SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The thesis describes a set of male Punjabi immigrants who had been to primary school in Coventry and who, when the research was started in 1970, were either in their last years at secondary school or working in local factories. The members of the set lived and most of them went to school in an industrial part of the city, the population of which, especially in the schools described, was split into two main categories, white and Punjabi. The thesis begins with a description of the working class background of the whites and the caste and village background of the Punjabis (chapters 1 and 2). The children of the early immigrants are then described, particularly their attitude to English and Punjabi societies, their relations with their parents and their peers (chapter 3) and their common attitude to education and work (chapter 4). The last part of the thesis is about their entry and passage through school in Coventry. The confusion at the two main immigrant schools and their decline are described and explained partly by the arrival of the Punjabis and partly by the schools being superseded by new comprehensive schools (chapter 5). The achievements of the Punjabis and the whites are compared and the difference of achievement is explained by reference to their differing social backgrounds and to two different systems of education, one based on a restricted education for the majority, to which the whites relate, and the other based on equality of opportunity to which the Punjabis relate (chapter 6). In the final chapter the work that the members of the set did when they were sixteen is described and it is shown that the set, whose members were united in their approach to school, ends divided and stratified with about equal numbers being restricted to one of three distinct levels (chapter 7).