GARVEY LIVES!
MOSIAH LIVES!
Welcome to the first show of the Mosiah season 6259 (2019).
Ninety-nine years ago, through its Declaration of Rights of Negro Peoples of the World, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) declared:
“Our children are forced to attend inferior separate schools for shorter terms than white children, and the public school funds are unequally divided between the white and colored schools.” (1)
A century on and inequality remains a feature of Afrikan children’s education experience. Thus in addition to the forty per cent rise in school exclusions in the UK in just three years, amounting to forty pupils each day (2), the statistics also reveal that “black Caribbean pupils were approximately 3.2 times more likely to be permanently excluded than other pupils.” (3) In contrast, the lowest exclusion rates were found among the Indian, Chinese and Other Asian groups. (4)
However, after the release of a recent independent study, the government purportedly wants reverse the trend of increasing exclusions. Edward Timpson, a former minister for children and families published his review of exclusions in early May 2019 which revealed that, in addition to the aforementioned data, boys with social, emotional and mental health difficulties were 3.8 times more likely to be permanently excluded than a child without SEN, and children from the most disadvantaged families were 45% more likely to be excluded than other pupils. (5)
As a result the then education minister Damien Hinds called on headteachers to expel fewer students and promised to make schools accountable for the exam results of excluded pupils. (6)
This move has been interpreted by some as a crackdown on “off-rolling”, where a school illegally removes a pupil from the register without formally excluding them. (7) Although Hinds claimed that “off-rolling” was happening on a relatively small scale, studies by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) indicated that 49,000, or one in 12 pupils (8.1%) ‘disappeared’ from English schools through this practice (8).
Some commentators contend that the pressure to “off-roll” is a result of schools being ‘terrorised’ by league tables, where the only currency of any value in the education system is exam results, hence their attempts to find various means to get children of the roll, including manipulating some parents into homeschooling their child. Some schools counter by claiming that lack of funding hinders them from undertaking preventative work to address issues before they can escalate. Nevertheless, if these school strategies are to be targeted by the government, some of the academy chains are said to be one step ahead.” (9):
“A few academy chains have now cottoned on to a different solution; open a social, emotional and mental health school and drop all the misfits into these soon-to-be “sinkholes”, where poor results are more likely to be forgiven by Ofsted while allowing their main flagship academies to continue to impress.
These flagship schools soon become gated communities for high-achieving, disability-free pupils. While the teachers who came into education embracing the premise and values that schools should be inclusive somehow become complicit in moving problem children out, and effectively kicking a child-shaped can down the road.” (10)
The introduction of these measures certainly give the appearance of wanting to tackle the exclusion explosion. Yet in the final analysis the DfE has made it clear that “there were no plans to limit the number of exclusions.” (11) Moreover, if funding is a real issue in addressing school exclusions then those in deprived areas will gain little comfort from the new Johnson administration’s funding formula that looks set to benefit schools in affluent areas the most. (12)
Ultimately, the community will have look to itself to tackle the exclusion crisis and other education challenges that often are found playing themselves out on the streets. Whereas, we readily acknowledge the so-called “school to prison pipeline” where young get ensnared in violence, there’s still less emphasis on the mental well-being of our young people who witness, live around and need to protect themselves from the dangers that are around them. As one young person who had two friends killed in one week and had a gun put to his head the next reflected:
“I know for a fact that a lot of the young people carrying knives are going through a lot of mental turmoil. They will say deep, sad things like ‘I don’t care if someone kills me, they will be doing me a favour anyway’. How do you not hear that and hear the mental health need there?” (13)
Someone who is confronting this need head on is Sis. Cheryl Phoenix of the Black Child Agenda:
“The Black Child Agenda was born in 2011, after the founder Cheryl Phoenix’s son’s came up against overt racism and direct discrimination at their school. They and other black students were being harshly penalised with regular sanctions of isolation and fixed term exclusions, or off-site education for minor infractions, whilst their white counterparts were given simple warnings.
The pattern was not only being witnessed by Cheryl, but also by other parents, teachers, professionals and the general public, up and down the country. With countless case studies and reports, (the most recent being the Lammy report), highlighting the issues around discriminatory processes within the education, judicial, Healthcare & recruitment system.
