migration, race and education: evidence-based policy or institutional racism? simon warren

7/31/2019 Migration, race and education: evidence-based policy or institutional racism? Simon Warren

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Race Ethnicity and Education

Vol. 10, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 367385

ISSN 1361-3324 (print)/ISSN 1470-109X (online)/07/04036719

Migration, race and education:

evidence-based policy or

institutional racism?

Simon Warren*Sheffield University, UKTaylorandFrancis LtdCREE_A_265683.sgm10.1080/13613320701658423RaceEthnicityandEducation1361-3324(p rint)/1470-109X (online)OriginalArti cle2007Taylor&Francis104000000December200 [email protected]

The promise of evidence-based policy is that social scientific research can lead to rational planning

that will lead to improved outcomes and life chances for people across the whole spectrum of social

provision. This article argues that evidence is politically mobilised to legitimise the reproduction of

racial and social advantage and construct racialised groups as targets for policy intervention. It is

suggested that migration and education policy is refracted through a politically generated concern

about the destabilising impact of new global flows of people; that this involves the construction of a

new racial settlement; and that this racial settlement is articulated through a strategy of managing

internal and external populations. Despite the weight of evidence in relation to the educationalexperience of minoritised communities, which demonstrates that racism is endemic and systemic,

government-sponsored policy interventions continue to reproduce White middle-class racial and

social advantage. Attempts to construct a discursive distinction between old and new migrations

have simply made the situation worse. They have led to a failure to learn lessons from the history of

racism and oppression faced by other minoritised groups. It means that the potential of the concept

of institutional racism, so hard won, has not been used to understand the experience of new migrant

communities. The conclusion is that the British education system is institutionally racist.

Introduction

British society has witnessed a social revolution. In fear of sounding empiricist, thefacts speak for themselves. The 2001 census clearly demonstrates that Britain is, for

want of a better term, diverse. Indeed, such is the extent of this social revolution that

diversity, rather than any specific ethno-religious identification, should be seen as the

norm against which everything else is measured. A report from the Department for

Education and Skills (DfES) has noted that in 2004 Black and minority ethnic

(BME) pupils comprised 17% of the maintained school population in England and

*Institute for Lifelong Learning, Sheffield University, 196-198 West Street, Sheffield, S1 4ET, UK.

Email: [email protected]


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368 S. Warren

constituted the fastest growing category of pupil (DfES, 2005). Furthermore, as

noted by Sally Tomlinson in a review of race, ethnicity and New Labour, census

analysts predict that the metropolitan cities of Birmingham and Leicester will soon

have no one ethnic majority (Tomlinson, 2005).

As I will illustrate later, government policy discourses make regular reference to thechanging demographic composition of Britain. In the first part of this article I argue

that these demographic changes and transformations in the global flow of peoples

have produced an ontological insecurity.

The promise of evidence-based policy (EBP) is that social scientific research can

lead to rational planning that will lead to improved outcomes and life chances for

people across the whole spectrum of social provision. Given the weight of evidence

about racially differentiated educational outcomes, and given that normal educational

practices produce racist effects, we might expect to see policy initiatives aimed at

tackling the racist logic inherent in these normal practices. Instead, English educa-

tion policy plays an active role in supporting and affirming exactly these kinds of racist

inequities and structures of oppression (Gillborn, 2005, p. 492). My argument is that

evidence is politically mobilised to legitimise the reproduction of racial and social

advantage and construct racialised groups as targets for policy intervention.

My focus is on a particular policy problematicthat of the integration of new

migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Integration has become a key policy problem

for the Home Office, which has hosted a series of national conferences on the issue

over recent years. A range of policy documents have been produced dealing with inte-

gration (e.g., Carey-Wood et al., 1995; Home Office, 2000a, 2002; Fyvie et al., 2003).

For the purposes of this article I limit my discussion to the compulsory phase ofeducation.

At this point I want to make a few comments on terminology. Throughout the arti-

cle a number of terms are used that might appear unfamiliar to some readers. While

the terms bear a resemblance to other terms more commonly used, I use them in a

particular way. Throughout the article I use the related terms Britain and British.

Britain is used instead of UK (United Kingdom) in order to problematise the

normative use of UK in British academic discourse. I do this in part to signal the

essentially contested nature of the political settlement referred to as the UK. Internal

political devolution has unsettled any notion of the UK being a cohesive politicalentity. Britain therefore signals the unstable and constituted nature of the language.

