Sunday Express | UK News | Call for 'black schools' | Call for 'black schools'

All black schools, all Black teachers and ALL Black Governors....Is Jasper right do you thing it will restore some of the missing 'values' and correct the decline in standards...

I used to think this might work, but I'm not personally sure that a BLACK school in a WHITE country will work!

I think it would work. Lennox lewis school was successful but lack of funding I last heard it closed. I say no harm in having a few exclusively black schools but watch when the successes roll in. watch who will want a share of it.

There was a time when 'black' schools would have been politically sellable in this country, and would have been run by outstanding heads and teachers from within the black community. That time has passed and will never, I suspect, return.

Tacking the problems needs specific, targeted, locally-based, and time-limited measures, and there are enough 'black' teachers in the system now to argue the case and make things happen without setting up schools. If I were Jasper, that's where I'd be directing my energy.

I wish it were different.....from my experience of being involved in work aimed at developing black teachers, there are many who have the know-how, commitment, and application to get on with things, and are doing exactly that......there are also many who, whilst well-intentioned, are misguided......and some again who are frankly not interested. So 'black' schools led by 'black' people is nowhere near enough in this day and age....

Agree entirely with your second point too.

Though this was interesting.....two pieces appearing within hours of each other on the same site in reponse to the Warwick University paper which got coverage last Friday.......I'll leave people to draw their own conclusions....

First up Tony Sewell...

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Racism is not the problem
Warwick University's accusation of institutional racism in schools undermines teachers and fails to answer important questions

Tony Sewell


The average black Caribbean child today may well attend the most lavish of new academies, where the average spent per pupil is more than many private schools. He or she will also have a host of central and local government initiatives which persuade, encourage and sometimes bribe them to achieve. Yet, in terms of behaviour and academic results, they still remain bottom of the class.

A new study by Warwick University concludes institutional racism is to blame for our pupils' collapse. The idea that teachers are directly or indirectly holding back black pupils is questionable. More likely it is to do with the inability or unwillingness of these students to break away from an anti-education peer group that loves the street more than the classroom. There is a need to challenge the low expectations that exist within too many students. Too many black boys aspire to the impossible aim of being a footballer. This has come not because schools have dampened down their aspirations, but because a dominant peer group culture appears more attractive.

I run a programme called Generating Genius which uses science and engineering to steer black boys in higher education. It is clear to us that unless we challenge the "institutional peer group culture" then very bright black boys will never achieve their potential. Some of our students are 14 but could easily go to university now. It isn't just about our high expectations of these students: we have created a "science gang" where the boys compete with each other to be the best scientist.

We have left a generation of students to flounder without guidance. The Warwick University research is irresponsible. It not only undermines hard-working teachers but it makes our students articulate victims. Liberal researchers have positioned black pupils as being on the spectrum of child abuse, in a world where adults can never be trusted.

Programmes that do not assume that black pupils are victims of racism get little or no support. Behaviour and academic achievement are linked because schools are conformist institutions. It is nonsense to say, as was quoted in the Warwick report, that teachers ignored the academic ability of black pupils, only concentrating on their behaviour. Schools will protect their best classes from the chaos of delinquency: it is racist to assume that this rule should not apply to black pupils. You cannot have a black genius in a classroom where he is disruptive. We must deal with the behaviour before we can progress. Most black boys tell me that the biggest pressure they face is not from their teachers but from their peers. So why haven't we addressed this question?

Funny, isn't it; after all the years of education researchers telling us how black pupils are trapped by institutional racism, they have never come up with a single solution on how to raise black achievement.

To tackle this issue needs an honesty that demands more from black pupils and their families. The irony is that the low expectations of too many social science researchers has left us lacking any intelligence on why black pupils fail and how to solve it. Instead they refuse to ask the hard questions of the pupils themselves and so get the answers they already expect.

Tony Sewell is CEO of the charity Generating Genius

Tony Sewell: Racism is not the problem in schools | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Then Gus John....

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Racism in education: have we learned nothing?
Today's report on schools' institutional racism is not news for the black Caribbean community: a joint approach is now required

Gus John
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Dr Steve Strand's report is a timely reminder to government and schools of what black Caribbean parents and many black teachers have been protesting about for years. His research-based evidence has been preceded by the findings of black supplementary schools and the experience of frustrated parents up and down the land for decades, which is that teachers' low expectations and stereotypical beliefs regarding the ability of African Caribbean children and the quality of teaching that flows from them, are leading to educational underachievement, low student aspirations and an alienation from learning that encourages poor behaviour and discipline and low self worth.

Forty years ago, the very first parliamentary select committee report on race relations and immigration charged that West Indian parents had overly high aspirations for their children and a tendency to equate length of time spent in school with the quality of schooling outcomes they could expect for their children. Little has changed since. Indeed, now that three generations of Caribbean heritage people have been through the British schooling system, teachers' professional socialisation with regard to teaching black Caribbean children has been largely influenced by expectations about challenging behaviour, unfocused learning, low aspirations and underachievement. Hardly surprising, therefore, that less than 50% of newly qualified teachers feel they have the competence and cultural awareness to deal with black students, especially in urban settings. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I had the experience while working as director of education in Hackney in the 1990s, of seeing my son losing his zest for learning and become utterly miserable at the very thought of another day at his local primary school. When I went to see the teacher whose teaching was, for him, a total turn-off, she said she saw him losing interest and talking with his friends more and more, but she "just left him". I took up the matter with the head teacher and was promptly accused of abusing my power as director of education and harassing the teacher. My son soon moved to another Hackney primary school, where he rediscovered his love of school and of learning. Many of his friends eventually transferred to secondary school ill-prepared both in terms of their attitude to learning and their self-management skills, neither of which had anything to do with their academic ability.

The Communities Empowerment Network (CEN), of which I was chair for some years, represents black students and parents each week in disputes with schools about discriminatory practices around setting, banding and streaming. Black Caribbean students' experience of those arrangements often leads them to challenge teachers, stop applying themselves, indulge in disruptive behaviours or, where they can, drop a subject altogether.

I suspect there are undisclosed issues to do with "race" and ability and how black Caribbean children learn, which account for the decisions that many teachers make, however much they might justify those decisions on grounds of pupil behaviour or lack of application.

I recently produced Born to be Great: a Charter on Raising the Attainment of Black Caribbean Boys (pdf), with the National Union of Teachers, based on a series of round-table discussions with black Caribbean students, parents and teachers. The charter is a bold affirmation that if we are to halt the destruction of hope and the death of aspiration, the descent into hopelessness that Strand's research heralds for far too many of our young people, all stakeholders must own up to their responsibilities and work individually and collectively to make a difference. That is why the charter articulates the entitlements and the responsibilities of students themselves, of their parents/carers and of schools and teachers. That is why it deserves to be adopted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families for use by schools and by black Caribbean students and parents.

Gus John: Yes, racism still plays a role in schools | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Not if its funded by the government, it will only piss off the natives. That being said there are ''plenty'' of black schools in the country. The usual happens when caucasian people feel that there are too many ethnic pupils and teachers in a school and so some have become all African schools with a majority of teachers being African.

If Lee jasper wanted he could round up all the African teachers in the country under a union and press for a change in the curriculum or get enough funding together so we can run our own schools separate from the state school system and with our own curriculum.

Would hardly be getting much for our taxes but there you go.

Hi Everyone,

Hope you all had a nice weekend.

I have been listening to Vanessa on the radio since last week, discussing Institutional Rascim found in schools. From those findings Lee Jasper has sugessted all black schools.

I would like to know your thoughts on this and also the findings that have finally come to light about the systematic rascim.