Indian & Chinese heritage kids attaining much higher than UK & U. S kids. Can we learn something?

[Keenrower]

Indian & Chinese heritage kids are achieving much better results & seem to have parents who pour all their resources into making this happen. Are their kids just brighter or are parents more aspirational?
Nigerian & Eastern European kids are also very high achieving.
With the new Labour government I think they are very happy to have all kids meeting expectations but these parents will not accept that & I think we have a lot to learn from them.

At the other end of the spectrum at my son's special needs school, Asian children are also over represented compared to the local population. I don’t think it's that straight forward.

My DS had a great time at Imperial and made life long friends he's grateful for.

This is naive and simplistic. Failure to achieve a certain academic threshold puts you at a massive disadvantage.

Insane levels of pressure are obviously not great and there’s a balance to be found but allowing your kids to coast and letting them think it won’t have ramifications for them in later life is irresponsible.

Also it’s not a binary choice of “academic success vs childhood”. Plenty of people manage to achieve a balance without letting their kids completely doss about.

Yes, absolutely. This is not talked about enough because it goes against the narrative.

While we are talking about the narrative, white Irish attained better GCSE results in 2023 than the "All Asians" category.

I think it is much easier to be the person who goes to a top university on a top degree course say law and then decide you want to work in a donkey sanctuary than it is to have poor grades and decide you want to be a barrister. It’s about having options for me. There is balance, I don’t want to run my DC into the ground, she should socialise and have hobbies for a rounded life but at the same time I won’t accept less than full effort. I won’t ask her to do more than she can realistically bear I won’t shove her into a degree course she hates but I’ll be honest with her about how her choices may shape her life. The expectations of her will always be high but I will also do my part as her mum to help her. Thats the deal, I do my best and she does her best.

They are children for quite a longtime these days, they do need encouragement, direction , guidance and support. To me thats love, I want her to have a good life, I care that she has a life that doesn’t feel like a giant missed opportunity. I see my job as a parent to prepare her the best I can for a successful, independent adult life. How many of us had the “exam dream” the one where you didn’t prepare or perhaps you regret not working harder at something or perhaps prioritising the now instead of what you could have in the future if you just out a bit of work and thought into it. I definitely do.

@AltReality

Op specifically mentioned Indian and Chinese, I’m using asian as a shortcut for those two groups specifically.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/gcse-results-attainment-8-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest/

Not to be insensitive but is it primarily a pakistani cohort?

They outperform 'All Asians' because Pakistani and Bangladeshi, who are more likely to come from working class, have relatively low scores. However Chinese and Indian pupils outperform Irish.

Sorry to bang on about it, but this is so linked to class in Britain. FCDO staff at diplomat level are selected from a highly competitive pool of very very well educated people, many (if not most) of whom will be middle/upper middle class. Same with our creative industries. My DH went to an arts college which specialised in design/film type subjects. He has many friends from there who are in the arts (camera operator, art director, editor/producer type things). ALL of them 'just happened' to go to private school (including my DH). It's so hard to get into a creative industry without a cushion of money behind you for the years where you are unpaid/freelance/paid terribly.

Ah got you. That's where I went to find the figures. I had forgotten the OP had said Indian. 😊

@Epli Yes, I know. I also had forgotten OP had said Indian by the time I posted.

The parents value education much more. It is a privilege.

I work with a guy who has come from Nigeria to train to be a teacher and is currently doing his masters.

Monday to Friday term time he works in a school, he has a delivery job in the evenings then Sat and Sunday he does a ten hour shift and is full time during the holidays, alongside all that when I first met him 3 years ago he barely spoke any English and was extremelyhard to understand......hes worked hard and chipped away at learning our Language and becoming easier to understand and now hes able to teach secondary school maths. His ambition and determination to give his wife and children a good life is something to be admired. I've never known such a hard working a determined person in my life, the sacrifices his parents made and that pressure to not let them down are what got him here.

