I've just finished watching the Education episode of Steve McQueen's Small Axe and like many of them, it's had me in tears, floods of them (please do listen to  Bob Marley's Small Axe in the above video as you read). I did OK at school really, compared to my siblings. I was very bright (as were they) but only did well in the classes where teachers took a particular shine to me, notably French, Drama and History. As a point of reference and interest, I am the lightest in skin colour out of my siblings. Think pigmentocracy or colourism.

Unfortunately in the classes where teachers took an instant dislike to me, which actually was most of them, I really struggled. English and Maths being 2 of those subjects. For years I thought I must be terrible at Maths, English and Science, because those teachers had told me I was, made me feel like I was. But looking back, the treatment I received in those classes, from my English teacher in particular, was awful. I was pretty much left to my own devices but it would never have occurred to me to complain or even be angry. My French teacher was lovely and encouraged me, saw talent in me, and I not only got an A but scored highest in my year, getting 100% in all my French exams. In English I barely scraped a C, in literature and language, and in Science was awarded a DD. I also received a D in the (mandatory at my school), subject of RE... Which is hilarious, seeing as I've always been incredibly interested in theology. I think refusing to be confirmed (it was a Catholic School) at the age of 14 and being so open about my lack of belief rendered my already outlier persona (by virtue of my being Black) an out and out heathen. And how could a heathen know anything about the Bible? 

So, I left school, at 16, with this idea that I was not as clever as my peers really. Unfortunately due to struggles in my life around domestic violence, my dad throwing me out onto the streets at 17 and my parents then splitting up, my Further Education suffered and despite the fact that I appeared to be an intelligent, articulate person, I started to develop an imposter syndrome; that I must just be good at appearing clever but academically lacked ability... 

Scootch forward many years, after having completed my Open University (English) degree (as an adult) and now training to be an English teacher, I am aware of how utterly dire and lacking my education was at school. I was, in lessons other than French, History and Drama, left to my own devices and not really taught. It is shocking I got the grades I did. There was another mixed race boy at my school and he came out with 10 A's but I remember him telling me that his parents, who were very well off, paid for a lot of extra tuition, In most subjects.

Was my school doing the same kind of thing that McQueen was discussing in that episode of Small Axe? My older sister, who went on to educate herself as an adult, and has gone further than many in her peer group who did better than her at school, is now doing her PhD and is so high up within the company she works that she had to smash ceilings along the way. She is the only woman or Black person in her position. She left that same school with no GCSEs... Both my younger siblings left that school with no GCSEs. Did that school; the only Catholic School in the area, just believe that children of colour were not worth the effort to teach properly? And so therefore didn't really teach them...us. I remember my English teacher humiliating me in my class because I pronounced Shakespeare incorrectly and it became apparent I wasn't aware of any of his work. She had been an actress in her younger days and always raved on about her husband who was a famous actor (famous in local theatre I think) and the truth is she had no time for people who were not familiar with or immediately excited by Shakespeare. Her preconceptions about Black people, who weren't really down with, or allowed access to RSA back in the 80's, was probably that we were all philistines. So why bother even trying? 

Schools are so much better nowadays, because, they have to be. In the Education episode of Small Axe, the woman, Hazel Smith, played by the fabulous Naomi Ackie, who goes to investigate the ESN school Kingsley had been put into, is metaphorically speaking part of the establishment nowadays. We have laws that prevent these kind of things happening. At least so obviously and in open air. It is much easier to report a school or even teacher for stepping out of line nowadays, and people are more confident in knowing their rights. 

That alone doesn't stop racism and racial bias affecting Black children in schools though. Black children still end up leaving school with with lower grades, proportionally than their white peers and perhaps it is just as simple as the sub conscious attitude of teachers, that certain children, with certain identities, are not particularly intelligent/academic/worth pushing past barriers to teach. Or perhaps we have some seriously ingrained racial bias running through our education system, from top to bottom. 

Most schools in the UK, percentage wise, have less teachers of colour than the percentage of adults of colour in the UK. The gap between those percentages gets even wider when we look at Black teachers. In my host school (for my teacher training year) there is, from what I have gathered, 1 Black teacher. He teaches Chemistry and is in his early 50's. He only started teaching 3 years ago. In my department (English) there are 21 teachers, all of them are white. I have had kids tell me I don't look like an English teacher and also one pupil saying that they thought "this was supposed to be an English class, not politics" , because I was using off curriculum texts and resources. My school pools from largely white, middle class areas but there is a small, working class estate it also draws from. Most of our students of colour are not from predominantly middle class/affluent areas and so therefore, it is not as mixed as many of the other schools in our city, but from what I hear at other schools, that is still not reflected in teachers. One school, on the other side of town to me, where just over half of the children are of colour, there are no Black teachers and 1 Indian teacher, all of the rest white. 

