Race, Equality and Schools

Richard Willey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429761461
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1984. How to respond to ethnic diversity is a question of major importance for teachers. The multi-ethnic school is only one aspect of a multi-ethnic society, and the problems and complexities teachers face have far-reaching implications. Attention has turned from fitting minority ethnic groups into existing education systems to achieving equality in a multi-ethnic society, with consequent questions about and changes in the practice of teaching.

This book guides the reader through the complexities of changes in the field of race and education, examining developments in both policy and practice. It looks at the radical answers which were developing within a number of national education systems - in Britain, Australia, Canada, the US and elsewhere, and at the teachers' practical responses to the pressing problems.

Chapter One

Policy, practice and new approaches

At the level of official policy significant changes have taken place in educational response to ethnic diversity. Initial assimilationist objectives have been replaced by pluralist aims. Early preoccupation with helping newcomers to adapt has widened into consideration of the implications for the education system as a whole of the presence of minority ethnic groups. But there has been much less progress in giving the altered objectives practical effect. Little concerted effort has been directed towards bringing about change, and a widening gap has opened up between stated policies and practice in most educational institutions.

A time lag between the development of educational theory and its implementation is to be expected. But in this case there are more complex reasons for the gulf between official rhetoric and classroom practice. Advocacy of tolerance and harmony in response to cultural difference is a relatively simple matter if confined to vague exhortation – especially when abstracted from the realities of racial discrimination and prejudice. But once attention is turned to securing equality, and to the factors which prevent equality, the task facing the education system at once assumes greater and more complex proportions. A comprehensive review of the attitudes and assumptions which underlie existing teaching is necessary; ‘multi-cultural education’ cannot simply be grafted on as an exotic addition to an established curriculum. Systematic consideration of the pervasive effects of past and present racism must, for example, be integral to the process. It is easy to incorporate pluralist aims into official rhetoric but difficult to implement them in classrooms. Teachers developing approaches in schools are finding that what is involved is more complex than the vague and uncontentious language of official policy often suggests.

To understand the issues now being discussed in schools and the nature of the difficult decisions facing teachers, it is necessary to look at the way in which official policies have developed. These policies have established the framework within which teachers are now working. The first part of this chapter considers the nature and effects of racism and the overall context created by government race relations policies. The second section then examines the development of official educational policies. The shift from assimilationist to pluralist objectives is considered, and the way in which a widening gap between policy and practice has led to the development of new approaches which emphasize equality and the central importance of combating racism.

Racism and race relations

Early Government responses

Considerable criticism has been levelled against successive British governments of the 1950s and early 1960s on the grounds that during the early stages of immigration there was no policy on the implications for society of the presence of the newcomers. Black immigration into Britain chiefly took place at a time when the economic boom following the period of post-war austerity had created a situation in which an expanding economy was actively recruiting labour. Immigrants came initially predominantly from the West Indies and then from India, from 1955, and from Pakistan, from 1957, to fill jobs in Britain where there was a labour shortage. There were policy assumptions relating to the presence of these new immigrants, as Rose, in particular, has shown, but these led very largely to a policy of inaction (Rose et al., 1969).

The distinction is important because reluctance to take positive action — particularly in the field of social policy — became a recurrent feature of much of the subsequent response. The attitude was that citizens were to be treated equally before the law; but the corollary was that equal treatment meant the same treatment and that no further action was necessary. In practice, it fell largely to voluntary unofficial agencies to fill the policy vacuum as best they could. Such early initiatives as there were were made in response to immediate welfare needs. In effect, immigrants were firmly categorized as strangers facing problems, not as citizens suffering disadvantage and exposed to racial discrimination. The principle of civil rights before the law was not considered to extend to the notion that the law might also guarantee social rights through legislation against discrimination.

The underlying assumption implicit in this early approach was that immigrants would be assimilated into existing British society – as earlier immigrants had largely been. The policy was rarely expressed in such extreme terms as those used by the Royal Commission on Population in 1949 when it declared that migrants could only be welcomed ‘without reserve’ if they were ‘not prevented by their religion from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged in it’, but throughout this period the policy approach was that the newcomers would eventually simply be absorbed into British society (HMSO, 1949). This was the emphasis, for example, in the terms of reference of the Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council set up in 1962 ‘to assist immigrants to adapt themselves to British habits and customs’.

