In terms of school exam results by ethnicity, the National Statistics suggests that in 2004, Chinese students topped the five A to C league (source: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=461). Why was this so?

There are numerous factors which could influence school results. The most fatalistic explanation is perhaps IQ. The Bell Curve by Herrnstein (1994) puts forward the theory that IQ levels are genetic. There is plenty of academic literature which suggests that there are links between IQ levels and ethnic groups. While I accept physical differences between ethnic groups, to accept the racial-genetic-IQ theory is more difficult, as for a start, I do not believe that IQ tests are anything to do with intelligence but one’s ability to do such tests.

When I was at school in rural Oxfordshire, I observed that school performance and family background seemed closely related. I cannot comment on variation by ethnicity as I was the only Chinese person at school. But perhaps one’s parents’ socio-economic standing matters. So, I downloaded the 2001 Census data and found that the proportion of Chinese who were in managerial and profession roles (25%) was lower than Whites (28%). Therefore, perhaps “class” alone offers insufficient explanation to ethnic differences in terms of school performance.

My wife is a secondary school English teacher and the lack of effort from many (or maybe most?) of her students upsets her sometimes. Their ambitions for making a career as professionals are almost zero, while their dreams of becoming rappers or footballers, all too common. Most of her students are Black – arguably the ethnic minority that has been in this country, en masse, the longest.

In popular media, the most well-known Black faces are perhaps rappers and footballers, or at least such celebrities far outnumber the likes of Obama (he’s American, not British, anyway), Mandela (perhaps from a bygone era), Martin Luther King (even further removed) and Tidjane Thiam (the head of Prudential). I wonder how many Black kids know who this Tidjane Thiam is. Meanwhile, would they associate with him, given he was born to a well-to-do Ivorian diplomat, and spent much of his childhood in Paris, holding French citizenship?

Do her students not know that the probability of making it as a rapper or footballer is close to zero, and one could be better off if he (hers is an all-boys’ school) instead studies hard and becomes a professional? They probably do.

So, why do they not study hard and aim to become professionals? To study hard is an “investment”, what we achieve at the end is the “return”. If that “return” is perceived to be “capped” somehow, say by discrimination, then one wonders if the “investment” is worth-while.

If I remember correctly, Diane Abbott MP, said that as a black woman, she felt she had to work ten times harder to get anywhere, and Tidjane Thiam before becoming the head of Prudential, said there were quite a few times, the other interviewing organisations simply said they would have problem with their senior management working with someone like him.

Since the Boer War, when buying ranks proved a disaster for the army, Britain has moved on and meritocracy has become more prevalent. However, entrenched advantages and prejudice perhaps still prevail, starting with the two-tier education system in which public schools (how ironic the name) churn out leaders in a way that inner city state schools could not compete. The Establishment lives, with today’s top positions in public life dominated by the sort of people with whom my wife’s students might find hard to relate. Instead, the kids relate to their own families and wider community. Many of them are without fathers, many without both parents, and their elders survive almost on the margins of society. I wonder if this “restricted” vision or group association “caps” their ambition for professional careers, and the “short-cut” of becoming rappers or footballers appears all the more appealing.

In contrast to British meritocracy, which is only a couple of centuries old, the Chinese system of scholar-official selection through civil service exams emerged in the 1st century AD, consolidated in 7th century. Although not without its faults, this system has promoted studying, as Confucius said that “there is nothing nobler than the reading of books” (words to that effect). And throughout Chinese history, there have been many great people who emerged from relatively humble backgrounds, through this system of scholar-official selection process, the bedrock of social mobility, real and perceived.

While physical traits are inherited genetically, cultural traits could also be inherited through a sense of collective consciousness. After more than a millennium of that collective consciousness being passed down the generations, today, it perhaps still prevails among the Chinese, whether in China or abroad, with a notion that through studying, one could improve one’s and one’s children’s lives.

This collective consciousness could diminish if the societies where Chinese people live perceive that there is a “cap” to social mobility, making hard studying seem less attractive as the “investment” is so great while “returns” are limited. Such a “cap” could come from discrimination, restricting social mobility, perceived or real.

Perhaps today, the Chinese kids in the UK have not been held back by any perceived “caps”, as they achieve great marks. But the Chinese as an ethnic group are relatively new to this country. Indeed, while most questionnaires on ethnicity would have categories such as “British Asian”, rarely have I seen one that says “British Chinese”. The connection with “the old country” and indeed culturally inherited collective consciousness could still be quite strong, and that the perception of a “cap” on social mobility has not developed in their minds, in this adopted country.

Maybe one day, the Chinese in this country will, like some of their fellow ethnic minorities, come to think that there is a “cap” to their social mobility and therefore stop working so hard for so limited returns, and hence starting a vicious circle of perception of “cap” influencing diminished effort and thereby a worse-off reality which reinforces the perception of social immobility.

Let us hope that through people’s hard work, such perception would not develop, even if the reality were to be different – for there is nothing worse than to lose hope. Once hope is lost through perception, all will be lost in reality.