I also have a more personal motivation. As an Irish citizen my relationship with the

UK as a political entity is immediately made problematic. The degree of ontological

challenge this poses to different individuals is varied. For me, the idea that a separate

country and political entity can lay claim to part of the country of which I am a citizen

is troubling. As an academic with a commitment to racial and social justice I cannot

escape dealing head-on with the racially and politically constituted nature of the

language I use. In the context of using Britain instead of UK, I hope that my use

of British may take on a slightly different hue. Within much academic (let alone

political and popular) discourse, UK and British are conflated terms, dismissingthe allegiances and belongings associated with the many component parts of the UK


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Migration, race and education 369

political entity. I therefore use the term British in order to signal the fact that the

kinds of citizenship discourses deployed by British governments in the face of onto-

logical insecurity seek to institute a British identity, even where the educational

context dealt with in this article is that of England. More of that later.

The other term that needs some explaining is minoritised communities. PreviouslyI have used the shorthand term BME. From this point on in this article I shall use

the term minoritised (communities, students, etc.) to separate racism and racial cate-

goriesthe two are not necessarily conjoined (Anthias, 2001a, 2001b). I want to

emphasise the fact that it is not the ethnic category or identification of individuals or

groups that locates them in subordinate positions (therefore the term minority,

which implies fewer rights to claim resources in a majoritarian political culture), but

the cultural logic of powerful institutions that mobilise racial categories in an attempt

to normalise racial differentiation (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Winant, 2000).

This article is organised into two parts. I begin by describing the contemporary

moment as one of the reconfiguration of racial settlements (Lewis, 1996, 2000). In

particular I argue that the mobilisation of evidence for policy production may best be

understood as constituted by a tension between strategies to manage internal and

external populations. Internally, new racial settlements are being forged that seek to

make distinctions between new and old migrations, and certain categories of people

are identified as requiring policy interventions to make them more responsible or

active citizens. Externally, an economic imperative is deployed to mark distinctions

between those migrants who can maximise Britains economic interests, and the

bogus asylum seeker. Both strategies are understood as part of governmental

approaches designed to manage new global flows of capital, peoples and symbols.The second part moves on to the terrain of education. The notion of responses to

ontological insecurity due to transformation in global flows of people is developed

through an expanded conception of institutional racism. Drawing on both critical

race theory and Pierre Bourdieus conceptual framework, institutional racism is

deployed to understand the ways in which evidence is politically mobilised to sideline

racism as an explanatory concept to describe racially differentiated educational

outcomes, and therefore normalise the reproduction of racial and social advantage.

Policy interventions around English language acquisition and urban education are

used as illustrative examples of the way evidence is mobilised to produce causalpolicy stories linking English language acquisition to educational success, and to legit-

imise policy interventions around the management of minoritised students.

In conclusion, I argue that far from racism being an abnormal feature of the British

education system, the system is propelled by a cultural logic of racial differentiation.

Consequently, the policy problem we should be dealing with is the way the education

system consistently supports social and racial advantage.

Racial settlements, risk society and migration

I want to situate my discussion of EBP within a critical perspective on the nature ofcontemporary society, in particular in relation to the related notions of globalisation


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with processes of globalisation and international insecurity. This sense of social and

demographic change is reiterated in important government policy statements, such as

Strength in Diversity produced by the Home Office (2004). In this strategic framework

for the development of a cohesive society the impact of modern migration sets the

scene for a discussion of policy responses:

Globalisation, new patterns of migration and the expansion of the European Union will all

impact on the changing nature of our population, as will the fact that many more people

now choose to study, work or live for a time outside their countries of origin. (p. 4)

It is important to state that the depiction of new global flows of people within this and

other policy statements is not wholly negative. The rhetoric is often careful, seeking

to celebrate the diversity of British society. This positive rhetoric has been noted by

David Gillborn (2005). Gillborn argues that anti-racism has been co-opted within

New Labour policy discourses, and in the process evacuated of all critical content

(p. 14). He warns that the positive rhetoric of race deployed by New Labour disguisesthe systemic nature of racism. However positive the rhetoric, the new patterns of

global migration are constructed within political discourse as threatening the cohe-

sion of British society and challenging the national collectivity:

Hence boundary maintenance is not just about controlling the numbers who are permitted

entry but also managing the composition of populations that may potentially alter the

make-up of the British collectivity. (Yuval-Davis et al., 2005, p. 517)

There is, then, as part of the struggle to constitute new racial settlements, a sense of

ontological uncertainty. This ontological uncertainty has seen the emergence of a

language of managed migration (Home Office, 2002), whereby distinctions aremade between different categories of migrant (as will be discussed below), and a

balance is sought between securing Britains external borders and establishing inter-

nal social cohesion around a newly articulated sense of British identity.

