Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 390)
TUESDAY 16 JANUARY 2007
PROFESSOR GUS
JOHN AND
DR TONY
SEWELL
Q380 Mr Winnick: Do you dismiss the
glib explanation given by some that it is all a matter of background,
deprivation and the rest and that does not really provide the
answer?
Dr Sewell: Yes.
Q381 Mr Winnick: Professor John,
do you agree with that?
Professor John: I agree with it
wholeheartedly. It seems to me that to argue anything else is
to indulge in a form of deterministic social pathology which gets
us nowhere.
Q382 Martin Salter: Dr Sewell, I
looked at the interesting email exchange between you and Lee Jasper
a couple of years ago. It was tetchy but illuminating. You write
here: "I was talking to a head teacher recently who said
that when it came to access black boys today have real opportunities
they are failing to grasp. I talked to middle-class black parents
who tell me they literally have to fight to keep their boys on
task. These boys are from well-resourced homes; they go to the
better state schools, and yet they are performing well below their
potential." How much do you think educational under-achievement
among young black men or black people is a root cause of the descent
into the cycle of crime and violence and overrepresentation in
the criminal justice system?
Dr Sewell: To me, it is the key
cause. The evidence is quite clear. If one looks at the period
between 13 and 18 significant adults are not there, particularly
in relation to low expectations in schools. One is bright and
attends school but does not achieve one's potential, yet there
is massive peer pressure and perhaps even the resources to go
somewhere else. The temptations are there and that is where one
goes. For example, we have quite a rigorous process to get boys
onto our programme and train them to be scientists. One boy aged
12 had gone through all of it to get on. The mother said to me
that she would not allow her son to be on the programme to protect
him because when he got back to his estate he would be likely
to be beaten up because he attended a science academy. That anecdote
does not arise all the time, but the point is that there is massive
pressure on these young men to leave all their intelligence and
academic potential behind and go somewhere else and resort to
instinct. The main instinct is violence; the other one is to go
into some sort of gang activity. It leads to some sort of answer
to the question whether if you had given that child a different
experience the outcome would have been radically different.
Q383 Martin Salter: That leads nicely
to my next point. The figures before us show that permanent exclusions
from school for Caribbean and other black pupils are three times
the average for other groups.
Professor John: It is much higher
than that in effect.
Q384 Martin Salter: Please explain.
Professor John: There are a number
of reasons. First, not all exclusions are recorded, so the statistics
are questionable. Secondly, there are two processes which are
commonplace. One is to encourage parents to remove children for
a cooling-off period or whatever, and sometimes they never finish
cooling off and do not return. The other is something called managed
moves whereby the school works with the parents and says, "Look,
I really believe that Delroy would get on much better down the
road, and I know that head teacher to be sympathetic. Rather than
having to exclude him, it would be better if you helped to move
him out of here." That is happening to a very real extent.
The Communities Empowerment Network organisation of which I am
a trustee handles something like 840 exclusion cases a year. If
one looks at the genesis of some of them one gets a sense of how
invidious the whole exclusion issue is. As I said in my original
submission to you, it is important that we discuss it here because
of the clear link that even the Youth Justice Board has made increasingly
between school exclusions and youth offending.
Q385 Martin Salter: In your view
are there any structural problems within schools that result in
this much higher level of exclusion among young black kids? It
has always seemed to me that the existence of league tables and
the drive towards improving the standing of individual schools
gives the school management the inevitable temptation to wish
to exclude the more difficult kids or those from more challenging
backgrounds. I just wonder whether one aspect of policies leads
to an increase in exclusions which only move the problem from
the playground to the street corner?
Dr Sewell: As to the notion of
triage where allegedly schools to maintain their position in the
league table get rid of the problem, which is black youth, there
is another question behind it. Schools need to think about the
way they operate; maybe they need to do it differently. Is it
engaging those students in a positive way? I think that things
go wrong on two levels. First, as to the issue of significant
adults, I wonder whether there is enough discipline in some schools.
