ABSTRACT
This chapter relates to a project undertaken with a group of over 5000 secondary school pupils in the north west of England. The project involved measures of attainment, attitude and aspiration of which only the results relating to attainment are given here. Within the society which is the multicultural Britain of the 1980s there are substantial numbers of ethnic minority group children in the educational system at both primary and secondary level. The characteristic of 'family background' should be obtained by combining the answers to a number of specific questions rather than simply relating this to the socioeconomic class of the father. A number of authors had already indicated that a much wider range of influences could affect pupils' attitudes and achievements. Studies of verbal reasoning tests, in particular, have produced the possible conclusion that 'verbal IQ' as such may not be a very useful measure, particularly for children of West Indian origin.
