Poverty, ethnicity and ethnic penalties in employment and education

With Kimberley McKintosh, Policy Officer at Runnymede Trust and Race on the Agenda (ROTA).

Research suggests that children and young people from some minority ethnic backgrounds are achieving well and better in certain cases than their White British counterparts. Where people live also has an enormous impact on educational achievement – minority ethnic students and those from low income backgrounds are doing particularly well in London for example and this ‘London effect’ has been explained by some as related to factors as wide ranging as the effect of local leadership to the high numbers of migrant children in London schools. However, poverty is opening up wide gaps between poorer and wealthier children in other parts of the UK, not all BME (black and minority ethnic) groups are benefitting from these educational success stories, and while more BME young people are accessing universities, the ethnic graduate unemployment gap remains high.

All minority ethnic groups in the UK have higher poverty rates than their White British counterparts and while there are a number of drivers for this, some of which are similar for all people living in poverty regardless of their background, there are other specific issues which appear to affect minority ethnic groups disproportionately and these ‘ethnic penalties’ are of particular interest when trying to understand some of the best ways of tackling these disparities. Might the government’s focus on collecting and collating data on ethnicity and public services through its Ethnicity Facts and Figures website, enabling all individuals and organisations to hold them to account, be a useful way of doing this? Or is there enough evidence about what the gaps in employment and education are but less is known about what credible solutions work? This presentation will look at what we do know and know less about in relation to ethnicity, work and education/skills and seek to establish where we should go next to tackle some of those persistent ethnic disparities.

About Kimberly McIntosh

Kimberly McIntosh is Policy Officer at the Runnymede Trust http://www.runnymedetrust.org.uk/and Race on the Agenda (ROTA). http://www.rota.org.uk/

Previously Kimberly worked for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) as their Trainee Policy and Public Services Officer. Here, she worked on their Freedom of Information response and managed the ‘Day in the Life’ scheme with the Civil Service.

Kimberly holds a Master’s degree in International Migration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and a First Class Honours Degree in History from the University of Manchester. For her Master’s thesis, Kimberly explored the relationship between integration and identity of the Jamaican diaspora in the UK and Jamaica’s development policy.

Her roles at the Runnymede Trust and Race on the Agenda focuses on research , network building , debate and policy engagement , She is a writer , commentator and columnist for such outlets as
gal-dem , The Guardian and Sky News