Teachers fear to challenge students, or they challenge them when
it is too late and that is exclusion. There is almost a fear of
those boys on the part of teachers. That fear becomes exaggerated,
a crime occurs and then there is a justified exclusion. But second
factor is the perception of those boys. I see them as extremely
bright and intelligent. What we may have in our schools is a curriculum,
or a way of engaging those boys, that is not meeting the needs
of that particular group. A few of them end up in the prison system.
A good deal of the reporting speaks of how bright and intelligent
they are; that constantly comes through. How are we engaging this
group? That is the structural problem here. We are not putting
on a programme that will teach them the skills that they really
need.
Q386 Martin Salter: What is Professor
John's view on that situation?
Professor John: I would add two
points to what my colleague has said. First, there is a different
tariff of punishment, if you like, as between the misdemeanours
and the inappropriate behaviours of black students and white students.
That emerges over and over again. As far as concerns schools'
zero tolerance of inappropriate behaviour, there was a time when
teachers taught children. Teaching children meant understanding
how they learnt and engaging with them as they tried to be disciplined
learners and dealing with anger, lack of concentration and so
on. To a very large extent now, for the reasons given in framing
the question, teachers teach subjects. I believe that that is
a fundamental difference. If one is teaching subjects for exams
and one does not have time to deal with young people who are not
engaging at the level at which one expects them to engage in order
to get the desired results clearly one will be intolerant of whatever
youthful misdemeanours they may be coming with. As one looks at
what causes these exclusions there are two things to bear in mind.
Quite often, those kids are bright and bored. They also do not
believe that the curriculum has very much relevance for them.
It is dull; they cannot engage with it at any level. That is not
only to do with a lack of black representation in the curriculum,
if you like—although that is part of it—but the schooling
process tends to go on without taking account of where they are
in their own development or what is happening to them within their
communities. They are expected to suspend their realities at the
gate and come in as people willing to absorb all of that stuff
and go along with the school regime without the school interacting
with them and getting some sense of what makes them successful
elsewhere. To give a brief example of that, we work very closely
with voluntary education projects in supplementary schools which
over the years have done a great deal to repair the damage that
mainstream schools do to black kids. The very children who are
suspended, excluded and are thought of as unteachable do the most
dazzling things in these supplementary schools. They are the same
young people but are subject to a different regime with a different
attitude on the part of their learning facilitators. Their parents
then become enormously pleased and thankful that this community
facility is there to rescue them from criminality because of their
exclusion.
Q387 Chairman: Is this an area where
we know what needs to be done—supplementary schools or changes
in the curriculum—and we can point to evidence of what works,
or is it an area where Dr Sewell says we need a big idea to do
something completely different? The Committee will want to address
that issue. What should we be saying about what is to be done
about reducing exclusions and improving attainment?
Professor John: My wish list for
you in terms of big ideas is that you point to the evidence of
the damage that school exclusions have caused over time, particularly
to this section of the population, and suggest that the government
reduce the powers of schools—I know that it will not be
popular particularly in view of the things we know—to exclude
young people. If they are to exclude they must give evidence of
how they consider the learning entitlement of those young people
will be delivered once they are excluded. It is a fundamental
issue. I believe that we have to tackle the issue of school exclusion
if we are to do anything at all about black youth offending.
Dr Sewell: I tend to take a different
line. From my experience as a school teacher, I am not convinced
that that is the approach. This is almost a strategic matter that
you may want to look at in terms of a suggestion. For some of
those boys who are disillusioned and are outside the framework
there is not a real sense that there are many peers in their lives
who they can see are doing well and to whom they can relate. This
came up in other evidence that you might also have had. One way
out of this is perhaps to concentrate more on how we can support
peers doing well in those schools and use them as mechanisms to
support those students. I think that the issue of exclusion must
be addressed in terms of the powers, but many young people are
in those situations and given the history some of those are deserving
cases. We need to tackle the causes rather than necessarily some
of the mechanisms. At the moment, almost by its nature as the
criminal justice system tends to be against black boys it is not
necessarily because we are giving schools too much power. I believe
that what we need to do is empower teachers to challenge students
and make decisions and for parents to be more involved in the
process. I am more sceptical about whether it is necessarily a
schools system problem. I think it is more complex than that.
Professor John: I disagree fundamentally,
but we shall discuss it later.
