The Educational Sabotage of Caribbean people in Britain Notes
Greetings all
Here are the notes from my recent video entitled “The Educational Sabotage of Caribbean people in Britain Notes”:
When you look at educational outcomes in the UK, unfortunately you usually find Black Caribbean children at or near the bottom.
In this video, we’re going to break down how in many ways, and for several decades, Black Caribbean or West Indian children have had their education sabotaged by the British education system itself.
Before we get into this sorry tale, I want to first say that this story is very close to home for me. I, a child of Uganda, am married into a large Jamaican British family. Many of my in laws will have been directly affected by this sabotage. And my two half-Jamaican sons are in the very education system that messed with the futures of so of their kinsfolk
But this is also a story about the power of the West Indian community in Britain. We’ll earn about the Black Education Movement that organised to ensure Black children received the education they were being denied. This included the creation of supplementary schools, also called Saturday Schools around the country to deliver a culturally relevant and empowering education to their children.
We’ll only be able to scratch the surface in this multigenerational story, so let’s go on with it…
The ESN Scandal
There’s only one place to start when it comes to the educational sabotage of Black Caribbean children in the Britain, and that’s the ESN Scandal. Most of us have heard of the Windrush Scandal whereby large numbers of Black Caribbean people have been wrongly denied citizenship rights. A subject we'll cover in a future video.
But less well known is the ESN scandal which affected thousands of Black Caribbean children of the Windrush generations, and which arguably continues to impact their descendants.
ESN stands for Educationally Subnormal, and was a label used to mark certain children out as being of lesser intellectual capability.
The practice of labelling children as being mentally defective began to be a concern of the state in Britain, in the early 1900s. The State could remove these children, who were usually of lower classes, from their parents to be raised by the State itself.
The Post WW2 Labour government created schools for these children, who were now being called Educationally Subnormal. These schools would deliver a standard and type of education that was deemed more fitting for their supposed station.
The Schools for the educationally subnormal were being created at just the same time as immigration from the British colonies in the West Indies and former colonies in South Asia started ramping up. This was the Windrush generation, and many of them were children. These newly arrived immigrant children were disproportionately labelled as being educationally subnormal.
In London, by 1968 30% these children made up 30% of pupils in these schools, though they only made up 17% of the mainstream school population. And most of these were West Indian children.
The Inner London Education Authority admitted that Black children were 4 times more likely to be wrongly placed in these schools than were White children (https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/black-caribbean-fsm-boy-send-168-times-more-likely-be-permanently-excluded-white-british).
Why?
Assumption of innate inferiority. Official reports of that era make mention of supposed low IQ of these children. We’ll return to one of these shortly.
I’ve been reading a report published by the Department of Education and Science in 1971 entitled “The Education of Immigrants Education Survey 13.” The report speaks at length about a range of other factors that inhibit the educational and social experience of immigrant children. It covers, mobility caused by frequent moves/slum clearance, the fact that immigrants concentrate in deprived areas, parenting styles, lack of parental understanding of the school system, etc, etc.
It’s well worth reading as it gives a fascinating insight into the climate of the time. For example, we read this about the sudden and fairly rapid influx of Black and Brown people:
“In the past immigrants have usually been of European stock, sharing with the host community a broadly similar culture, common linguistic elements - and, most significantly in many people's minds, though of no educational importance, with skins of similar colour. The immigrants of the 1950's and 1960's, on the other hand, represent a wide variety of ethnic and linguistic groups differing in backgrounds, attitudes and educational needs; the great majority are distinguishable by colour and have to add to the difficulties all immigrants face that of having to contend with the very complex problem of colour prejudice.”