Rosemary Sales (2005) has noted that this balancing act involves a number of

breaks with past practice and contradictions. The White Paper2Secure Borders, Safe

Haven: Integration with Diversity in Modern Britain welcomed migration for its

economic and cultural enrichment and articulated a notion of common British iden-

tity based not on some mythic sense of national ethnicity, but on human rights legis-

lation. As inclusive as this first appears, the detailed provisions around citizenship andnationality, and marriages in particular, introduce distinctly contradictory impulses.

Sales demonstrates that a new notion of British identity based on human rights fails

to recognise the experience of racism faced by minoritised communities. Also, the

pledge that new citizens are required to make binds them to a notion of Britain that

is Christian and Protestantthat is, it binds them to a confessional state.

Fear of an alien presence in the composition of the population is contained in

the continuing restrictions on family reunion contained in the new immigration

regime. Eleonore Kofman (2004) argues that constraints on family reunion are

aimed at restricting the growth of alien communities whose cultures are perceived

to challenge the cultural normativity of the majority society. Also, these policieshave an economic impetus in that family migration is usually associated with female


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372 S. Warren

migrants whose labour is often discounted in favour of young men or highly skilled

male workers.

Risk as policy metaphorThe struggle to constitute a new racial settlement based on the distinction between

different categories of foreigners frames the policy debate about refugees, asylum

seekers and new migrants. The process of these racialised distinctions is evident in

British policy discourses on migration. Don Flynn, in an insightful discussion of

current shifts in policy discourse on migration, notes that a key distinction is made

between the management of migration for Britains economic interests and the

restriction of asylum (Flynn, 2005). This distinction has led to an increase in the

numbers of work-permit holders. However, the media focus of concern has, until

recently, been on the numbers of asylum seekers. This discursive distinction betweengood migration for economic success and bad asylum seekers is unstable, as recent

political disagreement within New Labour about the control of migration from

Romania and Bulgaria suggests (Woodward, 2006).3 While the increased tolerance

towards economic migrants (of certain types) contained in the emerging immigration

regime can be perceived as new, it also continues a tradition of the rich north exploit-

ing the poor south. The active recruitment and enticement of skilled workers from

developing nations drains them of their most skilled and educated (Yuval-Davis et al.,

2005, p. 520).

The British immigration regime also attempts to construct a neat distinction

between economic and political migration. Stephen Castles (2003) argues that this ispractically untenable and empirically wrong. The distinction between forced and

economic migration is blurred because:

Failed economies generally also mean weak states, predatory ruling cliques and human

rights abuse. This leads to the notion of the asylum-migration nexus: many migrants and

asylum seekers have multiple reasons for mobility and it is impossible to completely sepa-

rate economic and human rights motivations. (p. 17)

Attempts at constructing these particular distinctions can be related to developments

in the way the management of both internal and external populations is conceptual-

ised within contemporary political discourse. A number of commentators have noted

that governments such as New Labour can be characterised by a shift from direct

government intervention, to governance and the constitution of a regulatory state

(Dean, 1999; Sales, 2002). This can also be conceptualised as attempts to shift the

balance of risk from the state to the individual, from a collective responsibility for

social risk such as employment, health and pensions mediated by institutions of the

welfare state to an individualised responsibility mediated by choice and markets

(Lister, 1990, 1997). Much social policy, including that for education, can be under-

stood as being developed within the logic of this form of rationality. This shift involves

the constitution of a distinction between what Mitchell Dean (1999, p. 167) callsactive citizens (who manage the minimisation of their own risk) and targeted populations


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(the at risk who require intervention). Poor investment (choice) is a private problem

that is regarded as having social consequences, and therefore needs to be regulated.

Different categories of external populations are targeted by the British govern-

ments managed migration policies. Some populations are deemed as contributing

to Britains economic competitiveness, while others are constructed as troublinginternal social cohesion. This highlights the argument made by John Urry (2000) that

modern government is often about managing global flows of capital, people and

symbols, as much as it is about managing internal populations. Distinctions between

internal populations are mediated through concepts of risk, and active citizenship,

with some groups targeted for policy intervention. The formation of policy in relation

to the education of new migrant communities should therefore be understood in the

context of a political concern about the unsettling nature of new global flows of

people (see also Winant, 2000). What counts as evidence may well have to be consid-

ered within this framing of the policy problem.

My argument is that EBP in relation to refugees, asylum seekers and new migrant

communities has to be understood as partly constituted within a tension between the

management of internal populations and the management of external populations.

Importantly, it should be understood as contributing to the formation of particular

racial settlements.

