An estimated 470,000 Afrikan children will soon be returning to school in the coming days. (1) Education remains a hot button issue within the Afrikan community, particularly around the issue of attainment. The latest statistics do not make for happy reading. Using the ‘Attainment 8’ method for GCSE results, the figures reveal that ‘Black’ children as group are languishing behind all other groups with a score of 45.0 (other group scores were: White – 46.1; Other – 47.2, Mixed – 47.3, Asian – 50.4 and Chinese – 64.2) (2)
However, some might argue that the constant focus on attainment is misplaced. The inimical experience in the UK for generations has been understood since at least 1966 when under the vison of Nana Bonsu, the first Afrikan supplementary school was set up in Manchester. (3) Five years later Bernard Coard published his ground breaking work, How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System. By 1988, things had not sufficient improved when Dimela Yekwai British Racism, produced Miseducation and The Afrikan Child. In 2004 Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka released Education: An Afrikan-Centred Approach to Excellence, that included a searing critique of the British education system as well as a tribute to young Jevan Richardson, one of it’s most tragic victims. Indeed, Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka’s book was brought out in the context of the London Schools and the Black child conferences first organised by Diane Abbott MP in 2002, who to wanted to highlight the “silent catastrophe happening in Britain’s schools in the way they continue to fail black British school-children.” (4)
In 2005 Brian Richardson oversaw the re-publication of Bernard Coard’s study, alongside a range of contemporary essays in a collection called Tell It Like It Is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children. Three years after this Neil Mayers put out Gifted At Primary: Failing By Secondary, that included the chapter You’ve Been Trained To Sell Out, And Your Children Are Next! (5)
This small sample of literature on this subject should demonstrate beyond any doubt the character of the UK education system vis-à-vis Afrikan children. Similarly, responses to it have also been entrenched in community activism. As noted above, the first supplementary school was set up fifty-three years ago with the objective developing with Afrikan children:
- Children’s positive self image and self confidence.
- Support to developing academic and non academic competences, to meet various challenges in mainstream education.
- A strong focus on the student’s African history and culture.
- Commitment to ensuring that children, teachers and parents recognize the importance of building a community. (6)
These objectives were consistent with the governing philosophy of supplementary schools. Dr. Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University who has undertaken extensive research into supplementary schools asserts: “The supplementary school movement initially represented a critical challenge to the mainstream curriculum.” (7) He also emphasizes that “that the context that led to the creation of Saturday schools hasn’t changed.” (8)
Yet the nature of supplementary schools does appear to have changed, even to the extent by 2010, the government was mouthing approbation:
“A number of benefits were identified by case study schools (including parents, pupils and teachers) and LAs. Many parents reported an improvement in the skills, knowledge and exam results of their children since attending supplementary school. Teachers, parents and pupils identified more concentrated teacher-pupil time due to smaller class sizes, in which teachers had time to explore a range of teaching approaches, and strategies for engaging pupils more freely than in the mainstream.” (9)
Some might interpret this as vindication and it’s it true that attainment levels are not as bad as they were and many Afrikan children do excel within the school system and this is all that some parents want. For example, Prof. Andrews recounts:
“At Lumumba [school], one of my participants told me that the parents, demanding value for money, compelled them to remove the Black history elements in their curriculum so that the students could focus on Maths and English.” (10)
In the current climate, supplementary schools have to take parents requests seriously as an existentially imperative. Bro. Nia Imara, who established NABSS (the National Association of Black Supplementary Schools) affirms that schools are closing an alarming rate. Since 2007 NABSS runs a database of supplementary schools across the country, an essential resource for schools to advertise their services and for parents (and potential volunteers) to find them.
During an interview with Afrika Speaks, Bro. Nia revealed that five schools have closed down since the end of last term. Some of the factors he cites include lack of fees from parents, loss of grants, difficulties with premises (he regards this as the most pressing issue). He has also noticed a shift in parents demands for academic outcomes over the political/cultural motivation that were the foundation of the movement. Yet he is resolute that these schools are needed now as much as ever as their purpose is at odds with mainstream education objectives:
“This school system was set up initially to train a workforce. Not employers or entrepreneurs – it is to train a workforce, to clean the toilets, drive the buses and sweep the roads. That what it was designed for from day one. The focus for our children should be doing for self, being business people, running a business, budgets, and this is what a lot of Saturdays schools are doing now.”
Bro. Nia also bemoans the fact that we have yet to convert a Saturday/Supplementary School into a fulltime school indicating a lack of will and commitment. He further calls on celebrities that have expressed an interest in education like Akala and Stormzy, as well as business people to openly advocate on behalf of and fund community supplementary schools.
