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Moving the goalposts : education policy and 25 years of the Black/White achievement gap
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Gillborn, David, Demack, Sean, Rollock, Nicola and Warmington, Paul (2017) Moving the goalposts : education policy and 25 years of the Black/White achievement gap. British Educational Research Journal, 43 (5). pp. 848-874. doi:10.1002/berj.3297 ISSN 0141-1926.
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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3297
Abstract
Drawing on a secondary analysis of official statistics the paper analyzes the changing scale of the inequality of achievement between White students and their Black British peers who identify their family heritage as Black Caribbean. We examine a 25 year period from the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), in 1988, to the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 2013. It is the first time that the Black/White gap has been analysed over such a long period. The paper reviews the changing place of the Black/White gap in education debates and notes that, despite periods when race equality has appeared to be high on the political agenda, it has never held a consistent place at the heart of policy. Our findings shed light on how the Black/White gap is directly affected, often in negative ways, by changes in education policy. Specifically, whenever the key benchmark for achievement has been redefined, it has had the effect of restoring historic levels of race inequity; in essence, policy interventions to ‘raise the bar’ by toughening the benchmark have actively widened gaps and served to maintain Black disadvantage. Throughout the entire 25 year period, White students were always at least one and a half times more likely to attain the dominant benchmark than their Black peers. Our findings highlight the need for a sustained and explicit focus on race inequity in education policy.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Education Studies (2013- ) | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Educational attainment -- Minorities -- Great Britain, Academic achievement -- Minorities -- Great Britain, Education and state -- Great Britian -- 21st century | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | British Educational Research Journal | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0141-1926 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | October 2017 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 43 | ||||||||
| Number: | 5 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 848-874 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1002/berj.3297 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 10 July 2017 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 5 August 2019 | ||||||||
| Related URLs: |
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