New racial settlements, institutional racism, and education

New Labours political project has foregrounded issues of social justice, even though

the particular formulation of justice operationalised through policy can be viewed ashighly problematic (Thrupp, 2001; Tomlinson, 2005). Through the introduction of

the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, New Labour has signalled its commit-

ment to race equality, even though education and migration policies appear to under-

mine this commitment in practice (see Tomlinson, 2005 for a discussion).

Institutional power and structured inequality

The attempt to forge a new racial settlement structured around the differential

management of internal and external populations can perhaps be epitomised by thecontrast between New Labours immigration policy and the Stephen Lawrence

Inquiry. Sally Tomlinson (2005, p. 153), in her review of New Labours approach to

race, ethnicity and education, notes that on its election in 1997 New Labour was eager

to affirm their view of a modern national identity which valued cultural diversity and

recognised the citizenship rights of settled minorities and the inequalities they faced.

While in opposition Jack Straw, who was to become Home Secretary in the new govern-

ment, supported the Lawrence familys campaign to gain justice for their son Stephen,

who was the victim of both a racist murder in 1993 and a failed investigation by

Londons Metropolitan Police. Once in office, Jack Straw set up an inquiry into his

death and the subsequent police investigation. The Inquiry report (the MacphersonReport; Macpherson, 1999) and subsequent Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000


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374 S. Warren

(Home Office, 2000b) were heralded as watersheds in race relations legislation

(Yuval-Davis, 1999). For the first time local education authorities (LEAs), along with

all other public bodies, were obliged to be pro-active in challenging racial discrimina-

tion and promoting race equality, and the national schools inspectorate, the Office for

Standards in Education (OfSTED), was charged with monitoring school and LEAcompliance with the new legislation. At a time when anti-racists feel let down by New

Labours record on race equality, it is important to remember the cautious welcome,

if not jubilation, with which both the Macpherson Report and the Race Relations

(Amendment) Act were received at the time (see Bourne, 2001).

The central concept in the Macpherson report was institutional racism, defined as:

the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service

to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in

processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting

prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minorityethnic people. (Macpherson, 1999, p. 321)

The response from anti-racists has been mixed. On the one hand the focus on insti-

tutional racism has been welcomed as a necessary shift from the official emphasis on

individual racist behaviour, and from a focus on the management of minoritised

communities to a focus on the normality of racism in British society (Bourne, 2001;

Cole, 2004; Gillborn, 2005). On the other hand however, as a concept it has been

critiqued for producing an ahistorical account of racism and for disengaging institu-

tional power from structural features of society (Anthias, 1999; Solomos, 1999;

Yuval-Davis, 1999; Bourne, 2001; Yuval-Davis et al., 2005). These critical voiceshave drawn attention to the way the report, while using the terminology of institu-

tional racism, in its detail largely reduces this to individual racist actions. This occurs

because the report fails to locate racism adequately within the everyday, ordinary,

moment-to-moment practices of people, which are saturated with racism as a struc-

tural feature of British society.

Utilising the insights of critical race theory, we can re-articulate institutional racism

as speaking to the way racial frames of reference and racial understandings are

normal aspects of British society; indeed, racism forms part of the commonsense

of daily living and working (Ladson-Billings, 1998; Gillborn, 2005). Race is always

present in our interactions. It is present when we buy our cheap clothes from the

supermarket, in the global racial divisions of labour that permit the manufacture of

cheap clothes in Third World sweatshops. It is present when we buy a bottle of wine,

when the grapes have been harvested by migrant labour. It is present in academic

institutions, where our offices are often cleaned by the Third World in the First. It is

powerfully present in the way these racial divisions and stratifications are viewed as

normalso normal they do not require comment.

As Pierre Bourdieu argues, every commonsense notion, every mundane practice

enshrines a point of view (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991, 2003). Using Bourdieus notion

of point of view, we can extend the concept of institutional racism as it applies toeducation. Rather than seeing the differential attainment of students as measured


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against an objective set of criteria, we can begin to understand it as the product of

raced, classed and gendered sets of cultural assumptions about the nature of privileged

knowledge and modes of knowing that are historically constituted (Mills & Gale,

2007). The particularity of Britains history is manifest in the particular forms of

knowledge and modes of knowing that are privileged at particular historical moments(see Blair & Cole, 2000; Cole, 2004). Institution can be seen to have two simulta-

neous meanings. It can mean the instituting, or bringing into life, of a point of view,

and the social institutions that mediate that point of view. As Nira Yuval-Davis puts it:

The issue of power is not one about a power that is exercised by all whites over all blacks

but is about the power of the dominant group represented in the state to reproduce its own

values and practices on its own terms, despite the discontinuous and shifting nature of the

processes. (Yuval-Davis, 1999, p. 4.3)

The trouble with evidence

A recent report mapping social inequality in education, commissioned by the DfES,

took the unusual step of including in its appendices a rejoinder to analysis conducted

by the very same government department (Strand, 2007). Steve Strands report is

simply the latest in a series of reports, mostly commissioned by government agencies,

which have mapped differential outcomes by class, race/ethnicity and gender (e.g.,

Gillborn & Gipps, 1996; Gillborn & Mirza, 2000; Bhattacharyya et al., 2002; Warren

& Gillborn, 2003; DfES, 2005).