Immigration control

The 1960s saw a change of emphasis. Against a background of mounting evidence of racial discrimination in society successive governments were drawn into a more interventionist role and embarked on what developed into the twin — and contradictory — major political responses to a multi-racial Britain. These policies were immigration control and anti-discrimination legislation. Under the 1948 Nationality Act immigrants from the Commonwealth were accorded full citizenship rights, but these were subsequently steadily eroded. The Immigration Acts of 1962, 1968 and 1971, based on colour consciousness, successively and disproportionately limited black immigration. In 1981 a new Nationality Act became law which created a hierarchy of citizenship which discriminated against those from the ‘New Commonwealth’. The spirit and effect of these measures was in direct contradiction to the principle of ‘racial equality’ concurrently being propounded. The then leader of the ILEA, Davis, commenting on the 1981 Nationality Act, told the Home Secretary that

Not only will it affect the particular children involved but it will make it more difficult to develop in our education service the understanding necessary to provide an education which has the confidence of the people of Inner London. (Davis, 1981)

The context created by the Immigration and Nationality Acts inevitably weakened the positive element in the government’s strategy — the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976 which introduced increasingly strengthened legislation against racial discrimination. These departures from the studied inaction of the 1950s were accompanied by a redefinition of aims. In 1966 the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, declared that the objective was ‘integration’ which he defined as ‘not a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’. It is this broad – and vague — definition of a ‘multi-cultural society’ which has since been reiterated.

Racial discrimination

A mounting body of evidence has detailed the extent to which the ‘equal opportunity’ called for by the Home Secretary in 1966 – the necessary prerequisite for positive response to cultural diversity – is negated by the persistent and damaging effects of racism. The most comprehensive picture of the way this operates in Britain is contained in the findings of a research project carried out by Political and Economic Planning between 1972 and 1975 (Smith, 1977). This study demonstrated beyond argument the existence of discrimination by race in many areas of life, especially employment and housing. Blacks were found to be more vulnerable to unemployment than whites; they were concentrated within lower job levels in a way which could not be explained by lower academic or job qualifications and within broad categories of jobs they had lower earnings than whites, particularly at the higher end of the job scale. An analysis of the patterns of employment suggested that discrimination was an important factor in the disadvantaged employment position of blacks and case studies confirmed this. In controlled experiments of job applications for white-collar jobs, for example, Asian and West Indian applicants faced discrimination in 30 per cent of cases and in applications for unskilled jobs in 46 per cent of cases.

Comparable patterns of discrimination were shown to operate in housing. Owner occupation, while high for ethnic minorities, had none of the connotations of wealth which it had for the white population. The properly involved was of low quality and unlikely to constitute a means of transferring wealth between generations. All the measures of housing quality used in the survey showed ethnic minorities to be much worse housed than whites. Black private tenants were paying much higher rents than white tenants, and ethnic minorities were found to be under-represented in council housing as a whole while startlingly over-represented in the lowest-quality housing. In another study, Rutter and Madge carried out an extensive review of the literature on deprivation generally and concluded that much of the future of ethnic minorities depended on the extent to which they were placed in a disadvantaged position through discriminatory practices: ‘Although there are specific issues which arise from immigration and from differences in cultural background, to a large extent the ‘colour problem’ is the problem of white racism’ (Rutter and Madge, 1976).

Racial attacks

In an extreme form racial prejudice is also manifest in direct racial attacks. Racial violence against black people is little documented and receives little coverage in the national or local media. But it is much more extensive than is commonly realized. One official source-a 1981 Home Office Report on Racial Attacks — showed that the rate of racial victimization ‘for Asians [was] 50 times that for white people and the rate for blacks [West Indians] was over 36 times that for white people’ (HMSO 1981a). Moreover, the study found that many incidents of racial attacks were not reported to the police and that ‘the results presented represent only a proportion -probably a small proportion – of the number that take place’. The report acknowledged that ‘the problem has deteriorated significantly within the space of the last year’. The level of attacks appeared to be on the increase. The Home Office study — hardly a document to dramatize the seriousness of the situation — reported that ‘In some places there was a sense of uncomplaining acceptance among some Asians to manifestations of racial violence; the problem was thought to be so widespread that they regarded it as little more than an unwelcome feature of contemporary British life.’ The report also found evidence that ‘racialist activity in schools is increasing’.

