Social and ethnic biases in primary education

Recently, teachers were asked to predict students' GCSE and A-level marks because exams could not take place due to the COVID-19 crisis. This sparked public debates about a concern that has been frequently highlighted over the last decades: teacher judgements might be biased putting students from certain groups of the population at disadvantage.

In much of the academic literature, a social class or ethnic bias in teacher assessments is measured as a discrepancy between teacher assessments of student school performance and student scores on standardised ability tests that is systematically related to student social class or ethnic background. Such teacher bias is problematic because teachers have an important influence on students' self-esteem, academic motivation and school achievement.

If teachers underassess the performance of certain students, they can harm their self-esteem and hinder them to achieve the education and life outcomes they could have attained through their abilities. Importantly, teacher bias can contribute to social and ethnic inequalities in education, which is concerning because these inequalities are already high in the UK and will strongly increase due to the COVID 19-pandemic and its consequences.

Evidence on teacher bias is mixed but tends to show that the performance of children from certain ethnic minority groups and socially disadvantaged backgrounds is systematically underassessed. The sources of ethnic and social class biases in teacher assessments are not fully understood.

This project will use existing large-scale survey data to study social class and ethnic biases in teacher assessments of the performance of primary school students in four countries England, Scotland, Germany and Ireland. It aims to shed light on the processes underlying the biases by understanding how national contexts such as teacher training and education policy influence biases in teacher assessments.

It also aims to analyse how students' behaviour in class, academic attitudes and their parental involvement influence the teacher assessments.

An important principle of this project is the engagement of teachers, teacher educators, head teachers and primary school students to inform the study. Over the whole project period, the researchers and teachers, teacher educators, head teachers and primary school students from the four participating countries will share experiences and views to inform the study's research design and interpretation of findings.

The findings of the project will show what factors primary school teachers from different countries take into account when they assess the performance of their students. This knowledge can help improve assessment approaches, student-teacher relationships and family-school interactions. To facilitate the impact of this study on practice and education policy, the researchers will create materials for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for teachers as well as recommendations for head teachers, policy makers and third-sector organisations.

Knowledge exchange activities will include workshops with teachers in South-West England and Scotland, a stake-holder event in London and an online teacher conference.