Cheryl has often said that it is not going far enough to simply “highlight” the issues, those of us within the African Caribbean and Mixed race communities live with these issues daily, we are often told we are “playing the race card”, when we wish to address our concerns, however this often falls on deaf ears. Cheryl explains, yet another report has been compiled, wasting millions of pounds with no clear outcomes, or policy changes which positively affect the African Caribbean & Mixed communities, there is a great deal of lip services, mainstream radio shows belittling the issues that this community faces, however we are being systematically failed daily.” (14)
Her work, unapologetically challenging the system harnessing grassroots activism and professional advocacy has brought her widespread acclaim as well as a 100% success rate for cases undertaken.
With such an effective model in our midst, the next stage must be identify how it can be grown offer support to all the children and families that need it.
(1) Nnamdi Azikiwe (16/02/13) Declaration of Rights of Negro Peoples of the World. https://keyamsha.com/2013/02/16/declaration-of-rights-of-the-negro-peoples-of-the-world/
(2) Lizzy Buchan (07/05/19) Schools to be held accountable for exam results of excluded pupils, new report says. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exam-results-exclusion-schools-students-report-a8901681.html#r3z-addoor
(3) Dave Thomson (07/05/19) When it comes to exclusion, the odds are stacked against black Caribbean pupils. https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2019/05/when-it-comes-to-exclusion-the-odds-are-stacked-against-black-caribbean-pupils/
(4) Department for Education (28/09/18) Pupil exclusions. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/absence-and-exclusions/pupil-exclusions/latest
(5) Sally Weale (07/05/19) Education secretary calls on schools to expel fewer pupils. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/07/education-secretary-calls-on-schools-to-expel-fewer-pupils
(6) Lizzy Buchan (07/05/19) Schools to be held accountable for exam results of excluded pupils, new report says. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exam-results-exclusion-schools-students-report-a8901681.html#r3z-addoor
(7) Weale (07/05/19)
(8) Sally Weale (18/04/19) More than 49,000 pupils ‘disappeared’ from English schools – study. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/18/more-than-49000-pupils-disappeared-from-schools-study
(9) Thomas Keaney (29/01/19) ‘Exclusions build a school-to-prison pipeline.’ https://www.tes.com/news/exclusions-build-school-prison-pipeline
(10) Ibid.
(11) Weale (07/05/19)
(12) Sally Weale (02/08/19) Disadvantaged schools ‘will gain least from new Tory funding’. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/02/disadvantaged-schools-will-gain-least-from-new-tory-funding.
(13) May Bulman (19/09/18) ‘I was gearing up for suicide’: How London’s knife crime epidemic has created a crisis in youth mental health. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/london-knife-crime-sadiq-khan-mental-healthy-youth-violence-suicide-a8545141.html
(14) The Black Child Agenda (2019) Who We Are.. https://www.theblackchildagenda.org/
we ask the question:
How can we tackle the school exclusion crisis?
1) Why are “black Caribbean pupils 3.2 times more likely to be permanently excluded than other pupils.”?
2) If racism is a factor why are Indian, Chinese and Other Asian children excluded the least?
3) Are schools really being “terrorised” by league tables ?
4) Do we sufficiently acknowledge the mental health needs of our young people?
5) How can we make The Black Child Agenda model accessible to more parents?
Our Special Guest:
Sis. Cheryl Phoenix: is an award winning Business woman, Mother, Philanthropist and Speaker. She is also founder and CEO of the Black Child Agenda a national organisation that campaigns for parents to galvanize support against illegal exclusions & racism in UK Schools tackling the Schools to prison Pipeline. It supports parents and young people up and down the UK with issues surrounding institutionally racist, unfair and bias treatment of Black Children. Sis. Cheryl’s career began in the corporate world of the city in the media, Business development and sustainability markets, which lead her to global events organising. . She sat on the board of the London Development Agencies BME grant awarding body, and was part of the panel which secured funds to BME Businesses within the M25 area. Sis Cheryl maintains her extensive media connection and appears regularly on the BBC and is often featured in the Guardian & Telegraph. Sis. Cheryl is a board member of the Bridge Park Community Council Steering Group (BPCC).