Minority Ethnic Pupils in Mainly White Schools

This stimulating research report funded by the DfES was published in 2002. The research conducted by Tony Cline, Guida de Abreu, Cornelius Fihosy, Hilary Gray, Hannah Lambert and Jo Neale from the University of Luton investigated the experiences of minority ethnic pupils in mainly white schools and looked at the issues that affect "isolated" minority ethnic pupils in areas where only 4% to 6% of pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Amongst the key findings of the research were that:

• Teaching provision for children in the early stages of learning English as an additional language (EAL) was variable, and no school had a strategy in place for supporting children with EAL beyond the initial stages.
• No school in the sample had a fully developed strategy for preparing pupils through the curriculum for life in a diverse society.
• Presented with alternative ideals of how diversity might be treated, most informants saw their school or class as trying to treat all children equally and playing down ethnic and cultural differences.
• A minority of schools or classrooms in this sample were seen as partially adopting the alternative stance of stressing and valuing cultural diversity.
• Teachers reported that, in most cases, the issues with which this research was concerned had not been covered either in their initial training or in any recent in-service training.

Both a summary and the full report are available to download on the DfE site at https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationdetail/page1/RR365