He came in yesterday to show off his new suit for work absolutely radiating pride and happiness that he's becoming successful, made me have a proper mum moment 😭😭😭

Poor soul is having a bit of an eye opener via the behaviour from our secondary school kids tho. He's more and more aghast whenever I speak to him 🤣🤣🤣

Yes funny that. All the attainment and yet strangely, very little change in who gets these jobs. The upper middle classes in England are still doing very nicely for themselves. And I doubt it will change.

I'd be really interested in comparing educational attainment between class groups - how do middle class Nigerians/Indians/Chinese etc families compare with middle class British children, and same for working class. By that I don't just mean those who are financially comfortable or poor, but those with a family background of university, skilled professions, travel opportunities etc. I suspect that there will be a much closer gap then, esp for the middle classes. In terms of working class groups, I think Britain is an anomaly in attitudes to education as a means to achieve financial and career success, and I think this is largely down to the notions that a. You can't progress beyond a certain point/enter certain professions if you aren't from the right background o edication is not useful and b. a real sense that to try and achieve 'better' (not in terms of money, but education and career) is to betray your family and roots. Those attitudes are so deeply entrenched.

@LarryUnderwood i think you are right. The English upper middle classes look about the same as they did 50 years ago. What has changed? Almost nothing.

I am not certain that most WC poorly educated British people aspire to do better if work is involved in getting there. Everybody drills on that children from every background should be enabled to succeed to their full potential. However, there is a solid chunk in that group whose potential is only postman, labourer, window cleaner, beautician in a market town or carer. Their intellect does not qualify them to rise further.

@bombastix and everyone in any real power pretends that class isn't a big deal any more. Nothing to see here!

My highly cynical eye normally sees them promoting a diversity initiative. The fig leaf of our time

In my experience there is quite a drive for ethnic diversity...but somehow they still all went to the same schools/universities and probably all played lacrosse against each other growing up. It's such a club and you can only buy your way in with networks, money and the right accent. Not saying minorities with the 'right' credentials don't still experience much greater barriers, am sure they do. But school/uni/accent/connections are the golden ticket everyone needs.

Am also somewhat cynical...

Too lazy to read the whole thread, how very un Asian of me.

Immigration of Asians into the UK is still fairly recent, lazy people are rarely immigrants, just like lazy white Brits don’t typically migrate to the USA etc. Immigrants will be more driven as not only do they generally require a skill to move, they know that they’re at a huge disadvantage due to their ethnicity. Those of us with non-white sounding names are less likely to be interviewed for jobs in the UK. The Asian attainment effect will likely slowly decrease as generations go past.

It isn’t about being specifically Asian, but it is about being non-white at the end of the day, its about being the child of an immigrant. The people who brought out my birth (despite being awful people), were very hard working, both worked two jobs, one being fulltime, both made sure we worked hard at school, took homework seriously, joined things that would help us progress like summer school, invested in things like music lessons, theatre trips and saturday school. Things like “oh I’m rubbish at maths” wasn’t laughed off as a silly character quirk, it was dealt with.

There isn’t the same pressure for white british immigrants, they don’t face the same disadvantages when they migrate. So you don’t see the same thing in Australia for example, as there just isn’t the same level of disadvantage.

Lazy entitled people don't tend to take the risk of migration or even going overseas for a new job in an unfamiliar environment @Simonjt . They stay close to home, bitch about the grandparents not doing enough childcare, and wonder why their lives are not enriched!

Sounds like good parenting to me.

It sounds like normal parenting and what most of us get

I’m reading this thread and wondering if many of you live in the real world. For 10 years I worked in schools in an area where almost all the kids are from an immigrant background. Hardly more than 1 or 2 white British children in a class. But these schools are really, really struggling. Behaviour is poor, attainment is extremely low.

I’m not surprised about the behaviour - if you throw lots of people together who have different values (not right or wrong, just different) and different ways of communicating, problems will naturally arise. But the low attainment? That I really don’t understand, because as many have said, surely immigrants are more likely to push themselves. In my experience, that isn’t always the case.