Over the past two decades Bangladeshis in England have overtaken white Britons in their performance in the GCSE exams taken at age 16. No other ethnic group has improved as much
has improved as much. Bangladeshis now compete for top university places and good jobs. Their progress suggests several things about success in Britain.
Education results were indifferent, especially among girls. “My girls didn’t tend to go to university,” remembers Vanessa Ogden, who became head teacher of Mulberry School for Girls, a largely Bangladeshi school in east London, in 2006. Many were expected to marry, then toil at home. Some resented that. “When we marry and have daughters we will treat them differently,” a Bangladeshi pupil somewhere in England told a schools inspector in 2004.
One conclusion from this success story concerns policy and patience. Heidi Mirza, who was appointed to an education task force by the Labour government in 1997, argues that the extra funding and attention lavished on poor inner-city schools then are bearing fruit now. Recently, under Conservative governments, those things have moved elsewhere. The “levelling up” strategy published in February identifies 55 education investment areas, none in London.
The final conclusion is that the road to true prosperity is very long. Some 24% of Bangladeshis receive income-related benefits, compared with a national average of 16%. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the median Bangladeshi household has about one-fifth as much wealth as the median white British one.
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