Disproportionate identification of special needs for ethnic and language minority students in England–patterns and explanations

Abstract

Using data from the Millennium Cohort Study, this article contributes to research on disproportionate special needs identification of ethnic and language minority students in England. It addresses the reasons behind such disproportionalities. By considering a comparatively broad set of indicators on students’ abilities, behaviours and exposure to risk factors, it examines if these indicators fully account for existing disproportionalities. Remaining discrepancies might hint at teacher bias and discrimination. Results indicate that overrepresentation of minority students within different special needs categories is fully explained by their exposure to risk factors, when a broad set of risk measures is considered. This also holds true for the overrepresentation of Black Caribbean students within the category of social, emotional and mental health difficulties. Underrepresentation, however, remains largely unexplained by students’ exposure to risk factors, school-related abilities and behaviours and even tends to increase when this information is considered.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.2002682 .

Keywords:

• Special education
• ethnic educational inequalities
• ethnic and language minority students

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of the CLS Cross-Cohort Research Programme (CCRP), Subproject Educational and Occupational Aspirations of Young People: Influences and Outcomes. For valuable comments on earlier versions of that draft I thank Lucinda Platt, Julian Seuring, Anna Berthold and Lana Blazevic. I am also very grateful for the helpful and constructive feedback provided throughout the review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes

1 StataCorp. 2019. Stata Statistical Software: Release 16. College Station, TX: StataCorp LLC.

2 In total, the first MCS teacher survey (sweep 4, age 7) contains 8876 teacher interviews, completed in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. As this paper focuses on the English educational context, only teacher interviews from the English educational context are considered (n = 5627). Teacher interviews from the remaining country contexts (Scotland n = 1100; Northern Ireland n = 951; Wales n = 1198) are excluded from all analyses (for further information on the teacher survey data see Johnson et al. 2011). In addition, all analyses are SEN type-specific and compare children within one of the four considered SEN categories to children without any identified SENs. Children identified with needs in another SEN category are thus excluded and considered separately (e.g children identified with CL are excluded from the models examining SEMH difficulties). When further excluding cases where teachers stated to “don’t know” children’s SEN type (about 5% of those identified with any SEN), final case numbers range between N = 4,623 and N = 4,421 children, depending on the SEN type.

3 Children’s teachers were firstly asked, whether a child has been recognized as having Special Educational Needs (SEN). If teachers indicate that a child has been recognized, they are asked to indicate what specific problems apply to this child based on a list of subcategories. I aggregated teachers’ subcategory indications, based on the four main SEN types distinguished with the Special educational needs and disability code of practice. Individual items were thereby aggregated as follows: SEMH contains children that teachers indicated as having (1) Behavioral problems or hyperactivity, (2) Mental illness or depression or (3) Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder; CL refers to children that teachers indicated as having (1) Learning difficulties (including dyspraxia and dyscalculia) or as (2) having dyslexia; CI comprises teachers’ indications of (1) Problems with speech or language as well as (2) Autism, Asperger’s syndrome or autistic spectrum disorder; Lastly SP contains children that teachers indicated as (1) Having problems with sight, (2) hearing or (3) another physical disability.