ABSTRACT
Black supplementary schools are set up by and for the black community, and are for the most part self-funding, organic grassroots organisations. These schools which are mainly run by women have a history that reaches back into the 1950s, ever since the first wave of post-war black migrants arrived and settled in Britain (Reay and Mirza 1997). Unlike the visible, established, voluntary-aided religious ethnic minority schools of the Jewish, Seventh Day Adventist or Muslim community, the schools are difficult to locate as they exist deep within the informal black community and supported by the black church networks. Rooted often, but not necessarily, in Methodism, Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, Rastafarianism or the Afrocentrism of Garveyism, black supplementary schools are hidden away from the public ‘gaze’ of funders and local authorities. They quietly go about their business in community centres, church halls, empty classrooms, and even the front rooms of dedicated black people.