Q388 Martin Salter: The sense I am
getting from both witnesses is that in our recommendations it
is critical that we address the issue of exclusions and the reasons
behind them. You may differ in terms of analysis, but it is a
critical matter; it is the pathway to the root cause of the problem
that we seek to address?
Dr Sewell: Yes.
Q389 Mr Clappison: In a nutshell,
do you call for more culturally specific solutions for young black
people, that is, ideas and solutions tailored to their backgrounds
and needs that you have so clearly described to us today?
Dr Sewell: I know that at the
moment we tend to follow the United States everywhere, but one
of the matters that they seem to be getting right is that crime
is falling in a number of American cities, for example New York,
particularly in black communities. Why is that the case? What
have they done? It is still too high but it is falling. I think
there are two reasons for this. The first is the creation almost
by way of social engineering of the black middle class. This does
not go down too well when you start to talk to some of our social
commentators. They do not seem to like that because they feel
that it is elitist. It is very strange because Britain is the
mother of elitism and yet we seem to be embarrassed by it. I do
not mean elitism in that sense. What was clear in the 1970s in
the US was that unless that issue was addressed and there was
the creation of opportunities for black people, particularly through
universities, there would be chaos. In a sense, part of that social
engineering has resulted in a strong black middle class which
is growing in real terms. They did that on the back of affirmative
action. We cannot have that because in England we do not like
that, so we have to do it but not say we are doing it. That is
how we usually do things in England; we operate on that level.
In the usual English way of doing things what I propose as a big
idea is that we look at leadership that is specifically targeted
as a model among young people. The Race Relations (Amendment)
Act allows one to target specific groups so one is within the
law in that regard. What I am looking for is something at that
level.
Professor John: For me, the most
important thing is to give young black people a sense that it
is cool to learn, to be gifted and successful, and reclaim the
sense that historically we are a great people. The typical discourse
in this society is about under-achievement, unemployment, being
on the margins and so on, which is what young black people hear
more than anything else. The causes of that are not put to one
side because they have to be addressed, but we ram home the message
that we have been great, and we can be great, and there is a capacity
on their part to be leaders—they can become middle class,
if you like—in the pathway of change. We train people to
become change agents within their communities and in respect of
their own lives. That is where I meet my colleague on the question
of leadership; that is what we are trying to do with our young
leaders programme; in other words, how do we instil in young people
that sense of their own greatness so they can reach for the stars?
They do not have to be mediocre and bully others who are using
their natural talents and performing well within the school system.
Dr Sewell: I believe that the
group X-it came to see you. I heard a clip on Radio 4 in which
a young articulate lady said that one of the problems she had
was that she could not see any aspiring black people to whom she
could relate. That resonated with me because that is the crux
of the issue. "Successful" does not necessarily mean
a job in the City. What we are talking about are people who are
not the stereotypes around her. She could not find many. We have
a great opportunity; we can do that differently. In a sense, what
we are saying is that the strategy could be to have more and more
projects to deal with the vulnerable or, if you like, at the level
of high-level criminals, to do work in prisons, which I think
is important. There are some interesting programmes and other
things that you can do. Alternatively, one can look at it much
more strategically; one looks at it as if, say, it is the seventies
and one is looking at what issues would arise now. You look at
it much more strategically and say that there are groups of young
people who have intelligence and potential. What can we do to
give them leadership capacity to make them feel that they are
more or bigger than gangs? The gang is an interesting analogy.
The gang is almost a mirror of society. If one looks at the Italian
gangs, they operated almost as an alternative society. They had
their own government structures and their own ways of dealing
with enemies. In the same way, those boys joined gangs because
they could not see their way into the mainstream. We need to provide
very clear routes, or what I call longitudinal pipelines, that
start at about 13, or even earlier. You work with this group.
This must resonate with you. One other point is that, talking
particularly about the African Caribbean population, when working
in Hackney we were able to name all the students who were from
that group. If you put their pictures on a table—I was going
to say "mug shots" but I had better not—you would
know who those individuals were. You are not talking about a huge
population here, so it is do-able. I think that is where we share
a sense that there is a strategy here—but maybe the line
is going somewhere else—by which we work with a group that
can create the leadership model that we are talking about.
