need therefore for schools to re-examine their practices. It is suggested that a way out of this impasse is to recognise that differential treatment and bad behaviour are part of a vicious cycle. While accepting that the evidence for racial discrimination in schools is stronger than the critics maintain, this paper argues, however, that we should be cautious in seeing such discrimination as the major factor accounting for the complex pattern of ethnic differences in educational achievement.