
Institutionalising segregation
HUGO PIERRE, convenor of the Socialist Party’s black and
Asian group, argues that expanding the number of schools under religious control
will increase the prospects of a dangerous segregation.
ONE OF THE government’s ‘education reform’ proposals
is to pass control of more schools to religious or ‘faith’ organisations,
arguing that they will drive up standards. Baroness Ashton stated on a Today
Programme interview in September that there was clear evidence to show that ‘faith
control of schools adds significantly to the standards of a school’.
This emphasis on ‘school standards’ is in keeping with
New Labour ideology that a well educated individual will not become ‘excluded’
from society. It is a theme they often use to cover attacks on the welfare state
or when they propose more repressive measures on young people in the name of
being ‘tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime’.
Yet the riots that tore through some towns in northern
England between May and July last year should have warned New Labour not to go
down this route. In his report on race relations in Bradford, one of the cities
affected, the former Commission for Racial Equality director, Sir Herman Ouseley,
warned that already "communities are fragmenting along racial lines.
Segregation in schools is one indicator of this trend". This segregation
has occurred when the vast majority of religious schools are either Roman
Catholic or Church of England: of the existing 6,973 state-funded faith schools,
only four are Muslim schools, with a Muslim population in Britain approaching
two million. But these warnings are being ignored and the proposals for an
expansion of faith schools are still being pursued.
The call amongst some Muslim parents for state funded
Islamic schools is now joined by a call amongst some black parents for
black-only schools. Lee Jasper, race advisor to London mayor Ken Livingstone,
made such a call at the memorial meeting held last year in Lewisham after the
suicide of a young black student expelled from his south London school. Racism
in the school system was blamed for failing black children and suppressing their
educational potential. In fact black Saturday schools have been formed in a
number of inner city areas to attempt to raise educational achievements.
Recent studies show that black children enter school as much
as 20% above the average level of educational achievement but leave school with
20% less than average qualifications at 16. Pakistani and Bangladeshi children
attain approximately the same levels of achievement.
Why do black children under-achieve?
THE BIGGEST FACTOR that determines the likelihood of
educational success at school is social class. Studies show that children from
families whose parents are manual workers have levels of educational achievement
30% below average. Black and Asian workers are concentrated to a greater extent
in the working class, and at the poorer end at that. The average income for
blacks is 75% that of whites and for Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers it is
two-thirds.
Education is only free in name. A look at the league tables
for any borough will show ‘independent’ fee-paying schools at the top,
usually with a far higher level of resourcing. Parents in impoverished inner
city or ex-industrial towns would not be able to afford to pay for additional
resources to match those schools.
Another of the crucial differences between schools will
often be the level of selection that takes place. Even in impoverished areas
schools that are oversubscribed are able to ‘cherry pick’ their students –
as opposed to those that are not popular with parents – with resourcing from
the Local Education Authority dependent on the number of pupils on roll. The
religious schools have been able to apply different admission criteria to
maintain their ‘religious character’, allowing them greater flexibility to
select.
School students do not leave their hopes and aspirations, or
problems and view of the outside world, at the school gate before they start
lessons in the morning. And the school system, under pressure from league
tables, open enrolment, formula funding, and massive underfunding and shortages,
is less tolerant of students as individuals than it has ever been. One factor
behind the high rates of exclusion of black children is the pressure on schools
to get rid of anyone who will ‘damage the school’s reputation’ or
discipline policy. UNISON was forced to conclude in a study on truancy it
undertook with CETSW (a national social work organisation), that schools needed
to become ‘child friendly’ if they were ever going to tackle this problem!
Many black children may not identify racism as the biggest
or even a significant problem for them at school. More significantly they
identify the school regime – their views not being taken seriously and the
lack of relevance of the school curriculum to the outside world – as reasons
why they lose interest in school. But one of the biggest factors is the
discrimination they see on a daily basis in the communities in which they live.
The high levels of black youth unemployment (33% on average) significantly
depress their overall expectations of whether or not a decent education is worth
having.
Schools have become far less overtly racist over the last 15
years largely due to the battles waged through the teaching unions. The casual
racism catalogued in a 1980s report following the murder of an Asian school
student in Manchester generally no longer exists. But an anti-racist education
with a clear class understanding of racism is not, of course, promoted by the
education establishment. The multi-cultural philosophy which is presented can
not by itself answer the real problems in areas where segregation is high and
real bridges need to be built.