While each report, partly depending on the particular datasets and interpretive

frameworks used, has stressed different aspects of this educational inequality, there isa common narrative running through them. The core narrative of this body of

evidence is that children from minoritised communities, in particular Black, Black

African (which often includes many refugees and asylum seekers from sub-Saharan

Africa), Pakistani, Bangladeshi and White working class students, tend to receive the

least benefit from formal education. Educational inequality is also strongly correlated

to social class, and boys tend to perform less well than girls. However, these relation-

ships are complex and far from straightforward.

So, what did the author of the above-mentioned recent report find so troubling

about the evidence presented by the DfES? The DfES produced an analysis of high-attaining students that appeared to contradict the evidence presented in the report.

In particular, it suggested that Black Caribbean students were not under-represented

in the higher-level mathematics examinations at KS3 (age 14 years). Strands report

was significant in that it provided proof that minoritised students, particularly Black

Caribbean students, were routinely entered for lower-level examinations, thus

preventing them from achieving the prized A*C grades at age 16 that act as gateway

qualifications to more successful routes into further education and employment. In

other words, the report pointed towards the kind of normal educational practices

that produced racist outcomesinstitutional racism.

In the story above we see the troubling nature of evidence, particularly as itrelates to race. My aim here is not to review evidence on the educational attainment


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376 S. Warren

of minoritised students, including refugees, asylum seekers and new migrants. My aim

is to turn a critical race gaze on the uses of evidence in support of government policy

in relation to the education of minoritised communities, including refugees, asylum

seekers and new migrants. In particular I want to use the extended concept of insti-

tutional racism, developed above, to explore the question of whose interests are servedby recent government interventions in the education of minoritised communities.

Race is irrelevant

One of the dominant features of the contemporary evidence-based approach to

policy is the mapping of educational inequalities. This draws on a British tradition

of political arithmetic which has tended to focus on mapping the scale of inequal-

ity. Increasingly, educational research has been marshalled in support of govern-

ment initiatives, often driven by a school effectiveness agenda (Whitty, 2006). This

can be seen in the field of race and education (see Gillborn, 2005, for a discussion).

Despite the evidence of race inequality in education, the relevance of race is

constantly challenged in mainstream educational debate. Different readings of

evidence are repeatedly posed in ways that appear to question the relevance of

racism as an explanatory concept.

For instance, a recent report from the independent research council the Joseph

Rowntree Foundation (JRF) argued: The great majority of low achievers more than

three-quarters are white and British, and boys outnumber girls (Cassen & Kingdon,

2007, p. x). The Guardian newspaper, which takes a left-of-centre stand on reporting,

ran an article that stated: The report, for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, chal-lenges common perceptions that African-Caribbean, black or Bangladeshi students

do worse than White students (Meikle, 2007). It took Nicola Rollock (2007), a crit-

ical race scholar, to point out the obvious conclusion that people would draw from

the reporting of the JRF studythat all previous research is wrong and that govern-

ment money should be diverted from supporting minoritised students in favour of

White boys. Rollock then proceeded to draw attention to the fact that a careful reading

of the report did not challenge previous research detailing racial inequality.

In a similar fashion, the good performance of Chinese and Indian students

compared to other minoritised groups appears to work to undermine the validity ofrace. If these students can perform well, then it cant be anything to do with racism,

can it? The relatively high attainment of these students renders them almost silent in

policy discourse, and little research has been conducted into their experiences of the

education system. Within policy discourse these groups are as homogenised as other

minoritised groups. Research by Louise Archer and Becky Francis with Chinese

students and their families suggests that race and racism remain key terms for under-

standing their experiences (Archer & Francis, 2005).

In the same week that the JRF report was published, the DfES issued a press release

on the yearly statistics for exclusions (expulsions) from school, stating that the

increase in fixed-term exclusions reflected the hard line schools were taking on disci-pline (DfES, 2007). School exclusions have been identified as a key mechanism of


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institutional racism, whereby Black Caribbean students in particular, but increasingly

Muslim students, are disproportionately excluded (Gillborn & Gipps, 1996; Osler,

1997; Audit Commission, 1999; Gillborn & Mirza, 2000; Ofsted, 2001a; Osler et al.,

2001, 2002; Abbas, 2004; Parsons et al., 2004). Official evidence suggests that minor-

itised students are simply treated more harshly than their White peers. What thishighlights is that the relations between evidence, race and policy are highly

contested spaces. There is no straightforward link between gathering evidence and

translating that into effective policies.

