By Ife Thompson
The UK’s Current Policy & Practice on the school exclusion of Black children
The State bears a hostile relationship to those it controls, there are some who are controlled in different ways and who feel the force of the State in more acute ways.’- Marquis Bey
The school is a space in which the state’s controlling and anti-Black functions are unleashed unto Black children.
The UK has one of the highest numbers of permanent school exclusion in Europe. In places Like Portugal, Spain and Italy school exclusion does not exist as a legislative option. Staying true to the UK’s ingrained anti-Blackness, the exclusion of Black children continues to remain disproportionality high. A recent Guardian Report found that ‘exclusion rates for Black Caribbean students in English schools are up to six times higher than those of their white peers in some local authorities’.
The UK’s commitment to zero tolerance policies is one way in which the exclusion of Black children remains high; but I would argue that schools institutionalised anti-blackness allows them to make decisions founded on racist stereotypes that allows them to find means to justify the exclusion of Black children in the UK from educational spaces. They mask these exclusions under the themes of punishment, safeguarding and welfare of staff and other students and deterrence. All themes followed and used explicitly show the merging of the Criminal justice System language in the school space.
Zero Tolerance Policies:
The creation of war of drugs policy came about as a carceral response to punish Black communities. UN experts on people of African descent noted that “the war on drugs has operated more effectively as a system of racial control than as a mechanism for combating the use and trafficking of narcotics”. Policies like that of the war on drugs led to the creation of zero – tolerance policies within the criminal punishment system that continue to have devastating effects on the Black community. The usage of zero tolerance policies aids in turning school spaces into sites focused on criminal punishment-based responses toward children. The recent case of ‘Child Q’ demonstrates this as she was subject state-sanctioned racist& sexual assault (strip search by police officers) for smelling like “weed”.
This showcases how the racialised drug policy is being used to justify the harassment and criminalisation of Black children within school settings without regard to the horrifying, misgynoiristic and traumatising effects.
Privatisation of education as a driver for Anti-Black exclusions:
We are seeing an unprecedent moved from the government towards the privatisation and academisation of schools and Pupil Referral Units (PRUs). Academisation has led to the profiting of the school exclusion of children. The Conservative government through the introduction of the Academies Act 2010 was able to enable to force “failing” PRUs ran by the Local Authority to turn into Alternative Provisions academies run often by business owners. One academy brand that enable us to fully understand the issues with this new approach/ educational policy is ‘The Harris Federation was set up by Lord Harris of Peckham, a major Tory donor and one of the richest men in the country. Their CEO Dan Moynihan is the highest paid academies leader, receiving a controversial £420k a year. The Harris Federation currently runs 41 academies in and around London. They have been criticised for their high expulsion rates, high turnover of teaching staff, and unreasonable use of public money’ Academies are publicly funded businesses paid directly by the Government, they have complete autonomy over all that they do apart bar a few statutory duties.
We should be concerned as only 4% of students in Alternative Provision’s leave with GCSE’s. The School Exclusions policy we have in place in the U.K is allowing the educational attainment gap to further widen on class and racial lines, they are also playing a key role in what we term in the UK as the Pru- Prison Pipeline.
The growth of students to use these AP schools have been aided by the Government ‘s recent reform to the School Exclusion Appeals Process. In 2011 the Government changed the way in which schools were held to account for the permanent exclusions they decided to issue. The Independent Review Panel (the only independent part of the school exclusions appeal process) could no longer allow (reinstate) a pupil to return back to the school, if they deem the exclusion to have been wrong. DfE’s data shows that this change has led to a reduction in the number of students being granted reinstatement. Their data also shows only 6.6% of reviewed decisions result in a student returning to their school. This policy change “coincidently” timed well with the rising growth of academies and APs. AP’s are paid per student per year and receive from the government £20,400 per child placement compared to just £985 per year for a child in mainstream secondary school education. Through this state-mandated practice we are actively seeing the commodified of education, we are seeing practices in place that inevitably serve the personal interests of these businesses ahead of our communities at large.
Further research rightfully shows that ‘The IRP format was unpopular with the majority of parents, exclusion officers and a minority of headteachers. These changes were described as politically motivated, unnecessary and confusing for parents, while many felt the IRP’s inability to reinstate students could not provide justice for parents and made exclusions easier.’ The Government’s manipulation of the accountability process against exclusions and the capitalisation of the school exclusion process has allowed for the active entrenchment of the racial disparities in school exclusions.