If I told you this was contained in a report from 2024 about Pakistanis, Somalis and Muslims overall, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid! This is the point I made in my video on anti immigration sentiment among Black British people. These same concerns were being directed at West Indian and South Asian immigrants in the 50s and 60s
The report makes repeated references to the cultural and familial dislocation that these immigrant children would’ve been experiencing:
“The majority of these children born overseas have moved from a peaceful, simple, slow-moving rural environment into the bustle and complexity of life in urban industrial cities. Not only have they to accustom themselves to different food and a more severe climate, but possibly to a different pattern of family relationships. For the older Pakistani boy, for example, this may mean moving for a time into an all-male household. For the West Indian child the change can be more radical. He is accustomed to living together with two or three generations in the same house, dependent not so much on his mother as upon a number of adults among whom his grandmother holds a special place. The environment is one in which marriage is not always considered important in providing a secure basis for raising children, whilst family discipline may be strict and physical punishment for misbehaviour all too familiar. He leaves behind this, often repressive, but affectionate and known home environment to join his mother from whom he may have been separated for several years, almost a stranger among new unknown brothers and sisters, possibly disliking and not fully accepted by the unknown father with whom his mother may be living, and perhaps, if very [page 6] young, sent out to child-minders while his parents go out to work. Little wonder that the sense of insecurity these conditions create often brings in its train emotional disturbance and maladjustment and that in school such a child will often exhibit behaviour problems. He may be restless and boisterous, displaying hostility towards adults and other children, showing little ability to concentrate or to apply himself for long to the job in hand - or else retreat depressed and uncommunicative into a withdrawn world. Most Indian and Pakistani children experience a similar complete change of physical environment but they continue to belong to close-knit family units with strongly developed religious and cultural ties and through these firm relationships they are able to preserve a sense of identity, of belonging - at least to their own community.”
In another section it states:
“A recent survey of immigrant pupils in the comprehensive schools in one local authority showed that 3.3% of them came over to join their parents after 1-5 years, 15% after 6-10 years and 3% after 11-13 years [21% in total]. A good many, therefore, came over to rejoin parents who they must have almost or entirely forgotten and in some cases to entirely new family groupings. In such circumstances it would be remarkable if emotional disorders were not commonplace.”
In a Guardian article from 2021, an academic who was looking into the overrepresentation of West Indian children in ESN in the 1970s interviewed head teachers and shares this revealing insight: “most [head teachers] were worried about disruption in class: “They are violent, with a lot of ‘you whites aren’t going to tell me what to do’ attitude.” There was some fear of the effects of the rising politics of Black power: “The black power people destroy kids, especially the less able.” One head of a girls’ school told me: “Enoch Powell is right, he has an avid love of his country. There are enough immigrants and there is going to be trouble.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/britains-racist-1970s-education-policies-black-children-educationally-subnormal
West Indians Fight Back
That last bit about Black Power reveals something that is hugely important with regard to these West Indian immigrants in Britain
I’ve mentioned in many of my videos that Black British people from the Caribbean have a long and deep history of struggle, resistance, organising and success.
The Black Power movement in the UK was largely driven by West Indian immigrants, though their cousins from the continent also played a huge role. The British state was very concerned about this movement and conducted a campaign against it, including infiltration, spying and outright intimidation and harassment. A notable example is the long running dirty tricks campaign against the Mangrove 9, a topic for another video perhaps.
So this is the backdrop against which this ESN Scandal was playing out. As a child in the 80s, I distinctly remember that our Caribbean brethren were much more confrontational when it came to the Police and the State in general, compared with us continentals who tended to be more subservient.
Black Education Movement
And the West Indian community fought back against the educational sabotage of their children by creating what’s been termed the Black Education Movement.
The movement had several planks. A key part of its work was organising advocacy campaigns and protests against policies that were perceived to be antiblack. For example, “A leaked document titled 'Haringey Comprehensive Schools' (Jan 1969) by Alderman Alfred Doulton, subsequently known in the community as 'The Doulton Report', sparked widespread opposition because of the following text:
"On a rough calculation about half the immigrants will be West Indians at 7 of the 11 schools, the significance of this being the general recognition that their I.Q.s work out below their English contemporaries. Thus academic standards will be lower in schools where they form a large group". ('Haringey Comprehensive Schools' Section 5 (c) 13 Jan 1969).
The leaked report explained the reasoning behind the public 'Report to the [Haringey] Education Committee on Comprehensive Education' sent out in March 1969…
Public meetings were held across London to encourage debate and organise demonstrations. Particular attention was paid to informing parents about what was happening to their children in schools. The West Indian Standing Conference (WISC) and the North London West Indian Association (NLWIA) led the protests against the banding campaign, acting as an intermediary between the police and the black community.
