Underachievers or Underrated? The Experience of Pupils of South Asian Origin in a Secondary School

Abstract

Research into the thorny issue of the educational ‘over/underachieve‐ment’ of white and ethnic minority pupils has assumed greater sophistication and insight in the last few years. However, attention continues to focus on educational outcomes or who gets what. As a corollary, analysis of who goes where in the allocation of pupils to high/low status credentialling courses and who, therefore, takes what, is almost routinely ignored. In this article I explore the allocative and selective procedures of a multiracial comprehensive school in England and argue that such considerations should be fully integrated into future studies on this theme.