Nick Clegg is wrong about black students....

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...but sadly he completely misrepresents the educational achievements of Britain's ethnic minorities:

What Mr Clegg is claiming:

Nick Clegg will today warn that hundreds more young black men are in jail than at top universities, in an explosive attack on race relations in Britain.

And what the proper facts say:

Based on detailed analysis of both the Office of National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey and the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s ‘HESA Student Record’, the report, ‘Race into Higher Education’, sets out how almost one in six (16.0%) of UK university students are from a Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background. This is up from 8.3% in 1995-96, the year in which Business in the Community founded Race for Opportunity. This increase is virtually in line with the growth in the BAME population from 7.7% of 18 to 24 year olds in 1995-96 up to 14% in 2007-08.

Even if we assume that the Russell Group universities do less well - say 10% from BAME communities - that's still 16,000 black students. If they achieve at 16%, that's over 25,000 black students - more that the 22,000 black people in our prisons.  The UK's student population as a whole is well over 2 million - meaning that there are at least 400,000 black students. This is four times the size of the entire prison population.

So Nick's just using carefully crafted statistics to mislead us. Typical Liberal Democrat!

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