Q390 Mr Browne: One of my questions
is about role models. We had evidence from a previous witness,
Lee Jasper—I also read your interesting exchange with him—who
referred to the absence of role models in the media and elsewhere.
I think that would have been a more valid criticism 25 years ago
than it is today. It seems to me there are quite a lot of role
models in the media. But when you talk about role models are you
talking about Darren Jordon reading the news, or whatever it might
be, or the person who lives next door to you who is part of your
community? Do both have some value? The other question is about
upbringing and single-parent families and the far greater likelihood
of black children being raised in that environment. There are
successful single-parent families where children do very well
regardless of their ethnicity, but there is a correlation between
single-parent families and under-achievement. That seems to me
to be harder to attribute to effects such as racism in society
and the malign effects of white people, because nobody is requiring
any family to bring up children in that way. I am interested in
both points which are about upbringing, role models and the environment
in which children are raised.
Dr Sewell: I know that my colleague
wants to deal with single parent families because he told me about
that beforehand. The question of role models is interesting. One
of the things that we do under the Generating Genius programme
is to train boys to be science peer leaders. Although we train
only a small number of boys because of the expense of doing so
over a period of time, it is their duty to go back into their
communities, or we invite groups of students to come to us. Recently,
I explained to someone that one of our programmes is to show students
how to make robots. Those robots are not electric; they are the
students themselves. They do that in front of other students younger
than themselves. Those students are not what I would call very
straight-laced; they are from tough comprehensive schools. Therefore,
the discourse they will have, their appearance and how they come
across will be the same as you. The only gap here is that you
use your brains and with ambition you can go far. That is what
we want. We are not interested in playing football or being rappers
today; we want to be scientists; we want to go to Imperial College
and get a PhD. Their brilliance is also demonstrated because they
will teach others how to do it. In a sense, that is the kind of
leadership that I am talking about here. It is very practical.
That is the power which encourages other students. I believe that
that was what the young person from X-it was saying. There was
no mechanism for her to see someone doing that. Let us consider
Darren Jordon reading the news. To give one anecdote, in the past
when a black person was reading the news we used to call upstairs.
Everybody would rush down and watch because we never saw a black
person on television before. It was an amazing event. Now you
have MTV and everything. The presence of black people on television
is no big deal; and Darren Jordon reading the news is no big deal
either. You will need something that they can really relate to
and engage in. That is the kind of mechanism I am talking about.
Professor John: I will try to
relate my answer to both questions. Young people who grow up in
a majority black society have a totally different view of themselves;
they have different aspirations from the average young black person
in Britain. In this audience we need not go into the reasons for
that in any great detail. I say that because the issue of single-parent
families and the correlation between that status and under-achievement
does not arise to the same extent in the majority black societies
that I am talking about. For one thing, it has nothing to do with
a particular propensity on the part of black people to have children
and be without partners and so on. The year 2007 marks 200 years
since the abolition of slavery. Let us remember where those patterns
came from: there was some retention of the organisation of the
family units in the context of the plantation system and so on.
The point I make is that you can use the incidence of single parents
and pathologise mothers in a way that fails to take account of
all the structural issues around them and their ability or otherwise
to support the children's development, whether it be a matter
of isolation or economic, emotional or other factors. We should
stop bleating on about single-parent this, that and the next thing
and the disadvantages of it and say: what does this child or mother
need to support her so she can develop her own potential, realise
her own ambitions and be a successful parent supporting her child?
It means, therefore, that we take it as a reality and find ways
to put support systems around such people and their children so
they are living in much more organic units and have an organic
network around them, as distinct from saying, "This is a
single parent", and, "In this school 60% of children
come from single-parent families and therefore you cannot expect
those children to do well." I was without my father for seven
or eight years during my primary school years, not because he
was running around giving other women children but because he
had to work elsewhere. That was the pattern for many people. But
within that we achieved because of what teachers, parents and
everybody else expected of our aspirations.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
What you have said has been enormously helpful. We have slightly
overrun our time but only because of our interest in what you
are saying.
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