Sensing unease, the Council delayed the proposals on banding. This gave the protestors the time they needed to circulate copies of the Council reports, draw up leaflets and prepare a response to the Doulton report, refuting every paragraph. A high-profile campaign with good access to the media resulted in the Conservative Council postponing its banding proposals before being defeated in the May 1970 elections.” https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/collections/the-black-education-movement-1965-1988
Similar campaigns sprang up in various parts of the country as the West Indian community stood up for their rights and in many cases forced the State to change its approach
Bernard Coard’s seminal book:
In 1971, Grenadian Bernard Coard published a small book entitled “How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Subnormal.” Coard reflected on the impact of his book in a 2005 interview thusly:
“The black community's response to the book was incredible. Thousands of black parents in small groups throughout the country began meeting, and several parents' groups were formed. Black supplementary schools were formed up and down the country. Some estimates put the number of these schools at as many as 150. Black youth groups were formed, and existing ones held regular discussions on the scandal and what their members could do to help. I found myself invited to come and address many of these groups and other organisations all over Britain. From May to September of 1971, I was addressing between three and five such groups each weekday afternoon and evening, and on weekends. The level of concern, and the sheer energy of the participants, was something to behold. Amazingly, several of these groups, and even supplementary schools, survive to this day, 33 years later.
In addition to the extraordinary galvanizing effect that the book had within the black community, it is my belief that the turn-around in the establishment's response also owed a great deal to the support which the contents of the book, its main thrust and objectives, received from thousands of teachers - white teachers, including several head teachers - up and down the country. Significant sections of mainstream British public opinion embraced the fact that what was happening was unfair; indeed scandalous, and should be acknowledged by those in charge and brought to an end. Dozens of journalists went out of their way, too, to get this message across. A book which was written for and intended, by the author, only for black parents and the black community, had taken on a life of its own; mobilizing, as never before, the black community, but also reaching, touching, and influencing white teachers, student teachers, university students, journalists, trade union leaders, and other broadly progressive sections of the majority population.” https://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/feb/05/schools.uk
Lasting Legacy
ESN Schools were phased out in the 1980s. However, the damage had been done as far as the education of West Indian children
As Coard put it in his interview:
“What is particularly important to note is that the children of the 1960's and 1970's whom the British education system failed are the parents and grand parents of today's children -- large numbers of whom are being suspended and "excluded" from schools, or placed in "special units" or streams. For many reasons true then as now, black boys were affected far more than black girls. The lesson to be learned for today's problems in the school system is that they were "hatched" decades ago, in the previous two generations. When society fails one generation of children, it lays the foundations for similar, even worse failures in the generations to follow. We human beings "inherit" not only through our genes, but often also from our social circumstances.
Those in charge of the education system have chosen not to seriously address and solve the problems. Instead, they have shifted around the problem; even sought to hide it from view. Yes, they (eventually) closed down the ESN schools. But they found other ways to shunt black children with educational difficulties (emotional, cultural, medical, and so on) into a corner and essentially ignore their needs - and potential - rather than put the resources needed into addressing them.
Disguised (and not so disguised) forms of streaming have emerged to specially deal with these "difficult" black children. As the kids' frustration levels have risen and the number becoming disruptive, even violent, have grown, the tactic of "exclusion" (even for the non-violent in many cases) has become a regular tool for getting rid of, rather than tackling the children's problems.
The growing numbers of children and young people resorting to violence in schools has created a serious problem for many teachers. This reflects on the system as a whole, rather than on the teachers, who are experiencing the results of the neglect of past decades as well as the reality of today's racism in so many areas of the children and their parents' lives. It must never be forgotten, however, that no child was born violent. To merely throw these children out of school not only solves nothing; it ensures worse violence in the future. The suspension and expulsion of kids - disproportionately black kids - from school because of misbehaviour (of various sorts and gravity) does not solve society's - or these youths' - problems, but postpones, while making worse, the day of society's reckoning for having failed to educate and cherish these youths when they were younger. And let us not forget that these "excluded" youths will be the parents, one day, of children themselves. This reality tells us that if we are to make a real difference to future generations of black children, we must start now, with the present generation, to turn things around.” https://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/feb/05/schools.uk
Going Forward
Hopefully this discussion has demonstrated that the problems that Black Caribbean people face now, are deeply rooted in historical dynamics, some of which include State discrimination.
We’ve seen that the West Indian or Black Caribbean communities have not sat around and been victims, but organised and resisted every step of the way.
Whatever solutions to these varied problems we suggest, we must always recognise and understand how we got to the situation we find ourselves in.