Education: Black British Students

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Our apprenticeships programme is very much aimed at this. We have also reformed vocational qualifications. In the past, too many of these qualifications had no real job value but were overpromoted in equivalence tables. Alison Wolf did a study on this, and we have dramatically reduced the number of equivalent vocational qualifications that count, which will be of much more value to all pupils and I think will particularly help black pupils.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that a recent study by the Institute of Education found that one of the major concerns of black parents was that teachers generally predetermined the kind of pupils—

[Noble Lords]

Reading!

[A noble Lord]

So was the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

—who were capable of academic success, that some teachers had lower expectations of black and minority ethnic students and that black pupils were more likely to be entered for lower-tier exams, meaning that these students were able to achieve only a C or D grade as a maximum?

[Lord Nash]

As I say, I would like to think that this was a thing of the past. However, in order to improve teaching leaders—