ABSTRACT

The literature on the schooling and education of black1 children in Britain is extensive. With few exceptions (Channer 1996; Nehaul 1996, Blair and Bowne 1998), most of what has been written has focused on issues of underachievement, over-representation in suspensions and expulsions, early drop-out rates in the USA etc. This focus on the negative is not at all surprising. Black parents over the years have campaigned for better education for their children, have run their own supplementary schools to improve their children’s chances, have tried to influence policy and practice in schools and have generally been vocal and active in their attempts to challenge discriminatory and unfair practices faced by black children and to reverse the continuing high levels of under-performance of black children in public examinations. Writers on the subject have tried to share their understandings of the nature and causes of these disadvantages, but despite the research, the community campaigns, the efforts of multiculturalists and antiracists, little seems to have changed over the decades and black and other minority children continue on aggregate to underperform in standardised tests compared to their white peers (Gillborn and Gipps, 1996).