This article argues that the "airlift" language often used to describe the eight hundred Kenyan students who attended US and Canadian universities between 1959 and 1963 is misleading. It assumes that the students were being plucked out of substandard education, yet these youth had received some of the most rigorous education in the…

Social mobility and improving the performance of disadvantaged pupils is a focus for policy in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. The findings from PISA 2018 provide a unique opportunity to explore the impact of disadvantage on pupils aged 15, to contextualise achievement outcomes with information about home-life and school, as well as providing…

This report is part of a series of documents released in conjunction with the United Nations' International Decade for People of African Descent (2015 to 2024) and Black History Month. It aims to provide insight into some of the key socioeconomic characteristics of Canada's Black communities. The first report in this series titled "Diversity…

In this paper, we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working-class children having more positive math self-beliefs and…

Data from ESL students' records in Vancouver are examined in the light of the BC Ministry of Education's claim that ESL high school students are more successful than students whose first language is English. We argue that the academic achievement of well-to-do students whose parents are skilled workers or entrepreneurs may mask the completion…

Youth from single-parent families report lower educational aspirations than those from two-parent families. This study explored the influence of background factors (gender, grade, parental education and SES), parental involvement with education, academic self-concept, and peer influences on educational aspirations. The participants were Canadian…

The cross-cultural study was conducted under the assumption that intelligence is a learned phenomenon; therefore, if ethnic differences exist, they are not due to differences in intelligence but are due to differences in individual attitudes and social systems. The study was intended to explain educational and occupational aspirations and…

Black Canadians share many aspects of the historical experiences of African Americans, but there are also important differences. One similarity between these two groups is the persistent academic underachievement of Black adolescents. Although this is a subject of widespread concern in both countries, it has received little empirical scrutiny in…

This study of the relation of variables of home environment to differences in children's cognitive development used a sample of 25 pairs of grade five boys in the 10-12 age range matched for general intelligence but discrepant with respect to verbal ability. Home environmental measures were obtained by means of a 70 minute interview with the…

Examines data on students at York University (Ontario) and seven other Canadian universities concerning who goes to university, parents' income, student diversity, where students live, why students go to university, how particular universities are chosen, the importance of a degree, and students' future academic plans. (SV)

An overview is provided of streaming in the Toronto school system and a summary of studies presented from Toronto and other Ontario school systems which have examined the relationships between streaming and academic achievement, ethnic background, social origin and future placement of students. Streaming is defined as the placement of pupils in…