Educational Expectations: Do Ethnicity and Religion Make the Difference between Genders?

Abstract This work analyses how ethnic background affects adolescents’ educational expectations in the UK in order to understand whether it shapes the behaviour of immigrant-origin girls differently from that of immigrant-origin boys as well as British girls and boys. We extend the literature by focusing on the role of religion as part of ethnic background since it may often be a traditionalist force hampering educational attainments. The empirical analysis relies on microdata drawn from the sixth wave of the Millennium Cohort Study. This is an ongoing longitudinal cohort study offering large-scale information on the lives of young people since when they were born-between 2000 and 2002-and on the families they are growing up in. Overall, the results show that most ethnic minorities have higher expectations than the British and that female adolescents have higher expectations than their male counterpart; gender differences do not depend on ethnicity and religion. Educational expectations are even higher among second generation teens and may reflect the optimism of immigrant parents.