Failing to learn the lessons
In the 1960s and 1970s, Black children were disproportionately sent to so-called ‘educationally subnormal’ schools, in one of the biggest educational scandals in British history. Half a century on from the exposure of this injustice, similar practices continue to blight the lives of Black pupils, argues researcher Montel Gordon.
In the early 1970s, Grenadian-born politician, teacher and writer Bernard Coard exposed the practice of British schools mislabelling disproportionate numbers of Black children as ‘educationally subnormal’ (ESN) and dumping them in remedial classes and schools alongside white children from poor backgrounds and/or with special educational needs. Half a century on, I believe similar practices continue through alternative provision (AP) and pupil referral units (PRUs).
The 1996 Educational Reform Act offered ‘alternative education’ for pupils unsuited for or unable to attend mainstream schooling. But what could have been an inclusive and intensive approach to providing smaller, more bespoke learning environments for those excluded from school too often becomes the profitable, market-driven warehousing of young people.
Take Birmingham, which has the largest Black Caribbean population outside of London. The City of Birmingham group manages the city’s PRU market through its monopoly as service commissioner. It provides a case study of the organised abandonment of those deemed unsuitable for mainstream education. With over 70 per cent of students receiving free school meals, its actions discipline, punish and fail the poor. The most recent Ofsted report on this managed market states the quality of education ‘requires improvement’ with ‘inconsistent implementation of the curriculum across the board’ that fails to match students’ abilities.
'Mainstream education and AP have become pathways to mental illness and prison'
My research indicates that both mainstream education and AP have become pathways to mental illness and prison, as schools and colleges in Birmingham and across the UK manufacture Black young men and boys whose exclusion is a source of profit rather than a cause for shame. The local authority replaces state social support for children labelled as economically unviable with exclusion, containment and imprisonment.
For Black Caribbean boys in Birmingham, history is in a loop. A 2003 study by BRAP (Birmingham Race Action Partnership) showed the downward spiral experienced by some Black Caribbean boys from their entry into a city secondary school to their becoming the lowest performing group at the GCSE level. This occurred despite school-based interventions to support learning and disproportionate numbers of exclusions to support order. Schools explained their failings by deploying the tropes of Black Caribbean boys and families not valuing education.
Concurrently, Birmingham City Council figures show that in Key Stage 4, Black Caribbean pupils make less progress than the national average and achieve significantly less than Black Caribbeans nationwide.
‘Ability and sets’
In The Culture Trap, Derron Wallace, a sociologist of race, ethnicity and education, argues that ‘ability’ and ‘sets’ within schools can promote institutionalised discrimination against some minority groups. He presents academic ‘ability grouping’ as ‘ethno-racial segregation’, based on local educational authorities pandering to the concerns of white parents that the presence of the children of Black Caribbean and South Asian immigrants ‘would detrimentally affect the educational performance of white students’.
In the 1960s and 70s, the racial, cultural and political tensions around and within the education system presented Asian students as in need of ESL (English as a second language classes) and Black Caribbean students as in need of ESN diagnoses.
The same preparations operate today but in a very different labour market. Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) are ESN schools 2.0 for those labelled ‘the worst children’ of the education system. Birmingham City Council claims such alternative provision ensures ‘pupils make good progress in their education and do not fall behind their peers’ and gain ‘qualifications appropriate to their abilities and age’. However, research indicates such units are characterised by poor staff training/recruitment, minimal impact on ‘containing’ their pupils and failure to deliver attainment levels. Like their students, the AP and PRU sectors do not work.
At the core, the wider education sector does not produce the academic results demanded of the mainstream sector: 4 per cent of AP students receive ‘good’ passes (C grade and above) in their GCSE maths and English in contrast to 64 per cent in mainstream schools. The primarily poor children who failed in mainstream provision fail in AP, argues Institute of Race Relations researcher Jessica Perera. They are ‘seen to possess no academic value in an increasingly marketised education system', and their education is simply ‘disposable’.
‘Outdated and ineffective practices’
Some claim the lack of racial diversity in the education system fails students, as teachers neither reflect nor understand the student body. A University of Birmingham report released in 2021 expresses concerns that, even now, a disproportionately white teaching workforce is ‘under-prepared for multi-ethnic classrooms’, as are school leaderships who persist in outdated and ineffective practices around race inequity. Patronising, prejudiced and pressured staff blame students for their own failings as teachers, drawing on colonial tropes reworked through 21st-century British nationalist sensitivities, to see them as ‘inferior’, uncultured and criminal to justify their placement in lower sets and AP.
As Coard outlined half a century ago, teachers’ projections shape students’ experiences and outcomes. Low teacher expectations within a competitive marketplace relegate Black Caribbean children to lower sets and towards the ‘disruptive behaviours’ that lead to exclusion and less academic achievement.
The cancellation of GCSE examinations during the pandemic highlights the role of expectations in racial inequalities in educational experiences and outcomes. Research indicates that teachers’ expectations mark down Black youth, who perform better in exams. The algorithm used in 2020-21 in place of exams drew on teacher projections, assessments and settings.
Such practices are challenged by organisations, such as Birmingham Race Impact Group, that demonstrate their commitment to creating an education system in Birmingham that is ‘antiracist in outlook and practice’. Additionally, the work of No More Exclusions demonstrate the importance of grassroots abolitionist organisations that centre the voices of young people excluded within the system and offer viable solutions.
‘The education system is failing the most vulnerable children’
Since exclusion by ethnicity figures were collected, Black Caribbean children have been the most excluded group, along with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children. Whilst the old ESN seemed to embody a version of the US ‘No Child Left Behind’ principle, PRUs show the power of ‘no child has the right to disrupt the education of other children’ to justify the exclusion of the ‘undesirable’ groups into PRUs. Academies are broadly twice as likely to exclude students in comparison to local authority-maintained schools, and Black Caribbean students are 3.6 times more likely to be excluded in academies than their white counterparts.
My research shows that the market education system is failing the most vulnerable children in society. The educational travesties detailed by Coard more than 50 years ago are today amplified by market forces that reproduce and reinforce educational inequalities. Collectively, we must think through the viable solutions to exclusion and the alternative education sector, which syphons marginalised youth towards low-paid, low-income sectors.
We must also ask more questions about how the marketised domain of education has not only put profit over people but situated itself as a system failing the most vulnerable.
Montel Gordon is a James McCune Smith PhD researcher in race and education at the University of Glasgow. He is also a freelance opinion writer for papers such as the Voice, the Gleaner, the Independent and the Metro. Follow him on Instagram, X and LinkedIn.
The Runnymede Trust's new report, History on loop: the sustained impact of school exclusions on Black communities, is out now.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Runnymede Trust.
Join the fight for racial justice: support the Runnymede Trust’s work by making a donation.
Photo © Alphotographic/iStock
