PRINCESS IS THIRTEEN years old. She loves drama and dreams of becoming an actress. But right now she fears for the future.







Worried: Princess Webb (13) and mum Zoe Johnson













She has just expelled her for fighting and, allegedly, biting a teacher.

Princess could be another statistic, one of 1,000 African-Caribbean children permanently kicked out of school every year.

After all she lives in Croydon, a London borough that is thought to exclude more black children than any other – and where one out of every ten black kids are shown the door before reaching their GCSEs.

Last week the government released a report shedding new light on the circumstances that lead to exclusions – low teacher expectations which cause teachers to act on feelings about behaviour rather than the child’s learning potential.

[align=center]crossroads[/align]
Princess agrees. ‘The teachers have never encouraged me. But I’ve definitely felt like they wanted to get rid of me and were just waiting for the right moment.’









The only “positive� advice she can remember is a teacher advising her to consider a music career – a profession only a fraction of people succeed at.

When UB40 sang “nobody knows me but I’m always there, a statistic to remind me of a world that doesn’t care� they could have been singing about Princess.

But like all exclusions cases she is more than a statistic. Until recently she was a model pupil, hardly ever in trouble and getting good exam grades.

Mother Zoë Johnson is stunned that her daughter no longer has a place of education. Princess is wondering whether she will ever achieve her dreams.

Zoë said: ‘I don’t want my child to be another statistic. Every child deserves the right to an education, yet they are stopping black children predominantly from getting an education.

[align=center]willpower[/align]
‘It’s been going on for years and years and years, and its time for it to stop now. They’re sending them on the road to get killed. If they can’t get an education they can’t get out of their lifestyle.’

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Dr William (Lez) Henry [/align]
They are at a crossroads. Many black families never recover from permanent exclusions. Youths are sent to Pupil Referral Units (PRU) – the educational equivalent of borstal.

A high proportion rejects schooling entirely at this stage, opting for the superficially exciting life on-road.

A constantly replenishing, ever-expanding pool of tomorrow’s gun victims, gun perpetrators, addicts and suppliers.

Those that are reintegrated into a new school inevitably find themselves lower down the schools table, at a more unruly establishment with lower expectations, lower results and more bad influences that are harder to ignore.

Set against these realities, the question of whether Princess overcomes the setback of permanent exclusion appears to rest not just on her own willpower, but on the institutions and officials who will preside over her case.

The new DfES report, entitled ‘Getting It. Getting It Right’, found the odds stacked against black pupils. They were punished more harshly for less serious offences, and praised less than white pupils.







Dr Lez Henry: A lot of parents are supportive but their kids are still failed by school system

It found black children outperformed their white counterparts in school entry tests yet were less likely to be identified as gifted, and disproportionately placed in the lowest “set� bands.

The study was handed to ministers in October last year but has remained under wraps until it was leaked in December and finally released last week.

Written by DfES director of school reform Peter Wanless, the report concludes there is a “compelling case� for admitting institutional racism is to blame.

However Wanless noted that the “R word� was potentially “inflammatory�, and that a less “challenging� label could be used instead to make progress.

It amounted to an admission that many schools and teacher unions remain in a deep state of denial about institutional racism despite decades of debate.

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Former youth worker Shaun Bailey, director of the youth and family charity MyGeneration, said the responsibility lay with parents, not institutional racism.







Back of the class: DfES report says black pupils are judged more on their perceived behaviour than talents

‘As a community we send our children to school and expect them to be educated, but a lot of their education should happen in the home.

‘How many children see their parents reading? How many books have you got in your house? Parents say they’ve got no money but have a big pile of DVDs in their house. Too many children are going out after 10 O’clock at night.

‘We give our black children too much leeway. They become adults to quickly, and are exposed to a whole host of bad influences in music and films, which all goes to make this “black� subculture that says black men are hard and dangerous.’

But Dr William (Lez) Henry, a visiting lecturer who spends much of his time giving school talks, said it was not an “either or� debate between institutional racism and parental responsibility.

