Black Brits Shut Out of Top Universities
Huw Evans, The Root| March 2, 2011

England’s university system has an enviable reputation, unless you are black. Even though the number of black students at English universities has tripled over the last 12 years, such students are at a disadvantage in comparison with white students at every stage of their higher education.

Black children are being graded below their performance by teachers who are unconsciously stereotyping them. A report co-authored by Simon Burgess, a professor of economics at the University of Bristol, ​has shown that black students performed better in Sats, the national exams that are marked remotely, than would be expected from assessments made by their teachers in the classroom.

The report’s findings suggest that low expectations by both teachers and pupils are damaging children’s prospects. Some teachers require training in order to stop seeing black students through the damaging lens of stereotype, consciously or unconsciously assuming that “all black children are great at sports” and less able in “English, math and science.”​ The report concludes that when some black pupils have a teacher who they feel does not understand or appreciate them, the students do not try as hard, thus suffering from the double whammy of being more harshly assessed by the teacher and not trying to do their best.  (Read more)