Teenagers of ethnic Chinese and Indian origin are doing better in British schools than their white counterparts, suggests data released by the government on Wednesday.
"Pupils from every ethnic group have improved in their GCSE/GNVQ results," said the Department for Education and Skills, referring to the national high school leaving examinations.
Nation-wide, the department said in a statement, 50.7 percent of pupils of all ethnic backgrounds got five or more grades of A-plus to C in their final exams in 2003.
For ethnic Chinese students, however, the percentage was 74.8 percent - with 90 percent achieving success in mathematics, compared with 71 percent for all ethnic groups.
For ethnic Indian students, 65.2 percent got five or more top GCSE grades, followed by whites with 51.3 percent, pupils of Bangladeshi origin (45.5 percent) and those of Pakistani origin (41.5 percent).
"Indian pupils, and pupils of mixed white and (south) Asian heritage, consistently achieve above the national average at all levels," the department elaborated.
Students of black African and Caribbean origin trailed at 40.7 and 32.9 percent, but those figures were up 3.3 and 3.7 percentage points from 2002 - a bigger rate of increase than any other ethnic group apart from Chinese.
Commenting on the findings, Schools Minister Stephen Twigg said "we must not be complacent" about closing what he called the "achievement gap" in British schools.
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