Supplementary schools are arguably at a crossroads. Parental demands for quasi-exotic tuition services have to be balanced with existential threats (falling rolls, lack of income, lack of premises) and adherence to their original mission of community sustainability Prof. Andrews concludes with the following prognosis:
“The Black supplementary schools arose as a grassroots movement that challenged the racism in the mainstream school system. On the conservative and more critical ends of the spectrum, all agreed that the schools were the problem and needed significant change. As racism has changed in nature and the movement has become more accommodated into the mainstream school system, the focus has moved away from indicting the racism in the school system to aiming to help Black children as individuals succeed in schooling despite the negative influences surrounding them. At its strongest, the movement had a chance to significantly change mainstream schooling developing alternative approaches to pedagogy and education but it appears as though it is the school system that has fundamentally changed the nature of supplementary schools. Everyone involved in supplementary schooling is committed to the uplift of Black children and communities; however, I believe that we must return to the roots of the movement and again present an indictment of racism in the school system and develop a critical Black education to challenge it.” (11)
In his most recent book, Warrior Scholar Mwalimu Baruti authoritatively explains in his most recent, To Educate A People, how parents have been more or less browbeaten into submission in pursuit of the proverbial “good education” for their children, seemingly oblivious to the consequences:
“These socially beleaguered parents saw one-way integration into whiteness i.e. fighting to have their children held hostage in constantly terrorizing, hateful, all white classes as their only salvation. As so many of us still do, they believed in the superiority of european people, culture and science and fought to have yurugu embrace their children by guiding them along sacrificial academic paths of subservient invisibility. As master subintegrationists they saw becoming the european as their ideal escapist aspiration. The only successful learning environment they could imagine fit what sociologists have referred as the ‘hostage theory’” (12)
As it stands, the vanguard educational institutions in the community are the supplementary schools. Baba Baruti then provides a yardstick by which they can evaluate their endeavours.
“The only true measure of our worth and work on the educational frontline is the degree to which we have consciously, consistently and progressively moved toward Afrikan liberation, empowerment and sovereignty… ” (13)
(1) Department for Education (27/06/19) Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2019 . https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019
(2) Department for Education (22/08/19) GCSE results (‘Attainment 8. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/education-skills-and-training/11-to-16-years-old/gcse-results-attainment-8-for-children-aged-14-to-16-key-stage-4/latest. The 8 subjects which make up Attainment 8 include English and Maths, which are both ‘double-weighted’, meaning pupils’ scores in them are doubled. Of the remaining 6 subjects: 3 must come from qualifications that count towards the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), like sciences, language and history, 3 can be either EBacc subjects, GCSE subjects, or technical qualifications from a list approved by the DfE. Each grade a pupil achieves is assigned a point score from 9 (the highest) to 1 (the lowest), which is then used to calculate their total Attainment 8 score. A pupil’s Attainment 8 score is calculated by adding up the points for their 8 subjects (with England and Maths counted twice), and dividing by 10. A school’s Attainment 8 score is the average of all of its eligible pupils’ scores. To calculate the national average for Attainment 8, DfE adds together all the Attainment 8 scores given to individual children, and divides them by the total number of pupils at the end of key stage 4.
(3) Nana Bonsu Oral History Project (2014) Saturday Supplementary School. http://nanabonsu.com/education/saturday-supplementary-school/
(4) Diane Abbott (06/01/02) Teachers are failing black boys. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jan/06/publicservices.race
(5) Neil Mayers (2008) Gifted At Primary: Failing By Secondary. Ill-Literation. p. 12
(6) Nana Bonsu Oral History Project. Op. cit.
(7) Kehinde Andrews (2013) Black supplementary schools: Addressing the declining attendance: Race Equality Teaching
(8) Natricia Duncan (10/11/13) ‘All Black Children Should Attend Supplementary Schools.’ http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/‘all-black-children-should-attend-supplementary-schools’
(9) Uvanney Maylor, Katie Glass, Tozun Issa, Kuyok Abol Kuyok, Sarah Minty, Anthea Rose and Alistair Ross, Emily Tanner, Steven Finch, Natalie Low, Eleanor Taylor and Sarah Tipping, Susan Purdon (2010) Impact Of Supplementary Schools On Pupils’ Attainment: An Investigation Into What Factors Contribute To Educational Improvements. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/4150856.pdf. p. 167
(10) Andrews. Op. cit.
(11)Kehinde Andrews (2014) Resisting racism: The Black supplementary school movement. In Ornette D Clennon (ed.) Alternative education and community engagement: Making education a priority. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 56-73
(12) Mwalimu Baruti (2019) To Educate A People: Thoughts From The Center. Akoben House. p. 219
(13) Baruti (2019) p. 600.
we ask the question:
Saturday Schools: An essential resource or outdated operation?
1) If Saturday schools are so essential, why are so many closing?
2) Have supplementary schools become “quasi-exotic tuition services”?
3) Why we been unable to convert Saturday schools into full-time schools?
4) Should we call on our celebrities to support Saturday schools?
5) Have the schools strayed from their original mission? If so how did it happen and how to do they get back?
Our Special Guest:
Bro. Nia Imara: is a veteran activist who set up the National Association for Black Supplementary Schools in 2007 as a resource to help support and promote supplementary schools across the country, as well as a means by which parents find local schools for their children.
Sis. Amitiye Lumumba: is a veteran activist, community historian and teacher. She has been involved in setting up and teaching in a range Supplementary Schools in the community and currently teaches in the Alkebu-Lan Academy of Excellence.
Sis. Kai Ouagadou-Mbandaka: is the Chief Officer of Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement’s Education Department, Head Teacher for the Alkebu-Lan Academy of Excellence Saturday School, and Co-ordinator for the Ma’at Academy of Excellence Home School Collective. She is also head of ARM’s Rites of Passage Programme for Girls and a Columnist for The Whirlwind Newspaper. Sis. Kai is one of the original co-hosts of Afrika Speaks with Alkebu-Lan when it first launched in 2006.