When Bernard Coard wrote his seminal How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System forty- nine years ago, he was referring to a pre-existing phenomenon.  If we assess where the Afrikan child in the British School system is today we see that, using the ‘Attainment 8’ method for GCSE results, ‘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) (1)

But this really applies to those that manage to stay in school because there has been a forty per cent rise in school exclusions 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)  Moreover, a  review of exclusions published in 2018 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, children from the most disadvantaged families were 45% more likely to be excluded than other pupils.  (5)

However, these figures don’t account for what is known as “off-rolling”, where a school illegally removes a pupil from the register without formally excluding them.  (6) 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 (7).

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.” (8):

“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.” (9)

Worryingly, if funding is a real issue in addressing school exclusions then those in deprived areas will gain little comfort from the Johnson administration’s funding formula that looks set to benefit schools in affluent areas the most. (10)

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 people get ensnared in crime, 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?” (11)

Claudine Duberry, author of Guns, Gangs and the implication for social workers and “a proactive, disruptive and a thought-provoking criminologist is clear about some of the causal links:

“The education system also has a lot to answer for. Young people end up in gangs as runners and don’t know how to get out of it. It’s very worrying. You get children aged eight or 10 in court on offences of drug possession.” (12)

Sis. Claudine is the founder of Taking Positive Steps an organisation committed to providing a tailored resettlement service to young people who are ostracised and excluded from society, as well as training and support to professionals and families.  Some of the training they offer for professionals, schools, parents and foster carers includes Working and engaging positively with hard to reach children and young people; Consequential Thinking (The Leader in Me); Whose child is it anyway? – Parenting with purpose; Mentoring: reaching at risk youth; Unlawful Group Association: Gang Culture and Gang Awareness Training; Taking a Trauma Informed Approach (https://takingpositivesteps.org.uk/training/).

To raise public consciousness of these issues Taking Positive Steps are canvassing support for National No School Day on November 20th 2020, to coincide with International children’s day, at 10 Downing Street (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/KMHF9M7).  This highlights the need, at least rhetorically, to emphasise the shortcomings – or even duplicity – of the state with regards to our children both within the school system and when they get trammelled out of it into criminality.  The statistics cited above give some indication of the in school experiences but it is out of school where the media narrative, focusing on so-called ‘criminal gangs’ often goes into overdrive, fuelled by (now discredited) initiatives like the “gangs matrix”. (13)  In addition, even senior police officers admit that “Gangs are, for the most part, a complete red herring… fixation with the term is unhelpful at every level.” (14)

When it comes to real criminality, Afrikan young people are frequently portrayed as the archetype, yet the Mayor of London has acknowledged that “cocaine use at ‘middle-class parties’ helping fuel gang violence on London streets.”  (15)  Indeed, it’s an open secret that not only are many of the city’s top hotels “five star drug dens”, “the City (i.e. the financial district) is a major link in the global drug trade.” (16)

We also have to factor in police involvement in the drugs trade, as evidenced at Stoke Newington Police Station and exposed through Operation Jackpot:

“More than 130 separate allegations naming 45 officers. In addition to those of drugs dealing, 65 allegations were of planting drugs or other evidence, 27 of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, 27 of theft, and 9 of assault.” (17)

Historically, the state has often used methods like “low intensity warfare” against our community.  This concept is explained Mutulu Shakur and others:

“Frank Kitson was the commander of the British counterinsurgency force In Northern Ireland for many years, and before that he was an officer in many of Britain’s lost colonial wars, e.g. Kenya, Aden, and Cyprus. Most of his examples of low intensity operations are drawn from Britain’s war in Ireland and the United States war in Indochina. One of his strategic techniques was the use of gangs. The rise of gangs in the oppressed communities in America partially reflects the successful use of his strategy by past administrations. The corollary to the use of gangs is the emergence of an increasing clamour for law and order. Kltson’s book, which is titled “Low Intensity Operations” (1971), is the basic manual of counterinsurgency methods used in Western Europe and North America. (emphasis added)” (18)

To ensure our young people do not get caught up in these machinations the community, like Sis. Claudine, has to be prepared to “challenge the theories around working and engaging with young people who display what society deems as challenging behaviour” Meaning we must be prepared to begin “thinking outside of the box.. (and going)..the extra mile to achieve positive outcomes.”

So, in spite of over fifty years of activism in this field, we have not yet managed to sustain viable educational (or social) institutions that would be the basis of inoculating our young people from the inimical designs of the state.  If we were able to do this we might be in  a position to push for a National No (mainstream) School – Forever.

(1) 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.

(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) Ibid

(7) 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

(8) Thomas Keaney (29/01/19)  ‘Exclusions build a school-to-prison pipeline.’  https://www.tes.com/news/exclusions-build-school-prison-pipeline

(9) Ibid.

(10)  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.

(11) 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

(12) Sam Gelder (13/05/16) ‘We won’t win war with gangs – we need to engage’ says Hackney social worker turned author. https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/crime-court/we-won-t-win-war-with-gangs-we-need-to-engage-says-hackney-social-worker-turned-author-1-4534777

(13)  Amnesty International (09/05/18) Press Release: Met Police using ‘racially discriminatory’ Gangs Matrix database. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/met-police-using-racially-discriminatory-gangs-matrix-database

(14)  Amnesty International  (2018) TRAPPED IN THE MATRIX: Secrecy, stigma, and bias in the Met’s Gangs Database. p. 10. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/reports/Trapped%20in%20the%20Matrix%20Amnesty%20report.pdf.

(15)  Mattha Busby (27/07/18) Cocaine use at ‘middle-class parties’ helping fuel gang violence on London streets, Sadiq Khan warns. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cocaine-party-london-gangs-drug-violence-sadiq-khan-mayor-a8466601.html

(16) Max Daly & Steve Sampson (25/10/13) 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Britain’s Drug Trade. https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/news/a5077/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-britains-drug-trade/

(17)  Terry Kirby (04/02/94) Police could face criminal charges after drugs inquiry: Officers in north-east London alleged to have sold cocaine and planted evidence. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/police-could-face-criminal-charges-after-drugs-inquiry-officers-in-north-east-london-alleged-to-have-1391845.html

(18) Dr.Mutulu Shakur, Anthony X Bradshaw, Malik Dinguswa, Terry D. Long, Mark Cook, Mateos Adolfho And James Haskins (1988) Genocide waged against the Black Nation, through behavior modification/orchestrated by counterinsurgency and low-intensity warfare in the U.S. penal system.  The research committee on international law and Black Freedom Fighters in the United States. p. 17. http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/Mutulu_Shakur/513.genocide.waged.against.black.nation.12.1988.pdf

We ask the question:

Do we need a National No School Day?

1) Have things improved educationally for our children in the last fifty years?

2) If not, why?

3) How big an issue are gangs in our community?

4) Are our young people criminals or criminalised?

5) What is the most effective way to challenge the status quo, vis-à-vis our young people?

Our Special Guest:

Sis. Claudine Duberry: has over 25 years’ experience of working with looked-after children, mothers and babies, and young people in the criminal justice system, strengthens our vision and dedication to the service provision.  She also is the founder of Taking Positive Steps, who provide a tailored resettlement service to young people who are ostracised and excluded from society, as well as training and support to professionals and families.  Sis. Claudine is also an author and recipient of multiple awards for her services and dedication to the community.  Her book Guns, Gangs and the implication for social workers, was published in 2015. (https://takingpositivesteps.org.uk/)