Carceral State in education policy:
Schools are sites the reproduce the social order and thus there is a mirroring of criminalisation of Blackness and Black culture in educational settings. Schools use uniform policies as a means to codify and penalise Black children, a recent example of this can be see through the caseload of our work at BLAM UK– one Black girl expressed to us she was sent to detention for coming into school with her hair in a natural state and not styled with gel. In some cases, Black children have been excluded for wearing Afro Hair to school – Ruby Williams is one such example. Pimlico Academy’s uniform policy that discriminated against Afro-Texture hair forced young people to go on staged a school-based protest.
We are also seeing cultural practices unique to Black communities policed and banned. One school in south London banned Black- British English usage in ‘formal learning settings’. Black Learning Achievement and Mental Health UK CIC (BLAM UK), led a campaign calling for the immediate reversal of this decision. We explained how the policy degrades and harms Black students by reinforcing anti-Black linguistic racism, classism, and an ideology of white supremacy by reinforcing elitist forms of English as the “norm” whilst simultaneously othering and criminalising BBE. We also highlighted that such a policy would only further exacerbate the disproportionate school exclusions Black children face, as communication in this language would be subject punishment, recorded on their school record that can be used to support their exclusion. Schools are able to institutionalise these types of Anti-Blackness under the guise of school and academy policies/ codes as the Government allows school to have complete discretion over the content within their guides, only requiring a self-assessed application of the statutory elements. School and Academies ( the later given more leeway by the state to this ) are at creative liberty to design, create and enforce their uniform and behavioural polices. The government’s position on this remains the same despite the news coverage and backlash of the anti-Black policies many schools chose to enforce. The UK government has a complete disregard to anti-blackness in UK schools and have failed to put anything in place to protect Black students or to ensure schools are upholding their Equality Law duties. It is currently up to parents to organise and expose the truth to the community as a means to hold schools to account this. The government does not provide legal aid for education law matters making the access to an educational lawyer to support Black families wishing to challenge exclusions unattainable due to the high costs. It is of particular note that more than half of UK Black children live in poverty and Black pupils as a group are the most overrepresented (in absolute terms) in the FSM population (this means that a higher proportion of Black pupils were eligible for FSM compared to their proportion of the general pupil population). Black pupils made up 9% of FSM pupils but only 6% of pupils overall.
It is our mission to support Black parents against the alarming levels of anti-Blackness they face that lead to us creating a free advocacy support team to help our community in holding schools to account. Our Work at Blam UK has caused us to demand the following educational polices that will cultivate and nurture Black Futures.
We are calling for:
- Black freedom, justice, and abolition practices in the education system.
- Abolition of School Exclusions in the UK
- Education spaces that cultivate Black Joy.
- Educators ask themselves, ‘Do I need to respond in a way that relies on the state or social services?‘
- Radical transformative justice to be practised in all UK schools.
- Afro hair discrimination and bias to be stamped out.
- Mandatory training of teachers on adultification bias, Anti- Blackness, Spirt Murdering of Black Children
- Schools to be sites that cultivate, place at the centre, and recognise our cultural artefacts as Black people and use it to build us up and empower us against the harsh white backdrop of white supremacy.
We echo the words of Black Crit Thinkers and believe that UK schools must become sites that act ‘as forging refuge from the gaze of white supremacy—where Black children dream weightless, unracialised, and human. Where language flows freely and existence is nurtured and resistance is breath. Where the Black educational imagination dances wildly into the night—quenching the thirst of yearning and givin birth to becoming.’
Glossary of Terms
- Alternative provision (AP): alternative provision is education for pupils who, because of exclusion, illness or other reasons, would not otherwise receive suitable mainstream education. AP education includes education arranged by schools for pupils on a fixed-term exclusion; and pupils being directed by schools to off-site provision to improve their behaviour.
- AP academy: PRUs that convert to academy status become AP academies. PRUs can convert on their own, as part of a chain of academies, or with the support of a sponsor.
- Pupil Referral Unit (PRU): an establishment run by a local authority which is specifically organised to provide education for children who would not otherwise receive it. This can be, for example, because they are excluded or have a mental or physical health condition that means they cannot attend their normal school.
- Zero Tolerance Policies: Originally developed as an approach to drug enforcement (Skiba & Rausch, 2006), the term became widely adopted in schools in the early 1990s as a philosophy or policy that mandates the application of predetermined consequences, most often se- vere and punitive in nature, that are intended to be applied regardless of the gravity of behavior, mitigating circum- stances, or situational context.
BLAM UK CIC 