Do African Children Excel in UK Education? (Notes and References)
Habari Gani people!
Here are the notes from my video entitled “Do African Children Excel in UK Education?”:
I get a lot of comments stating that African children do brilliantly in UK education
This video will investigate how well African children do on average in Education in the UK
We’ll look at both GCSE levels and A-Level and we’ll notice that the answer to the question is kind of, and no, respectively.
GCSE Performance
Note, a higher proportion of African pupils get a good pass in Maths and English than do pupils of many other ethnic groups
But a higher proportion of pupils of several other ethnic groups reach this threshold than African pupils
Note that a considerably higher proportion of African pupils reached this level of attainment than was the case for White British pupils
GCSEs and pupils eligible for Free School MEals (FSM)
Being eligible for free school meals is seen a proxy for living in relative poverty
In 2022, African FSM pupils performed much stronger than all FSM pupils except Chine, Indian, Bangladeshi and Asian other.
The gap between African FSM and African non FSM pupils was among the smallest of all ethnic groups
Notice that among White British pupils, only 20% got a good pass in English and Maths
When you look at non-FSM pupils, a slightly higher proportion of White British pupils got Grade 9-5 GCSE in Maths and English than did African pupils
This suggests that the effects of relative poverty negatively impact White British pupils’ educational outcomes much more heavily than pupils of all other ethnic groups
London v the rest of England & Wales
There’s an important detail I need to bring out and it relates to the location of pupils
It’s a well-attested fact that for various possible reasons, pupils in London and the South East perform better than their peers elsewhere, especially those in the north and north east.
African school pupils are heavily concentrated in London with nearly 80% living there. This is a far higher a proportion of any other ethnic group.
In 2023, when looking at London pupils only, a higher proportion of White British pupils achieved two good passed in Maths and English than Black pupils
However, the Black figure isn’t disaggregated into African and Caribbean (and other) so is of limited value to the current discussion
However, I assume that African pupils’ overall better performance in GCSE will be impacted by the fact that most of them live in London- where pupils generally do better than elsewhere in the country
A Levels
So what about A Levels or Advanced Levels which are the main intermediate qualification between school and university. How do African pupils fare, on average, in these?
The following shows the average grade achieved by ethnicity in 2023:
So we can see that African students (and Black students generally) are among the lowest-performing when it comes to average grade
And a similar picture emerges when looking at the proportion of very high achieving students at A Level, by ethnicity in 2023:
Again, the proportion of students getting the very highest level of achievement is lowest among the Black demographics, including African students
Closing Thoughts
At GCSE (high school) level, African pupils do better than average. But this is largely due to the low performance of White British pupils, particularly those outside London and those that are eligible for free school meals
At A Level, African pupils perform among the lowest alongside Black Other and Black Caribbean students
So something seems to happen between GCSEs and A Levels that results in the previously above average performances turning into below average
In a future video, we'll consider whether performance of African children varies depending on which countries they or their parents originate from