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.

Valuing education is one thing, hot housing kids and putting huge pressure and expectation on them is quite another.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmeduc/85/8502.htm

I don’t have any insight at all as to the US but a few of the UK issues are raised in this report from 2021.

💯 this especially with A. I, our kids will be competing globally for jobs.. Happiness is not going to get them on the property ladder but being highly educated might.. The Asian parents are a step ahead & always have been. That's my humble opinion.

Completely agree, being happy is quite hard when you are on the bones of your arse skint. My DH is an art enthusiast I love reading and we both like theatre, we want Dd to appreciate those things too but my expectations are that she’s employable as a bare minimum.

It's the parents and the attitudes towards education as others have said. I grew up in a small, very working class town in the 80s. Very rural so no choice of school and the standard of teaching was low as most kids weren't interested in school. I was the only student from my primary school to go to university. My school didn't even give out homework throughout primary school but my parents, particularly my mum, were hyper focused on my education, forcing me to do additional reading, maths and writing outside of school and to learn another language which was unheard of in my village back then. We still had plenty of time for sport and friends but were taught to be disciplined in terms of learning and to aim higher even when it was very much in contrast to the rest of our friends' parents approaches. My parents worked two jobs each at one point to save up so they could eventually send me and my siblings to boarding school. My mum was definitely what would be known as a tiger mum these days, but I have very happy memories of my childhood and learnt to deal with pressure from an early age. I now have a high paying career in finance, a very comfortable life and have been able to travel the world, in no small part thanks to my mum's approach to education.

You will also find that many Asian women denied education themselves will move heaven and earth to help their daughters excel. My MIL was denied an education and married off. Never worked outside the home. She has now devoted her entire life to minding my SILs children completely voluntarily, because my SIL is a doctor and she doesn't want her to have the same constraints.

I suppose one person's ridiculously high expectations are another person's love and support.

This. My kids study for 2 hours every evening.

I love your mum, she sounds like a great woman.

Exactly. There's a sensible balance

And high levels of academic attainment don't directly translate into high earnings anyway.

I have a well paid, professional, job and glittering academics.
My ex earns 4x as much and has the equivalent of some BTECs

Absolutely this. And also kids winding up in professions that they have no interest in but was expected of them.

DS (white) goes to a super selective grammar where over 80% of the boys are Asian. The catchment is 10km. I’ve noticed his primary school friends who go to majority white local secondaries see their mates much more, go to park/shop after school. DS doesn’t, his friends parents seem much more reluctant to let them meet up although distance is also an issue. He’s had friends over twice, been over to a friends once and and gone to three parties in the whole of year 7! They do have a lot of half days where they go for food into town.
He seems happy and they all play Fortnite together.
It is interesting that the rugby A and B teams are majority white. There is a school trip abroad that I went to a meeting for last night and the parents were majority white. The Asian boys aren’t proportionally represented there.
There is also a parents WhatsApp group for the class and there’s a lot of chat on it about exams/homework/how much revision etc is your son doing. My local friends don’t have parents WhatsApp groups at all for the local schools!

My black and brown friends) best friend Indian)with DKs born here,are much stricter and horrified at behaviour of white British kids. Their dks are polite, knuckle down to their homework, not showing signs of being pressured or unhappy.

@CheeryUser like what sort of advantages? Can you elaborate?

I would agree but people think me teaching DD to read early is somehow hothousing. Peoples perception of whats a reasonable amount of effort varies dramatically.

100% this!

The BIGGEST contributor to the success of a child at school isn't actually the school the child attends, but the attitude and support of the parents of that child. This has been thoroughly researched and documented.

A child with supportive parents that value education will generally do well regardless of the school they attend.

I remember seeing a video recently that a 10 year old got an A* in maths A-Level recently.

If you click on the link I’ve posted, it takes you to a UK government report published in 2021. I distinctly remember this being discussed at the time. It’s based on FSM families.

Interesting point. I read about Syrian & Afghan girls achieving very highly in the UK once they arrive here... Iranian students also.

There definitely can be hothousing and abuse in Asian cultures.

However, until the workplace playing field is levelled, and my DS is not asked to shorten his Indian name to Sid or Tom, I am going to bet on education as the only way up for most Asians unless you are very rich. Twice as good to get half as far is still true and will be even more true in the current economy.

I am Chinese born in the UK.
As a child we are taught to respect our parents, our elders, and our teachers. We are taught to value education, and that education is the key to a better life, and to escape the harsh life that our grandparents or great grandparents endured. You want to live in a big house, you need to work for it. You want a nice car, you need to work for it . You want money, you need to study.
The support is that Chinese parents will do everything to support their children's education, and to support the teachers. The support also comes from grandparents who will support the parents. For each child, you have 6 adults supporting that child's education ; maternal grandparents, paternal grandparents, and two parents.

There is a selection bias.

People who are motivated enough to move to a foreign country are more likely to have high aspirations for their children and themselves and have a certain level of competence that allowed them to move in the first place.

There are millions of Indians in India and Chinese in China who aren’t so high achieving.

There are disparities between ethnic groups as well. So it’s not just the fact of self selection there are other factors at play as well. I would argue culture is more important than where you start from there will be white british people from humble backgrounds that have done very well for themselves because their parents took a keen interest. though I do think self selection makes a difference too.

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

Parental attitude is the key I feel. A headteacher I know of overheard a father saying to his son starting reception 'remember you don't have to do what the teacher tells you. If they tell you off tell Daddy and I will sort them out'. What hope is there.

Recently went to Africa and saw really young children walking miles to school- education is valued there.

Many parents and children don't value it in the UK just read posts on MN from teachers

True. My dad came over as a doctor. What he really wanted to be was a journalist. But there were few brown journalists back then. Mostly dominated by Oxbridge grads. So he decided to be as good a doctor as he could be. When people say Asians pick certain professions its because they weren't allowed to enter unless they belonged to certain professions. Still true

I reckon Asian and Chinese families can sometimes put a bit too much pressure on their kids, often because of their own expectations. They push for high achievements, but I'm not sure it's always the best for the children. It feels a bit like a rat race, mimicking other families and turning everything into a competition. Sometimes, this means the kids miss out on developing their emotional intelligence, which is really quite crucial. I’m all for parents supporting their children and staying clued in about their school activities, but constant pressure can do more harm than good. On the flip side, those parents who barely know what their kids are up to at school or what they're studying? I'm not on board with that approach either.