In the budget on 16/09 the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne made a pledge; he pledged to “set schools free” from local bureaucracy and convert all English schools to academies by 2020.
Academies are independent, state-funded schools, which receive their funding directly from central government, rather than through a local authority. Although the day-to-day running of the school remains with the head teacher or principal, they are overseen by individual charitable bodies called academy trusts and may be part of an academy chain. These trusts are said to provide advice, support and expertise. They have more freedom than other state schools over their finances and curriculum, and do not need to follow national pay and conditions for teachers. (1)
Academies have been held up by successive governments as panaceas of achievement yet there is ongoing concern that they do not benefit Afrikan children. According to The Voice newspaper, June 2013:
“A leading academic has said that black pupils achieve worse GCSE results in academies than in local authority schools with a similar intake. Professor David Gillborn, director of the centre for research in race and education based at the University of Birmingham, pointed to the Government’s data which revealed that while other ethnicities performed better, attainment among black pupils leaves much to be desired.
According to the Department for Education’s Equalities Impact Assessment: Academies Bill published in 2010, 37.1 per cent of black children enrolled at academies achieved five top GCSEs including maths and English. But in local authority-run schools with similar characteristics, that figure was 41 per cent among children of African and Caribbean heritage.” (2)
However, the government countered that Gillborn was not using the most up to date data and asserted the following year that “Government reforms aid attainment among black pupils.”:
“It is particularly through sponsored academies, where long-term underperforming local-authority-run schools are being turned around by brilliant sponsors, that black pupils are benefiting. There are proportionately far more black pupils in academies than in council schools, and the improving performance of black pupils is reflected in the improvements in academies.” (3)
“Moreover, “research by the Department of Education at Oxford University shows gaps in educational achievement at age 16 have decreased substantially over the last 25 years, particularly in the attainment of different ethnic groups.” (4)
So even though the research states that “the two lowest achieving groups are currently black Caribbean and mixed white and black Caribbean students,” they assert that even here the gap is closing.
Yet just in January of this year the UK prime minister was lamenting that “If you’re black, you’re more likely to be in a prison cell than studying at a top university,” suggesting that whatever transformations are said to going on in schools, they are not leading to concomitant changes in society at large. An additional point of consideration could be that whether the rising academic achievement results in any net benefit for the Afrikan community.
Consequently, interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament (iNAPP) advances as a way forward:
“The NAPP is of the view that parents and a community are the primary educators of their children and that the only solution is in taking full charge of our children’s education. We contend that our children deserve the very best education and that what is patently best for them is an educational curriculum in which they can see themselves positively represented as well as a learning environment that reflects their own cultural and social matrix; where they experience love, respect and cultural understanding. This is the central theme of an ‘Afrikan-centred’ education.” (5)
(1) Academies – old and new explained (03/06/15). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13274090.(2) Pears, Elizabeth, (08/06/13) Black pupils failing in academies. http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/black-pupils-failing-academies.(3) Department for Education and Lord Nash (26/06/14) Government reforms aid attainment among black pupils. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-reforms-aid-attainment-among-black-pupils.(4) Closing the attainment gaps (18/08/15). http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-08-18-closing-attainment-gaps.(5) interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament’s (28/11/15) Manifesto: Working Draft for Community Consultation.
So we ask the question:
Are Academies good for Afrikan children?
1. How should the Afrikan community measure academic success?
2. Do alleged increasing academic attainment levels mask ongoing socio-economic challenges for the Afrikan community
3. Can ‘Afrikan-centred’ education really deliver academic success?
4. What is the iNAPP policy on Academies?
Our special guest is:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and UNIA-ACL Ambassador for the UK and national co-Chair of the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament. Bro. Ldr is a veteran activist of over 30 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An Africentric Guide To Excellence.
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