Educational achievement in the infant school: the influence of ethnic origin, gender and home on entry skills

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Abstract
Existing research evidence on the educational achievement of children from different ethnic groups begins when children are at junior school at seven years of age. These results are difficult to interpret without knowledge about educational achievement at the earliest stages of schooling. In this paper results are reported on the literacy and numeracy skills of a sample of black and white UK children just prior to entry into 33 ILEA infant schools. There were few differences in children's test scores attributable to ethnic origin, indicating that in this sample later ethnic differences–should they occur ‐cannot be explained by skills on entry. Girls had higher test scores than boys, but variation in test scores was more attributable to parental teaching of literacy and numeracy at home and mothers’ educational achievement. These results are from the first stage of an ESRC‐funded longitudinal study of children's progress in infant school in relation to ethnic origin, gender, the influence of parents and schools.

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