Race relations legislation

When looked at in terms of the documented extent and effect of racism government incursions into race relations legislation appear belated, hesitant and largely ineffectual. Initial approaches were marked by extreme caution. The first piece of legislation, the 1965 Race Relations Act, was limited in scope and the Race Relations Board set up under it operated conciliation procedures which were cumbersome and ineffective. In 1968 a second Act extended the grounds on which complaints of discrimination could be referred to the Race Relations Board and set up a new promotional agency, the Community Relations Commission, to encourage ‘harmonious community relations’. The emphasis remained firmly on caution, conciliation and persuasion. The motivating concern of both Acts was the avoidance of racial strife rather than the provision of effective legal redress for citizens suffering from discrimination.

By the mid-1970s official policy conceded that racism was more widespread and intractable than had previously been acknowledged. A government White Paper published in 1975, after a year-long review of race relations, concluded that experience was showing that

early optimism may not be justified, that the problems with which we have to deal if we are to see genuine equality of opportunity for the coloured youngsters born and educated in this country may be larger in scale and more complex than had been initially supposed. (HMSO, 1975)

The result was fresh legislation. The 1976 Race Relations Act adopted a new approach. This time an attempt was made to deal with discrimination not only in terms of intentional individual acts — direct injuries done by one person against another — but also with discriminatory effects. A widened definition of discrimination – treating another person less favourably because of colour, race, ethnic or national origins -was now allied to the concept of ‘indirect’ discrimination -the application of conditions that cannot be justified on non-racial grounds but which affect unequally particular groups. The new agency set up under the Act, the Commission for Racial Equality, was given new powers of investigation and was enpowered to call for documents and witnesses and to issue non-discrimination notices.

But despite its new powers, the Commission for Racial Equality, like its predecessors, has made limited impact. It has found the mounting of formal investigations expensive and slow, and has tended to become bogged down in casework. The Commission’s first chairman, David Lane (a former Conservative MP and Home Office Minister) argued that the law needed to be strengthened if the Commission was to be effective. But this has not happened. In 1982, Lane warned that ‘all recent research has shown the persistence of racial discrimination on a serious scale’ and that continuing economic recession could only make things worse (Lane, 1982). In one such piece of research Little and Robbins, in a study of transmitted deprivation, found that not only were ethnic minorities disproportionately experiencing ‘the worst that our society has to offer’ but that ‘this is continuing through to second and subsequent generations with consequences for society as a whole which are no longer potentially serious but actually so’ (Little and Robbins, 1982).

Social policy

Government has accepted — in theory — that an attack on the causes of discrimination needs to be accompanied by action to counter its deep-rooted effects. The 1975 White Paper which preceded the 1976 Race Relations Act recognized that use of the law against racial discrimination, on which government had largely relied for the previous decade, would have limited results if unaccompanied by a concerted social policy response. The White Paper argued for a ‘fuller strategy’; ‘a more comprehensive structure’ was necessary to combat ‘a cumulative cycle of disadvantage’ exacerbated by racial discrimination whereby ‘an entire group of people are launched on a vicious downward spiral of deprivation’ (HMSO, 1975). But this theoretical analysis has not been given practical effect. When, in the summer of 1981, disturbances on the streets of Bristol, Brixton in London and Toxteth in Liverpool gave more ominous warning of the effects of continued neglect, the official inquiry conducted by Lord Scarman came to conclusions which echoed those of the Government White Paper six years earlier. ‘Racial disadvantage is a fact of current British life … urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society’ (Scarman, 1981). Some thirty years after the first substantial migration from the West Indies effective policies for Britain’s multi-racial society still remain, in the 1975 White Paper’s phrase, to be ‘worked out’.

Education policies

The development of education policy has in many ways reflected the pattern of overall government race relations policy. The DES has consistently been reluctant to take a strong lead and has tended to react to developments, often belatedly and largely ineffectually, rather than initiate positive policies. This has led to a wide variety of uneven responses by local education authorities (LEAs). The consequence of lack of central leadership and guidance has not simply been action or inaction at local level. Some of the developments which have taken place, particularly those which have been preoccupied with exotic aspects of cultural difference and have ignored the effects of racism, are now argued to have had unintended negative consequences.

Early responses: the ‘problem of immigrants

Early educational responses were dominated by a largely ad hoc approach to the ‘problems’ created by the presence of minority ethnic group pupils. The educational task was seen by the DES as the ‘success...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction Equality in a multi-ethnic society
• 1 Policy, practice and new approaches
• 2 Racism and schools
• 3 ‘Whole-school’ approaches
• 4 Particular needs and positive action
• 5 Responses to linguistic diversity
• Conclusion The way forward
• Bibliography
• Index