The Guardian’s Sally Weale and Richard Adams cite findings from our Class differences: Ethnicity and disadvantage report.

Schools are being urged to focus improvement efforts on struggling white working-class pupils who get the worst GCSE results of all the main ethnic groups, amid growing concern about stark disparities in attainment.

A study by the Sutton Trust education charity found that disadvantaged pupils from Chinese backgrounds were almost three times as likely to get the benchmark five good GCSEs as their white working-class peers.

While poverty continues to play a major role in educational outcomes, attainment among pupils from Bangladeshi, black African and Chinese backgrounds who are on free school meals (FSM) has improved dramatically in the past decade.

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“Several explanations have been proposed for this shift,” says the report. “The popularity of private tutors among ethnic groups and the latter’s concentration in large urban areas such as London (where average results have improved in recent years, with some suggesting that ethnic minorities have driven this progress), the impact of supplementary schools, and differing levels of parental aspiration, among others.”

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, welcomed improving attainment among some ethnic groups. “This may reflect a strong cultural appreciation of education from which we can all learn,” he said.

“But it is worrying that there is such a disparity in the achievement of different ethnic groups at GCSE and particularly concerning that white working-class boys and girls continue to perform so poorly.

“Harnessing that same will to learn that we see in many ethnic minority groups in white working-class communities should be a part of the solution to the low attainment of many boys and girls. We need a more concerted effort with white working-class boys, in particular.”

Beyond school, the paper – entitled Class Differences and published on Thursday – reports that 45% of white British pupils attend university, the lowest rate of all ethnicities excluding Gypsy/Roma. Yet white British students have better rates of attending elite universities, with 24% of those who go on to higher education attending a Russell Group university, more than most minority ethnic groups.

Read the full article here.

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