Schools have often seen how incidents in the local community
can further polarise and increase segregation in schools. After the murder of a
white boy in Somers Town in the mid-1990s, a pupil at South Camden Community
School in North London, many white parents in the local area withdrew their
children from the school and sent them to schools further away, even though the
incident was not related to the school. This led to the school becoming a
predominantly black school for a number of years, which was not a reflection of
the local area.
Is more religious involvement the answer?
THE SPURIOUS CLAIMS made about the levels of achievement in
church schools are a cover for driving through more counter-reforms in the
education system. There is clear evidence that far from improving achievement
church schools often select out the more ‘problematic’ children. Camden has
three primary schools in the Somers Town area of which one is Catholic, one
Anglican, and one is secular. Forty-two per cent of the children attending the
Catholic school and 40.4% of those at the Anglican school receive free school
meals (a measure of parental income), compared to 54.7% at the secular school.
This is repeated throughout the borough where 47.9% of primary and 37.6% of
secondary school children receive free school meals at secular schools compared
to only 36.8% at primary and 19.4% at secondary level of children in religious
schools. The poorer you are the less chance you have of getting into the ‘schools
of God’!
The same applies to children who require extra support
because they have a Special Educational Need. One in five of Camden’s
secondary school pupils require this support in the secular schools compared to
one in ten in the religious schools. Poor students, or students with
difficulties or problems, are sifted out by church schools who don’t want to
tarnish their image for prospective parents (and thereby endanger their formula
funding if school rolls are not filled).
But Camden also has a racial divide which follows the
religious one. The religious primary schools in Somers Town have an average of
30% of their students who are African or Bangladeshi but the secular school has
70%. In fact 60% of the secular school’s students are Bangladeshi when the
Catholic school has none! This segregation is repeated in the secondary schools.
As socialists we defend the right to religious expression.
But religion should be separated from the state. It has no place in the running
of schools as it is a barrier to the unity of the working class and encourages
segregation of workers. It is no wonder that, with a sectarian school system, a
recent Royal Geographical Society report showed that 68% of young people in
Northern Ireland had not had a meaningful conversation with a member of the
other religious community. Even in towns such as Oldham, racial divisions are
enhanced by religious schools and are not broken down easily when young people
are forced together later at college level.
Expanding the number of faith schools will worsen the
segregation. Nor will it bring equality for Muslims, for example, with other
religious communities; as it has not done so in the case of Irish descendants,
who also face significant discrimination in Britain. But the government’s
proposals go even further because they advocate allowing secular schools to
become religious schools. Making limited concessions to religious groups which
are not properly explained, particularly where there is competition for
resources, can lead to explosive situations and a chance for racists to exploit
the resultant tensions. What would happen, as could happen in many areas
throughout the country (against the backdrop of an under-resourced education
system), if schools with large Muslim populations wanted to turn their local
secular school into a Muslim school?
Experience internationally has shown that closing down
secular schools has not increased religious tolerance but has decreased it.
Saudi Arabia has a very high proportion of graduates but over 50% of them
graduated in Islamic studies. Then there is the experience of Pakistan and
Bangladesh where IMF liberalisation policies closed down large numbers of state
funded schools for them to be replaced by Islamic or madrassa schools (which
have often forced girls out of education completely). How soon before right-wing
Christian groups insist on teaching creationist theories as opposed to
evolution, as has happened in several ‘bible-belt’ schools in the USA?
What of black schools? The plight of black students is a
badge of shame on the state system, but under capitalism would there be any
improvement? Would bullying of black children stop? The horrific murder of
Damilola Taylor was a tragic case that shows the opposite. Black Saturday
schools have been in operation for over 20 years in Britain but in this time
blacks have still fallen behind on average. The experience of the US also shows
that with an extensive network of black schools and colleges, educational
achievement still lags behind. Many US blacks still use the armed forces (27%
black – twice the percentage in the population) as their route to gaining
higher education. Only the middle class few gain access to the black colleges.
The Socialist Party believes that all schools should be
brought under public control to ensure real neighbourhood schools, enabling all
of the talents and experiences of school students to be shared and developed.
This would take place with the resources available to develop the whole child
and not just the parts capitalist society requires for their immediate
exploitation. There would be no place for schools controlled by religious
organisations. But education is intimately linked to class and the abolition of
class society would lead to those resources being freed and young people having
an optimistic outlook for their future, the bedrock for encouraging the
exploration of knowledge.
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