a) The main problem people have with understanding ethnicity is the confusion it brings with racism, the difference is that racism is highly aimed through skin colour whereas ethnicity will look at culture religion etc... therefore and ethnic group is one in which they is a few people who share similar/the same ethnicities whether it be religion, the music they listen to or even the families background many things can make up an ethnicity and therefore creating a variety of ethnic groups.

b) The education system encourages ethnic separation in three main ways, number one being the ethnocentric curriculum, meaning schools layout the curriculum to involve predominantly white cultural learning which can cause a separation between the pupils of different ethnicities as Troyna and Williams found. Another way could be the selection and segregation process involved in schools as David Gillborn found, marketization has let schools select students specifically and institutional racism is evident for schools who pick certain ethnic groups because they may follow stereotypes like the one that African Caribbean boys are ALL trouble makers. Which leads me to my final encouragement of labeling and teacher racism, interactionists sociologists manage to find that many teachers labeled black boys as disruptive and Asians as passive and therefore favoured to Asians in class by helping them more than the black boys
1 Socialisation
2 Equal opportunity
3 The term ‘cultural dupes’ implies that children have little control over their education and receive it in a passive way.
4 The term ‘meritocracy’ means a society where there is equality of opportunity enabling the talented to rise up to occupy society's most demanding roles.
5 The term ‘branching points’ refers to the clearly defined stages in a student’s educational life when decisions are made about their future path in the educational system.
6 Structures are anything that exist externally to individuals and shape their behaviour. Both theories see education as an important structure in the form of a social institution that helps make society work. As a structure the education system influences the people who study and work within it. This is in marked contrast to the interactionist perspective, which focuses on processes (such as labelling) within education, rather than the structure of the education system itself.
7 See plan in the workbook. Functionalist perspective on education
1 Shared norms and values held by most people.
2 Collective conscience
3 When there is a sense of community brought about by shared norms and values.
4 This is a term associated with Durkheim because he used it to describe a fully