I bring this up because it has been proven that if a Black student has 1 Black teacher before leaving primary school, their chances of doing well at GCSE and beyond are greatly improved, even more so if they were lucky enough to have more than one. Why is it that myself, the other Black trainee teacher on my course (teaches Biology, in his 50's)and the Chemistry teacher I referred to earlier, all went into teaching later? And why... Why are there so few teachers of colour, especially Black ones taken on in the first place? In my teacher training cohort, there are only 2 of us of colour and we are both over 40, why no Black youths? We might be led to believe that there were less or no Black young trainees who applied, or could it be that as an older Black person, you are expected to be less politically volatile and more grateful? You are seen as less of a threat to the establishment? And therefore more likely to be taken on than a 21 year old graduate... 

I will be 45 next year when I qualify. It took me so long, I guess, because I lacked confidence in myself, still do in some ways. When I was at school, due to the toxic environment of my family life, my parents were not in a position to notice how we (my siblings and me) might not have been being best served at our school, let alone do anything about it, like in Small Axe. My mum was too busy getting the crap knocked out of her by my dad and he was too busy bedding as many women as he possibly could, between the beatings. So that legacy of growing up amidst domestic violence and having a school that possibly saw me as not worthy of teaching properly because of my melanin, meant I have had to build that confidence myself over the years, as an adult. 

Things ARE different nowadays. We are much more switched on to the many ways in which oppression and bias can occur and there is a deliberate push against this. I sometimes hear this referred to as 'wokedom' by people aggravated by BIPOC (or just generally marginalised people) demanding freedom. But really until the establishment changes, there will be no real change. We not only need more BIPOC teachers, but more heads of department, more headteachers that are not white. We also need more academic professors at University who are not white. The percentage of academic professors at British University's that are white and male is 68%. The percentage of Black professors teaching at university is around 1%, lower than it is in schools and at last check, the percentage of Black people in senior, managerial academic positions in universities was 0... Not 0.5 or 0.25%, but 0. 

This needs to change, and no, it is not just about getting any BIPOC to fill roles, we need conscious PEOPLE of colour. Kemi Badenoch, Black, Nigerian Tory MP for Saffron Walden, has seemingly been so institutionalised by the white world and institutions she must have worked hard to rise up in, that she expressed concern over the decolonisation of the curriculum debate, suggesting that it was anti the purpose of education to attempt making it less white. 

We need more BIPOC in positions of political power who actually understand the reality of race and racism in the UK and care about it, like Nadia Whittome, Bell Ribiero-Addy, Dawn Butler, Apsana Begum and last but not least, the stalwarts that are David Lammy and Diane Abbot. Yes, they are all Labour but I'm sorry, all I tend to hear from Tory MP's of colour is how utterly institutionalised and divorced from the reality of what it is like for most people of colour in the UK, and a total disregard for why there might be a correlation between the socio-economic/poverty gap and ethnicity. Rishi Sunak being a stella example.

What am I saying here? Things are changing, yes... but at this stage in the game, still not fast enough. About a month into my PGCE, i made the complaint that all (bar one) of the educational psychologists, social scientists and theorists we were studying were male and that every single one, was white. I got some apologies and they said they would look to rectify it the following year. When it came to my first assignment, A Critical Evaluation of Approaches to Learning and Teaching (which I have just handed in) I didn't want to just use and reference white academics but also didn't want to waste my time, searching for relevant ones of colour, that is the job of my lecturers. Very quickly I was supplied with a really quite impressive list. Question is, if they were able to give me that list so damn quickly, why wasn't it part of the structure of the course in the first place? Why is it necessary to present these great advancements in knowledge as white? Yes, there were more white and male academics and Dr's back in the first half of the 20th century, writing these theories because education was not as open to non white and female people, but that got better, its just those theories are still largely ignored. 

My point is, these sorts of changes are vital. It trickles from the Top down, not the other way around. How can we expect equality in education at secondary, if right at the very top you have one of the few Black Conservative MP's saying decolonisation of the curriculum is a bad idea. If there are barely any academic professors at universities who are Black and few of colour. If not only what is being delivered but who is delivering it, is largely very white. We need to do better and push harder in ALL quarters. 

Thank you Steve McQueen for your wonderful series. Each episode of Small Axe brings me face to face with an aspect of my identity as a person of colour in the UK; whether it is The Mangrove, which makes me think of my parents families first coming to the UK, to Lovers Rock, which makes me think about how my folks got together (at one of those Blues parties). But that last has struck a different chord, making me reflect back on my education in the 80's to my current present of training to be a teacher. We have come far but I hope every one who watches this series realises how much further we still have to go. 

For those who haven't watched them, here is a link, the episodes will be on BBCiPlayer for about a year. 

As a note to end on, the student who said I didn't look like an English teacher was Black... That made me smile because you know what, I would have thought the same thing at his age... Black children need  Black role models, in their teachers, the authors and specialists they study AND in all positions of power. 

Thank you Steve McQueen. For all you've done for our community ❤️