Discrimination in education

Discrimination in education is the act of discriminating against people belonging to certain demographics in enjoying full right to education. It is a violation of human rights. Education discrimination can be on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, race, economic condition, language spoken, caste, disability and religion.

The Convention against Discrimination in Education adopted by UNESCO on 14 December 1960 aims to combat discrimination and racial segregation in education. As of December 2020, 106 states were members of the convention.

In several countries, teachers were shown to systematically give students different grades for an identical work, based on categories like ethnicity or gender. According to the Education Longitudinal Study, "teacher expectations [are] more predictive of college success than most major factors, including student motivation and student effort". Grading bias can be detected by comparing the outcome of exams where the teacher knows the student's characteristics with blind exams where the student is anonymous. This method may underestimate the bias since, for written exams, the handwriting style might still convey information about the student. According to the Experimental Evidence on Teachers' Racial Bias in Student Evaluation, "teachers rated a student's writing sample lower when it was randomly signaled to have a black author versus a white author. This study found that this bias was dependent on the teacher and their relationship and attitude towards race. Other studies apply the same method to cohorts spanning multiple years, to measure each teacher's individual biases. Alternatively, teacher's grading bias can be measured experimentally, by giving teachers a fabricated assignment where only the name (and thus gender and ethnicity) of the student differs.

Multiple studies in various disciplines and countries found that teachers systematically give higher grades to girls and women. This bias is present at every level of education, in elementary school (United States), middle school (France, Norway, United Kingdom, United States) and high school (Czech Republic). Grading discrimination is also present in university admission exams: in the United States, the counselors who evaluate students for college admission favor women over men. In France, it was shown that in the admission exam for elite school École Normale Supérieure, juries were biased against men in male-dominated disciplines (such as mathematics, physics or philosophy) and biased against women in female-dominated ones (such as biology or literature). Similar results were obtained for teacher's accreditation exams at the end of university. Female teachers tend to have a stronger pro-female bias than male teachers.

Using individual teacher effects, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Camille Terrier showed that teachers' bias affects male students' motivation and impairs their future progress. It can also significantly affect the students' career decisions. There is some evidence that students are aware of the unfair grading. For example, middle school boys tend to expect lower grades from female teachers.

According to a 2018 study from Germany, students from the Turkish ethnic minority are given lower grades than native Germans. A 2024 study in Germany on anonymously graded tests found lower grades by immigrants were caused by performance gaps, while non-anonymous teacher ratings showed discrimination against native Germans. Language difficulties were shown to not explain the observed disparities.

In 1999, National Union of Students (NUS) had called for the introduction of anonymous marking and claimed racial and sexual discrimination had impacted the results of students. NUS cited a study which showed "the marks awarded to black students at one London university were 4.2 per cent lower than those given to their white peers. And at a Welsh university, 42 per cent of men got first class or upper second degrees compared with 34 per cent of women. In Scotland, Asian students comprised 20 per cent of those on a particular course, but represented 80 per cent of those who had failed".

According to a 2015 US study, classroom discussion around race today is much less negative than one would find in the past. This article discusses a process called anti-bias curriculum. This advocates for classroom and parent discussion around issues of discrimination, privilege, oppression, and racism with young children. This allows room for children to develop skills with these topics.