I want to move now to looking at how minoritised students are constructed as

targets for the internal management of populations through specific interventions.

Causal and legitimising policy stories

The recent history of British education is characterised by government-sponsored

initiatives aimed at improving schools and raising educational attainment. Until

recently, generally this was generic in focus or targeted on geographical areas. Some

targeted intervention has been aimed at minoritised and English as an Additional

Language (EAL) students through the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant

(EMAG). Recently, there has also been consultation around achievement strategies

for minoritised students. The DfES has attempted to develop a more coherent

national approach to support for asylum-seeker and refugee students. In this section

I want to look at particular policy interventionssupport for English as an Additional

Language (EAL) and the Excellence in Cities initiative (EiC)as illustrative exam-

ples of the process of constructing minoritised groups as at risk and therefore targetsfor intervention.

Language support

English language acquisition has been used as a strategy for inclusion and integration

for the past four decades (Townsend, 1971; DES, 1985; Gillborn & Gipps, 1996).

Secure Borders, Safe Haven, in its discussion of citizenship, makes the point that this

means ensuring that every individual has the wherewithal, such as the ability to speak

our common language, to enable them to engage as active citizens in economic, socialand political life (Home Office, 2002, p. 30). Acquisition of English is clearly signalled

as a prerequisite for inclusion within the British collectivity. I am not concerned here

with arguments for or against English language provision, or with the relative merits

of particular programmes. My interest is in the politics of representationin the way

evidence is politically mobilised around racialising projects.

Evidence regarding the relative attainment of students categorised as EAL is mobi-

lised both to explain differential outcomes and to justify policy intervention.

Evidence, particularly that using statistical data, is often presented in such a way that

it conveys a causal story (Stone, 1981), in this case in relation to the differential

educational outcomes of EAL students. The story goes something like this: the prob-lem of differential racialised attainment is a problem of English language acquisition.


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378 S. Warren

Indeed, there is some limited evidence to suggest that once refugee and asylum-

seeking students gain a good grasp of English they make good academic progress, as

the EAL evidence would suggest (Rutter & Jones, 1998). Perceived competence in

English is tied in a causal fashion to the differential educational outcome of different

minoritised groups. So, overall, EAL students have lower levels of educational attain-ment than non-EAL students. EAL students are often at a lower starting point than

non-EAL students but appear to make greater progress subsequently, so that they

catch up with their peers.

Of course, there are problems with the certainty conveyed by the policy story.

Until recently the DfES data on EAL students did not record whether those students

actually received any EAL support. Consequently, there was no way of relating

outcomes of EAL students to provision of English language support. Also, the data

did not indicate the level of competence in English of those designated as EAL.

I would argue that the absence of this information simply highlights the political way

the EAL evidence has been mobilised. Recently, there have been more nuanced

readings of the relations between EAL, differential attainment and racialised groups

(see Bhattacharyya et al., 2002). The performance of EAL learners does vary across

racialised groups, with Chinese and Indian EAL students having higher levels of

attainment than other racialised groups of EAL learners. Significantly, Bangladeshi

and Black Caribbean students do less well regardless of EAL status. Despite the

articulation of a more careful narrative by academic researchers, the hegemonic

causal story largely remains intact.

The evidence is also mobilised in order to relay a particular policy story (Stone,

1981). In this case it is about the necessity of remedial policy interventions in orderto address a deficit within certain minoritised populations. On the basis of the

causal story outlined above, the DfES has provided schools with guidance on

support for EAL and newly arrived students within the National Literacy and

Numeracy Strategies (NLNS; DfES, 2002). This guidance is aimed at supporting

access to teaching and learning for newly arrived EAL students. The NLNS are

intended to raise the numeracy and literacy standards of every primary school pupil

in England. Evaluation of the NLNS offers inconclusive evidence of a positive

impact for EAL students. While EAL students tend to perform less well than their

peers, and greater fluency in English is associated with better progress and perfor-mance, this finding is weakened by flaws in NLNS target-setting and assessment

(Lorna Earl et al., 2003; Ofsted, 2003). The target-setting and assessment features

in the NLNS are technical features that can be improved upon.

