An education revolution is about to begin – if we want it. Some of our brightest and best minds (and others with different agendas) have been tackling this issue for six decades. While they helped establish a formidable legacy of foundation schools (“Saturday” or “Supplementary” schools), the school system itself has remained fairly intractable to change. According to educator and author Bro. Neil Mayers, the school system, based on a two-hundred year-old military experiment is far from broken, but working as designed:

“We keep trying to refine a system that was never designed to produce independent, confident, critically thinking human beings. From its inception mass schooling was structured to produce order. To produce compliance. To produce people who could sit still, follow instructions, and reproduce information on command. And we act surprised when reform after reform fails to produce adults that can think for themselves.” (1)

Bro. Neil contends that one of the ways this is achieved is that the curriculum is filled with content that has little real world application, leaving students ill-prepared to navigate it effectively. When we factor in Afrikan children specifically he takes care to distinguish between low achievement and underachievement and key determinant that produces the latter is institutional racism that exists in society at large and is replicated within the school. (2)

This doesn’t mean that our children cannot ‘succeed’ within the parameters of the education system is designed to produce and what would aid thus greatly is Bro. Neil calls “cultural esteem” as opposed to “self-esteem.” He represents this as a pyramid with “African Diaspora History” at the base, layered with knowledge of self, self-pride, self-worth, expectations, ambition, with excellence at the summit.

“The current education system spends enormous energy trying to fix the summit while ignoring the foundation. It demands high grades from children while simultaneously starving them of the historical truth that makes high achievement psychologically possible.” (3)

Cultural esteem can really only function effectively within a framework of family and community institutional cohesion. i.e. the parents must be committed to acquiring and instilling these elements with the assistance of community resources that may include foundation schools, cultural organisations and notable individuals.

To this end Bro. Neil pulls it together with “The Blueprint For Brilliance.” This is a comprehensive rendering of the attributes our young people need for success (“the perfect graduate”), coupled with an in-depth breakdown of “the new core skills” required at different age and stage subject checkpoints that will fully equip them for the world they will enter. It’s a towering achievement that is nothing less than revolutionary. As we said above, if we want it. (4)

Bro. Neil contends that our righteous anger is an absolutely necessary component, and a luxury our children can ill-afford to do without:

“I make no apologies for hoping this book leaves you uncomfortable. If you’ve read this far and are not at least slightly furious then I’ve failed in my task. The children failed by this system don’t need your sympathy or your empathy. They need you to do something.” (5)

(1) Neil Mayers (2026) The Lie We Call School: Why the System Isn’t Broken, and Why That’s the Problem. ill-Literation. p.64-68.

(2) Mayers. p.100-105

(3) Mayers. p. 131-2

(4) Mayers. pp. 148-210

(5) Mayers. p. 218

Is School “A Lie”?

1) Is the school system broken or working as designed?

2) Is “cultural esteem” really a factor in academic success or is it down to hard work?”

3) What is required of us to implement “The Blueprint For Brilliance”?

4) Are you “angry” about the challenges our children face? What will you do about it?

Our Special Guest:

Bro. Neil “Seba Yaw”Mayers: is an education strategist has worked in schools for over twenty years which includes two years in the USA. In that time he has been a form tutor, Head of Mathematics, Head of Inclusion, Pastoral Manager, Head of Year, Vice-Principal, and Headteacher. In his first school, he challenged the Gifted & Talented programme on the grounds that it shouldn’t take five years for any child to obtain a GCSE. He later proved his point by guiding an entire class of 20+ students through their GCSE Mathematics examinations with a grade C or above in four school terms. The students were twelve years old. Until March 2020, Neil was Headteacher of an Independent Wellbeing Specialist School in West London, working in partnership with The Children’s Society. Seba Yaw is author of the acclaimed books Gifted At Primary, Failing By Secondary (2008), a practical blueprint for Black parents navigating the British school system, and Sailing Through Secondary, Considering Uni (2020). His third book, The Lie We Call School was published in May 2026.

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Apologise and hold inquiry into ESN schools in the 1950s to 1980s: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/769015
Set up an independent inquiry into West Indian children placed in ESN schools: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/760415
Support the T21 Alchemy campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/f/t21-alchemy-raising-consciousness-around-around-disability
Support the Black Child Down Syndrome Project: https://blackchilddownsyndrome.com/about-us/
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