A Closer Look at Higher Education Minority Ethnic Students and ...

The quantitative part comprised a self-completion survey of asample of almost 1,000 Year 13 (or equivalent) students at 18 stateschools and colleges in England, all taking courses leading to HEentry (mainly ‘A’ or ‘AS’ levels, but also GNVQ and HE Accesscourses), and so could be considered as ‘potential HE students’.All of the schools and colleges selected had above averagerepresentations of minority ethnic pupils, and so the sample wasable to generate sufficient numbers of potential entrants fromdifferent ethnic groups for comparative purposes. (Approximately70 per cent of the 957 in the achieved sample had a minorityethnic origin.) It should be noted, however, that this was not arepresentative sample of all minority ethnic potential HE students,and especially not a representative sample of all White potentialHE students. But, in many ways, the sample was similar to theundergraduate intake of English universities. It had a biastowards FE colleges in order to capture data specifically from thatentry route, and no independent school was included. The surveywas administered and analysed by the survey organisation,Employment Research.In addition, 20 minority ethnic potential students who hadcompleted questionnaires were also interviewed by telephone anda further 22 interviewed face-to-face at their school or college, toexplore some of the issues raised in more depth. They wereselected to cover a range of ethnic and biographical characteristics.1.3.4 The parent survey and interviewsThis focused on a sample of 80 parents identified from the studentsurvey, who were interviewed by telephone, of which 13 wereinterviewed a second time in more depth. Its purpose was toexplore their influence on decisions made by their offspring to goon to HE study, including the extent to which parental attitudes toeducation are also influenced by their own experiences of highereducation, and the support being given to their student sons anddaughters. Thirty per cent of the telephone interview sample werefrom a minority ethnic background, and the majority of the latterwere first generation immigrants to the UK. The majority of bothWhite and minority ethnic parents in the sample had completed aformal period of compulsory education, with around half havingbeen to higher education themselves. The social class profile of theWhite parents was slightly higher than for minority ethnic parents(just over half were in a professional/managerial occupation,compared with just under half of the minority ethnic parents inthe sample).1.3.5 Graduate surveyThe sample of past students, ie graduates, was generated from thedatabase held by MORI of final year students, interviewed in May2002, who had said they were willing to participate in a follow-up6Why the Difference?