Indian tigers: what high school selection by parents pursing academic performance reveals about class, culture and migration

ABSTRACT

The high academic performance of children from Asian backgrounds in many countries is commonly ascribed to cultural or class values and practices. This paper explores how factors relating to migration are also significant by examining the educational practices of a group of recently migrated parents from middle-class Indian backgrounds in Sydney. These parents privileged academic success in high schooling over the social and cultural capitals alternately or additionally emphasised by other parent groups. Using concepts from Pierre Bourdieu and Legitimation Code Theory this study describes how parental experience and capital prior to migration has a structuring influence on parental habitus that influences post-migration practices including the privileging of academic capital, intensive educational support and coaching and high school selection.

KEYWORDS:

• School choice
• Asian academic success
• migration
• academic capital
• parental habitus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 ‘Ethnicity’ and ‘culture’ are frequently and problematically elided in the literature (Watkins and Noble 2013). In this paper ‘culture’ is used to describe identifiable group practices and ‘ethnicity’ is used to denote either a self-referenced identity by study informants or as an empiric descriptor as used in other studies.

2 All names including participants, schools and areas have been anonymised.

3 The HSC is a set of assessments and examinations at the end of high schooling that produces a final cumulative mark. Admittance into study programs in higher education is based on this mark.

4 Each public primary and high school in NSW is assigned a geographic ‘catchment’. If a student resides within a school’s catchment area enrolment is guaranteed. Families may apply to enroll students in schools outside their catchment area however these enrolments are at the discretion of the school principal and are frequently constrained in high demand schools.