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‘There are parents who are fully supportive of their child yet they still fail in the education system. They end up saying “why am I sending my child into this arena to get destroyed?�

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Gee Bernard ‘The issue is lack of positive representation of us in the national curriculum. A lot of parents have not had that, so where do they look for positive ideas of self?’ [/align]
For some debate over the causes of educational malaise is put in the shade by the daily challenge of trying to keep excluded black youth from going off the rails.

The Croydon African Caribbean Families Organisation teaches twenty excluded black children at a time on funds of just £2,000 per year.

Veteran community activist Gee Bernard, who heads the group, believes real life stories provide an insight into the problem. ‘I have one African boy here, so gifted and talented.

The teacher refused to allow him to take his coat at the end of the school day. He got upset and got excluded. And he still had to walk home without his coat in the freezing cold.

‘Black children are at risk from the moment they enter school simply because they are black.







Gee Bernard: We have the collective power to force change... but we don't use it<‘Our children are not uneducatable. They are no worse that anyone else’s children. What they face is institutional racism in its deepest form.

‘The schools are kicking out the cream of our society and we must unite and take responsibility ourselves. But parents do nothing. People want to leave it to me.

‘Some of the schools here have 60% to 70% black children. If you take all the black children out there is no school left. We have the power.’

The campaign group Communities Empowerment Network say headteachers in the borough have developed a culture of exclusion but Croydon is anything but unique.

Councils of all political persuasions are at it. Birmingham, Lambeth and Wandsworth are also vying for top spot as the most prolific expellers with black kids again bearing the brunt.

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However the prospects for expelled children do not look good. Croydon is currently undergoing an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) who have just completed an interim report and may yet use race laws to take legal action.

Overall their permanent exclusion rates are among the worst, but when ethnic monitoring is taken into account an alarming picture emerges.

Around 30% of Croydon’s school population is black, but in 2004/05, 42% of all permanent exclusions alone were of Caribbean heritage, and over half were Caribbean, African or mixed race.

The Department of Education and Skills (DfES) figures show that nationally black pupils are three times more likely to be expelled, in Croydon that figure rises to five times.

The dilemma for the CRE and campaigners is whether to target the council, who claim they have been trying hard to reduce exclusions, or to focus on individual schools.

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Haling Manor High is the borough’s worst offender. According to a 2004 Ofsted report, for every two Caribbean pupils one is given a fixed term (temporary) exclusion. One school governor said 23 pupils were excluded last month, 20 of them black.

The town hall spends annually £6.2m funding no less than six PRUs to handle the stream of wasted talent pouring through its doors.

The turning point is almost always the start of secondary education. In the space of five short years many black children lose interest in education.

Two thirds of African Caribbean pupils leave school without five or more good (grades A to C) GCSEs, a minimum standard as a springboard to access quality higher education or get a good career start in an increasingly competitive labour market.

That means two out of every three black school leavers are not just battling racism in society but are lacking the necessary exam certificates.

Nine percent of black school-leavers have no qualifications whatsoever. Many in this category have been officially excluded but some are unrecorded “hidden� exclusions – pupils who are unofficially told not to come back and, on this occasion, obey the teacher.

A spokeswoman for Croydon council said: ‘We support the government’s zero tolerance approach to disruptive behaviour but we want to, wherever possible, find ways to keep children in the classroom while maintain a good standard of behaviour.

‘We provide a good service for excluded pupils to try to ensure that their education suffers as little as possible from the exclusion process.

‘Exclusions have been high the past but the situation is improving compared to position nationally. We are working with schools, governing bodies and the CRE to reduce exclusions.’

Princess is appealing her exclusion and has a hearing next week. She admits to fighting but disputes the biting allegation as says she has evidence to prove her side of the story.

http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription...p=7&cat=28

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/ethnicminorities/resources/PriorityReviewSept06.pdf

^^ Leaked Government Document PDF ^^