Background
As part of their focus on raising standards of attainment, governors may wish to give consideration to attainment in specific groups of children within the school that may require additional support.

Information, Guidance and Practice
There are a variety of resources and sources of information on attainment in under achieving and under represented groups within the school:

• Ethnic Minorities (including children of refugees and asylum seekers and gypsy travellers)
  
  The Standards Website (follow link in Web Links below) contains information and examples of good practice relating to ethnic minority achievement in schoools.  The site aims to provide support to local authorities (LAs) and schools by:
  • providing documentation for ethnic background data collection;
  • sharing successful experiences of schools and LAs;
  • signposting useful links and publications which provide information and research on minority ethnic pupils educational achievement.

The Ofsted website contains several publications of potential interest (follow links in Web Links below):

• Educational Inequality: mapping race, class and gender
• Managing support for the attainment of pupils from minority ethnic groups
• Raising the Attainment of Minority Ethnic Pupils: School and LA Responses
• Managing the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant - Good practice in primary schools
• Managing the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant - Good practice in secondary schools
  
  

See also the GovernorNet article (Background below) on the Ofsted Report, "Provision and support for Traveller pupils".

The Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG) is government money for supporting schools and LAs to meet the educational needs of minority ethnic pupils.  Most of the money now goes direct to schools, with the amount reflecting the proportion of such pupils in the school.  They use the grant to provide teaching or support in English as an additional language, and to increase resources or support staff such as mentors, as well as to fund a range initiatives aimed at raising the achievement of this group of pupils.

• Gender
  Attainment amongst boys in general has been a source of concern for some time.  The Ofsted website contains several reports of potential interest (follow links in Web Links below) including:
  • Boys' achievement in secondary school
  • Yes he can - schools where boys write well

The Standards website also contains a useful area on Gender and Achievement (see the link in Web Links below).