Gillborn (2006) provides a different, more critical, interpretation of such prac-

tices. He discusses evidence gathered for the Commission for Racial Equality4

(CRE) on the compliance of public bodies with the Race Relations (Amendment)

Act. Of particular importance for my discussion here is the fact that schools were

not setting appropriate targets to challenge differential outcomes (Schneider-Ross

(Consultancy), 2003, cited in Gillborn, 2006). Teacher assessment, therefore,

appears consistently to reproduce racial differentiation in educational opportunitiesthrough the disproportionate location of minoritised students in lower teaching


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streams and lower examination tiers (Tikly et al., 2006; Strand, 2007). It is highly

likely that the flawed target-setting and assessment in the NLNS also produce

racially differentiated outcomes in relation to EAL.

On the basis of the evidence presented, it is difficult to disaggregate the effect of

poverty from that of English-language fluency. This is particularly important giventhat a majority of EAL students live in relatively deprived circumstances. It is not

possible to determine from the evidence whether the students with greater fluency,

and therefore improved performance, are the children of Pakistani, Bangladeshi,

asylum-seeker and refugee families living in deprived urban areas, or the children of

professional families. Put another way, it is not possible to distinguish between the

children of elite transnational workers (if they send their children to state schools at

all) and those of migrants working at the lower end of the labour market.

Excellence in Cities

The government has put together a programme of strategies within the initiative

Excellence in Cities (EiC), as part of its drive for social inclusion and to raise standards

in urban schools (Department for Education and Employment, 2001). Given the

concentration of minoritised communities in inner urban areas, this initiative should

be of particular importance to the integration strategy. EiC comprised six key strands:

learning mentors, learning support units, city learning centres, beacon and specialist

schools, EiC action zones, and gifted and talented.

A consortium led by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)

has been commissioned to evaluate the EiC. The evaluation is complex, usingsurveys, statistical and financial analysis, single and cross-strand analysis, impact

assessment and local evaluations. Outcome evidence from the EiC evaluation repli-

cates the known racially differentiated patterns of attainment (ODonnell & Sharpe,

2000; Stoney et al., 2002; Cunningham et al., 2004; DfES, 2005; Kendall et al.,

2005). This is supported by recent analysis of pupil outcomes (Morris, 2003). Partly

due to the unreliability of ethnicity data, the evaluation is unable to make any

substantial statements about the impact of EiC on minoritised communities, includ-

ing refugee, asylum-seeking or other migrant communities. What evidence there is

strongly indicates that the gifted and talented and specialist schools strands appear tohave exacerbated existing patterns of discrimination. Furthermore, the learning

mentor strand focuses attention on mainly pastoral concerns rather than institutional

reform.

Since my focus is on EiC as an illustrative example, rather than as a case study,

I will undertake a selective reading of the evidence provided by the official evalua-

tions. However, my selectivity is guided by the selective nature of the evidence itself.

The evaluation evidence specifically reporting on minoritised students only provides

data relating to the gifted and talented and learning mentor strands (see Kendall et al.,

2005, pp. 89). Evidence on minoritised students in the specialist schools strand was

provided by separate evaluations.5 It is not my intention in this paper to provide anoverview of evidence. Neither is it my intention to evaluate this evidence, including


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380 S. Warren

official evaluations of key government initiatives. I am using these illustrative exam-

ples in order to discuss critically the political mobilisation of evidence in relation to

what I have called ontological uncertainty.

The gifted and talented strand, for instance, does not appear to have supported

minoritised students in accessing the mainstream curriculum or success. It is likelythat this is the case for refugees and asylum seekers. These are the groups least likely

to be identified for gifted and talented programmes in schools. In contrast, minori-

tised students are the most likely groups to be identified as needing learning mentors

(ODonnell & Sharpe, 2000).

There is evidence that in specialist schools students achieve higher results and

make greater progress than their peers in non-specialist schools. There have been two

recent major evaluations of the specialist school strand, both drawing evidence from

all non-selective specialist schools so designated at the time of the evaluations

(Ofsted, 2001b; Jesson et al., 2004). While both studies agree that specialist schools

perform well, they differ regarding the impact on minoritised students and those eligi-

ble for free school meals (FSM; see DfES, 2005, for a discussion of FSM as an indi-

cator of social class). The Specialist Schools Trust report (Jesson et al., 2004) argues

that FSM students benefit equally from the improved performance in specialist

schools. The Ofsted report (2001b), admittedly using a smaller dataset and

conducted earlier, provides evidence of an uneven distribution of FSM students

across different types of specialist school. According to the Ofsted report, the majority

of FSM students are in arts and sports colleges. These schools perform less well than

other specialist schools, with sports colleges performing at the national average. This

omission is important since minoritised and EAL students are over-represented in theFSM figures. Although the Ofsted report provides some evidence of the distribution

of minoritised students across specialist schools, this is not disaggregated by ethnic

group. There appears to be a tendency for minoritised students to be located in the

less successful specialist schools. Data on the distribution of different pupil groups

across specialist schools would provide evidence of the relative impact on outcomes

for a range of students, which could be used to assess this strand.

