Croydon: No support for Black 'after schools'

In a week in which the Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove stated that Black children are being marked down by their teachers, Croydon council are undermining local projects that  mitigate institutional prejudice in schools  and other factors that cause  BME low education achievement.

Schemes which have clearly helped improve educational attainment amongst BME School students in Croydon are at risk of being abolished, undoing the progress made in turning around children’s prospects.

16 organisations across the borough have been recipients of the Education Grant Allowance, which funds extra-curricular projects designed to improve attainment for BME pupils. Close to three-quarters of the 2010/11 budget went to groups that provided Supplementary classes and mentoring.

However, the Conservative-run Council has sought to reduce the funding and the remit of the programme, cutting the funding by over 60% and focussing the scheme solely upon mentoring, ending the funding for supplementary lessons that have been so crucial to increasing educational attainment in the borough and turning Croydon around from being below the national average for educational attainment to it being above the national average.

The Council has justified its cuts by stating that the attainment improvements mean that groups no longer require council grants and that local schools can play a role in assisting BME students. Cllr Tim Pollard, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Learning has said:

Whilst I certainly understand from our consultation that some of the groups who are losing funding may feel the impact of this decision, overall I believe that it is right for the council to invest in improving the capacity of schools to deliver these services directly, rather than relying on others to provide the extra support that these young people often need.”

The Council has failed to understand that the improvements in attainments have come as a result of supplementary learning that could only have been possible with council funding, and that there is still much more that needs to be done. Despite increasing attainment for Asian students in English and Maths at Key Stage 2, there are still fears that progress, particularly amongst Pakistani, Bangladeshi and African-Caribbean boys could stall or even be reversed by this policy and that placing the responsibility for assisting BME students in the hands of previously under performing Croydon schools will undermine the progress further.

Another worrying element to this equation is the Coalition Governments desire to scrap any equality impact assessments -PSED- for any public bodies. That means that local policy can be driven not on a needs basis or evidence based, but on political whims or, worse still prejudice.

Evidence has also shown us that investing in those areas, that ensure greater educational achievement, is ten fold cheaper than dealing with unemployment, social problems including the cost of those falling into criminal activity.

If we are to make progress, we must abandon short term, cost cutting policies that will only deliver long term problems .

Robert Austin and Simon Woolley