How do Indian Students in the UK construct ‘School Success’?

Indian students in the UK are academically positioned as the second highest performing ethnic group (Department for Education, 2022a) and are subjects of high expectations from key adults around them. In educational settings, they are covertly termed “model minority” students and teachers perceive Indian students as hardworking and successful. Indian parents and communities also overtly hold and express high expectations for their children around academic and occupational success. There has been limited exploration of the term ‘School Success’ with Indian students in the UK, with most research focusing on ‘academic success’ or occurring in the USA. As a result, these dominant discourses can be oppressive and marginalise students. This study explores the discourses used by Indian students in the UK to construct School Success to gain their constructions and understand how existing discourses impact their subjective experiences. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (as described by Willig, 2013; Georgaca & Avdi, 2011 and Parker, 1992) is used to analyse semi-structured interview data from four Indian students aged between 18 and 22 in full-time education. The analysis suggests that Indian students construct School Success through four constructions, which supports and extends current literature. These include success as ‘Progress, grades, careers and the model minority student’, ‘Relaxed compared to India’, ‘A competition’ and ‘Happiness and self-development’. Participants expressed parents, teachers, and the community view School Success as academic, while they construct a more holistic understanding. Success for Indian students is developing as a person, being happy, and being content with personal progress. The research contributes to conversations in Educational Psychology around culturally sensitive practice and the impact of wider factors on the development of identity for ethnic minority children and young people.