Education Bill

Memorandum submitted by Marika Sherwood (E 08)

I wish to submit the following for consideration:

Re: ‘Changes to school performance tables’

The League tables mean that schools concentrate on the subjects which are used to assess their place on these ‘tables’.

This leads to the minimising of other subjects. That in turn means that children received a very very biased education.

Almost a mid-education. Please change these tables to take into account performance in all subjects.

Re: ‘a vision for a transformed school curriculum’

At present, our pupils learn virtually nothing about the world outside of the UK – really almost outside of England! Given globalisation etc, this therefore does not give them any of the necessary tools to begin to understand the world they inhabit.  This produces a sense of superiority in White Brits, as obviously no-one else ever achieved anything, invented anything, designed anything, ruled empires, explored anywhere, traded internationally, etc. The damage done to Black Britons is clearly stated by Nigerian novelist Ben Okr (awarded the OBE in 2001) wrote in

Astonishing the Gods (1995, p.3): 

‘…as a boy he was sent to school… It was in books that he first learnt of his invisibility. He searched for himself and his people in all the history books he read and discovered to his youthful astonishment that he didn’t exist.’

February 2011