The relationship between school students and their teachers significantly affects the educational [Page 2226]experience of children, their attainment, and consequently their life chances. This entry looks at how the teaching profession in the United Kingdom has responded over half a century to its changing classroom populations and at the state's provision for the education of ethnic minority students today. It focuses particularly on the opinions held by the predominantly White teaching force about their Black and Asian students and their expectations of these students.

That children of color do less well than White children in schools in the United Kingdom has been recognized since the 1970s and has been documented by the government-commissioned Swann Report of 1985 and by much subsequent research. Children of Caribbean and ...