Education is in our hands. Let us hold hands

Article taken from NEW NATION

A FAMILIAR FACE at this years London Schools and the Black
Child conference will be education minister Lord Andrew Adonis. It will be the third time he addresses the event. The good working relationship he has stuck up with several leading black education campaigners is even more surprising. In the early days of the 1997 Labour Government insiders said that issues of black attainment and exclusions were simply not on the Governments agenda. Relations with the first education secretary, David Blunkett, were decidedly frosty. In fact, Blunkett was also unsettled by a little-known adviser to Tony Blair who some perceived to be the real power on education policy.

No one could have predicted that this bookish education expert would take black under-achievement any more seriously than his predecessors, but Andrew Adonis confounded expectations by prioritising the issues and now appears to be reaping dividends. The gap between African Car ibbe an and whit e boys achieving good GCSE results has narrowed
in each of the past three years and now looks more like a trend, not a blip. Current predictions are that the gap wi l l disappear altogether within four or five years. Progress has been even faster in London with African-Caribbean pupils showing faster improvement in GCSEs than any other ethnic minority group.

Some di f f e r enc e s r emain between government and black educationalists, most notably on the powers of schools to exclude children. But Lord Adonis will speak at this years conference knowing he can also boast some remarkable achievements. The statistics are clear things are getting better, and fast. The question is whether black parents, many of whom have themselves been discriminated against by the British education system, will recognise this change in reality. Lord Adonis was far from boastful when New Nation caught
up with him this week. Asked for the reason why black pupi ls catching up so fast, he appeared to credit the black community every bit as much as Government policies.

He said: Id like to congratulate all black pupils and their families on the very remarkable results that were seeing in our
schools. This is a tribute to better schools, leadership, and far more good black teachers in schools, and graduates
acting as role models. Its also down to the support being given by parents. The latest figures released last week by the Office of National Statistics show that of pupils getting five or more GCSE grades A to C, Af r ican-Car ibbeans registered an increase of twice the national average. Just under 50 per cent of black school - leavers achieved this benchmark, against 60 per cent for a l l p u p i l s . A rema r k a b l e turnaround from 2000 when a
whopping 70 per cent of black kids failed to reach this level, a fact that will condemn a large proportion to a life of low income, trapped in poor crime-ridden neighbourhoods. If current trends continue, the gap could be closed altogether by the t ime the Olympics come to London in 2012.

Lord Adonis said the LSBC conferences had been instrumental in pushing the issue of black attainment up the political agenda. Its been really important in focusing our attention on the needs of the black community. It has helped us in setting targets for the recruitment of teachers, which we now do.
The need to support black teachers is expected to be one of the main demands coming out of this years LSBC conference. The Department for Children Schools and Families is developing fast-track training to propel black high-flyers into headteacher positions. Lord Adonis sees the need for more black leaders as crucial to changing the culture in schools. One of the main reasons is that many black teachers have higher expectations of black pupils than some white colleagues who remain burdened by ingrained stereotypes. I think its very, very important that aspirations are raised in secondary school, so people can really see a clear route through GCSE on to either apprenticeship and work with training, or to higher education. The figures for black attainment may be moving in the right direction, but it remains to be seen whether those at tending the conference can report seeing the chages with their own eyes.