Reform, racism and the centrality of whiteness: assessment, ability and the ‘new eugenics’

Abstract

The Nobel Prize winning scientist James Watson was vilified when his views on the supposedly inherent deficiencies of black people became public. The scientific establishment, mainstream media and politicians joined a chorus of disapproval that would seem to evidence a widespread rejection of the old myths of racially ordered intelligence. Unfortunately, the English educational system behaves as if Watson is correct. This paper considers the impact of the various forms of sorting, selection and separation that characterize the use of ‘tracking’, ‘setting’ and ‘tiering’ in secondary schools. These processes amount to a new eugenics whereby black students are systematically disadvantaged but blamed for their own failure by assessments that lend racist stereotypes a spurious air of scientific respectability. The paper documents a key example of these processes through the introduction of the ‘Foundation Stage Profile’ (which claims to quantify the ‘development’ of 5-year-olds). These trends look set to expand through a policy platform built on pseudoscientific notions of ‘talent’ and ‘potential’ that threaten to abandon a substantive concern with equality of outcome.

Keywords:

• racism
• policy
• assessment
• reform
• new eugenics
• whiteness
• Early Years

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for their comments on earlier drafts of this material: Stephen J. Ball, Alice Bradbury, Kalervo Gulson, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Grace Livingston and Claudine Rausch. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the symposium ‘Student diversity and secondary school change in a context of increasingly standardized reform’ at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, San Diego, April 2009.

Notes

1. There is no universally accepted nomenclature for the groups that are viewed as ‘racial’ minorities in the UK. Where quoting research data I am limited to the categories used in the original studies; otherwise I try to use the terms most often embraced by the various groups themselves.

2. The data reported here are averages for 2004 and 2005 (as in the original evaluation) and only significant population groups are reported (where they account for at least 3% of the overall sample): Tikly et al. (2006), Table 1.

3. Officially the ‘Gold Standard’ benchmark for 16-year-olds is now viewed as those achieving at least five higher grade examination passes including English and mathematics.

4. The main examination at the end of compulsory schooling in England is the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). Results are graded from A*, A, B and C through to G: grades C and above are known as ‘higher pass grades’ and at least five of these are necessary for entry to most courses in higher education or in professional education.

5. A condition of gaining access to the data was an agreement to retain anonymity for the local authorities.

6. Despite the similarity of terms, the ‘Foundation Stage’ for primary school students and ‘Foundation Tiers’ in GCSE examinations should not be confused – they are entirely separate.

7. Following substantial delays in marking organised by a private contractor in 2008, the government later abandoned tests for 14-year-olds: see BBC News Online (2008).

8. The new form of presentation offers three aggregate measures of attainment in the EYFS profile: first, students who are assessed ‘6 or more points [from a possible 9] in at least 7 Key Scales’; second, those achieving ‘78 or more points [from a possible 117] across all scales’; and finally those who achieved both the first two measures, who are classified as ‘achieving a good level of development’ (DCSF 2008, Table 1).

9. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (2001, no. 30: 32).

10. For a longer discussion of the evidence surrounding the nature of human abilities see Gillborn (2006, 2008), Fraser (1995), Lane (1999) and Stobart (2008).

11. Although there have been attempts to revive Burt's reputation he was devastatingly exposed by several writers, including his official biographer (see Kamin 1974 and 1981: 98–105).