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Publication: Sify News
Date: February 25, 2004
URL: http://headlines.sify.com/2925news5.html?headline=In~UK,~Indian~students~top~the~class
Teenagers of ethnic Chinese and
Indian origin are doing better in British schools than their white counterparts,
suggests data released by the government on Wednesday.
"Pupils from every ethnic group
have improved in their GCSE/GNVQ results," said the Department for Education
and Skills, referring to the national high school leaving examinations.
Nationwide, the department said
in a statement, 50.7 percent of pupils of all ethnic backgrounds got five
or more grades of A-plus to C in their final exams in 2003.
For ethnic Chinese students, however,
the percentage was 74.8 percent -- with 90 percent achieving success in
mathematics, compared with 71 percent for all ethnic groups.
For ethnic Indian students, 65.2
percent got five or more top GCSE grades, followed by whites with 51.3
percent, pupils of Bangladeshi origin (45.5 percent) and those of Pakistani
origin (41.5 percent).
"Indian pupils, and pupils of mixed
white and (south) Asian heritage, consistently achieve above the national
average at all levels," the department elaborated.
Students of black African and Caribbean
origin trailed at 40.7 and 32.9 percent, but those figures were up 3.3
and 3.7 percentage points from 2002 -- a bigger rate of increase than any
other ethnic group apart from Chinese.
Commenting on the findings, Schools
Minister Stephen Twigg said "we must not be complacent" about closing what
he called the "achievement gap" in British schools.