The policy problem in education is constructed not as the instituting of a racial

imaginary, of education as inculcating a British collectivity, but as the inability or

unwillingness of a significant minority of young people to engage appropriately withthis system. A range of research studies have demonstrated how the normal practices

of teachers act to exclude students from educational opportunities, whether that be

through the hierarchical and gendered organisation of school knowledge (Paechter,

2000) or through such practices as ability grouping (Hallam & Toutounji, 1996;

Boaler, 1997; Hallam, 2002a, 2002b; Tikly et al., 2006) and exam entry (Gillborn &

Youdell, 2000; Tikly et al., 2006; Strand, 2007). These latter practices are seen to

have a particularly negative impact on minoritised students, including refugees and

asylum seekers (Gillborn & Gipps, 1996; Gillborn & Mirza, 2000).

One way of viewing this is that the form and content of official knowledge assumes

a racially and socially normalised student who has a particular relationship with theobjectives of schooling. There is nothing new about this hidden curriculum.


15/20


However, it is newly articulated within an overarching policy commitment to social

inclusion which reduces all equality concerns to raising standards as defined by exam

results, and subsumes the particular dynamics of racism and sexism within concerns

for school improvement and effectiveness. Another aspect of this moral economy of

risk is the marshalling of all aspects of school life to raise educational standards,including pastoral systems. Pastoral systems, whether behaviour management

systems or learning mentors, can be viewed as elements in the moral regulation of

students, as processes of functional integration (Rose, 1996, p. 343). At risk

students, therefore, can be seen to be heavily regulated by these pastoral systems of

care. Indeed, at risk can be regarded as a central category in the individualisation of

risk as something carried by individuals, masking the structural organisation of risk

(Kelly & Joly, 1999; Ball et al., 2000; Dwyer & Wyn, 2001).

Conclusion

I have argued that education policy is refracted through a politically generated concern

about the destabilising impact of new global flows of people; that this involves the

construction of a new racial settlement; and that this racial settlement is articulated

through a strategy of managing internal and external populations. In this context

evidence plays a political role. The particular role it plays, and what counts as

evidence, is determined by the way policy problems are framed. In this paper I argue

that persistent racial inequality in education is largely framed as a problem of pupil

behaviour, self-esteem and aspiration. Policy initiatives aimed at improving the

academic attainment of minoritised pupils in English schools place an overwhelmingburden on the management of pupil behaviour and expectations, and on language

acquisition. It is not surprising then that in a major policy initiative such as Excellence

in Cities minoritised pupils are disproportionately identified as requiring mentoring

rather than being assessed as being gifted and talented, and tend to be located within

the poorer performing specialist schools. Major evaluation programmes have failed

to include ethnicity as a variable. This is shocking given the revolution in social

demographics and the mounting evidence of systemic discrimination. Attempts to

construct a discursive distinction between old and new migrations have simply made

the situation worse. This situation has led to a failure to learn lessons from the historyof racism and oppression faced by African Caribbean, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Turkish

and other minoritised groups. The language of institutional racism, so hard won, has

not been used to understand the experience of new migrant communities. The policy

problem we should be dealing with is the way the education system consistently

supports social and racial advantage.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the anonymous referees for their insightful comments and sugges-

tions, which have made for a much improved article. I would also like to thank ClareRigg for proof-reading and asking awkward questions.


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382 S. Warren

Notes

1. The Institute for Public Policy Research is a London-based left-of-centre think tank.

2. A White Paper is a consultation document produced as a forerunner to the publication of a Bill

which is debated in Parliament. Once a Bill has been passed by Parliament it becomes an Act

and is instituted in law.3. Romania and Bulgaria were awaiting full inclusion into the European Union (EU). EU

members had the option to open their labour markets to workers from these countries. The

New Labour government under Tony Blair, informed by economic arguments, discussed

opening migration to workers at both skill levels of the labour market, and was met with strong

resistance from its own Members of Parliament, who feared that such workers would displace

British workers.

4. The Commission for Racial Equality is a publicly-funded body with responsibility for advising

on race equality issues and policing the enforcement of relevant legislation.

5. The gifted and talented strand involved extra provision for more able students. Learning

mentors worked alongside teachers to provide academic and pastoral support to at risk

students. Specialist schools are state-funded schools that receive extra funding from the DfESand private sector sponsors to develop a specialist focus such as art, technology, mathematics,

or computing.

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