Educational attainment of Muslim pupils in England and Scotland

Educational attainment of Muslim pupils in England and

Scotland

Outline of presentation

• Educational attainment of Muslim pupils• Progression of pupils through school• Exclusions• Scottish and English data• Summary and comparison

Methodology• Secondary analysis of large scale survey data

(Scottish pupils’ survey, year; LSYPE, 2001 Census, Government statistics)

• Difficulties to disentangle religion from ethnicity - 99.16% of Pakistani girls and 97.46% of Pakistani boys, 97.27% of Bangladeshi girls and 98.66% of Bangladeshi boys self-identifying as Muslim (LSYPE).

• In the Scottish analysis, ethnicity is used as proxy for religion.

KS4/GCSE results, by ethnicity, England (boys)

Source: Government Equality Office (2010)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Traveller of Irish Heritage (<0.1)

Gypsy/Romany (<0.1)

Black Caribbean (0.7)

White and Black Caribbean (0.5)

Any other Black background (0.2)

Pakistani (1.3)

Black African (1.0)

Bangladeshi(0.5)

Any other ethnic group (0.5)

White British (41)

Any other White background (1.3)

White and Black African (0.1)

Any other mixed background (0.5)

Any other Asian background (0.5)

Irish (0.2)

White and Asian (0.3)

Indian (1.2)

Chinese (0.2)

Boy

s

Rank in the distributionEthnicity unknown for 2 per cent of the boys in the sample

KS4/GCSE results, by ethnicity, England (girls)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Gypsy/Romany (<0.1)

Traveller of Irish Heritage (<0.1)

Black Caribbean (0.7)

White and Black Caribbean (0.5)

Any other Black background (0.2)

Pakistani (1.2)

Black African (1)

White British (40)

Any other White background (1.2)

White and Black African (0.1)

Bangladeshi (0.5)

Any other mixed background (0.5)

Any other ethnic group (0.4)

Irish (0.2)

Any other Asian background (0.4)

White and Asian (0.3)

Indian (1.1)

Chinese (0.2)

Girl

s

Rank in the distributionEthnicity unknown for 2 per cent of the girls in the sample

Source: Government Equality Office (2010)

Differences from average assessments, boys aged 7-16, not

FSM (LSYPE)

Differences from average assessments, girls aged 7-16, not FSM

(LSYPE)

Exclusion by ethnic group and gender (%, England, 2005-06) (DCSF, 2009)

0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00 25.00 30.00

White British

White and Asian

Any other Mixed background

Indian

Pakistani

Bangladeshi

Any other Asian background

Black Caribbean

Black African

Any other Black background

Chinese

Any other ethnic group

Boys Girls

Secondary 4 results, by ethnicity, Scotland, 2008 (boys)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Other (1)

Asian-Other (0.1)

Asian-Pakistani (0.6)

White-UK (48)

White-Other (0.6)

Black (Caribbean,African, Other) (0.2)

Mixed (0.3)

Asian-Indian (0.1)

Asian-Chinese (0.2)

Boy

s

Rank in the distribution

Secondary 4 results, by ethnicity, Scotland, 2008 (girls)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Other (0.2)

Black (Caribbean,African, Other) (0.1)

White-Other (0.6)

White-UK (46)

Asian-Pakistani (0.6)

Asian-Other (0.1)

Mixed (0.3)

Asian-Indian (0.1)

Asian-Chinese (0.1)

Girl

s

Rank in the distribution

Three year tariff score of S4 pupils by ethnicity

and deprivation (SIMD 2006) (Scottish Government, 2009d)

Cases of fixed period exclusion by ethnic background of pupils 2007/2008

(Scottish Government, 2009c)

0 5 10 15 20

Exclusions rate pupils(%)

Highest qualification, by ethnicity, men, UK, 2006-2008 (%) Working age population

(Source: LFS, 2006-08)

Highest qualification, by ethnicity, women, UK, 2006-08 (%)

Working age population

Summary

• Attainment: Overall Chinese and Indian pupils were the best performing groups and Black African, Caribbean and travellers the worst performing groups.

• Progress - Muslim pupils start off well below national average – but catch up in England

• However, at the age of 16 Pakistani boys in England still score well below national average – in Scotland the gap is generally smaller.

Summary II

• Gender difference is marked and cut across ethnicity. Notably, Pakistani girls make greater progress than Pakistani boys and overtake white girls.

• Social deprivation matters – but the difference in educational attainment on the grounds of social deprivation is not as great for minority ethnic groups as for white pupils.