THE NEED for a Black education fund might never have been greater.  

Despite the fact that Black children continue to excel at GCSE level, they still face considerable barriers in the system which creates disadvantages compared to the experience of their white counterparts.

Permanent exclusions remain four times as high compared to white children, according to the Institute of Race Relations, while the transition from education to work has barely changed.

The Tory-LibDem coalition government abolished the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG), which provided extra support for children whose first language is not English.

There are now growing demands for a new Black Education Grant, to reduce university dropout rates from Black students due to lack of money to live on.

Diane Abbott MP, a longtime champion of Black kids education, fought against the axing of EMAG. She told The Voice: “I was opposed to scrapping it because there was still a need to support ethnic minority achievement. 

“We are still seeing Black and ethnic minority children underachieving and more likely to be excluded.

“Some of the under achievement has lessened, but we still have got children, particularly Black children, who aren’t achieving what they could. 

“There’s the way Black children are treated which is with a lack of respect, as we saw with the Child Q case.  

“You could argue it has everything to do with the way teachers view Black children. And not all teachers respect them academically.”

While grants supporting Black children are something Abbott favors, she’s mindful of the fact some use cherry picked data pushing the culture war to divert attention from the shortcomings of government.

The ‘white boys have it worse’ narrative has become the main pushback against those highlighting the longstanding exclusion and treatment of Black children in the education system.

Abbott added: “This keeps coming up. When you try to talk about Black underachievement, people are increasingly coming back with “oh but white working class boys are at the bottom of the ladder”, and that just isn’t true. 

“The figures still show that Black children are much more likely to be excluded. I’m not saying that white working class boys should not get support. But it shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to address the longstanding issues in relation to Black children.

“What I would like a Labour government to do is to look at the figures and put in the extra resources.”

Professor Kehinde Andrews agreed about the dangers of failing to counter the myth that working class white kids have been left behind, which is used as  a “gotcha” argument, implying that anti-Black racism no longer exists in classrooms.

Andrews said: “I call it the new racial science. The old racial science was to prove we weren’t human beings. This new racial science is to prove that racism no longer exists.

“The way they do that is to focus on these poor whites that are doing so badly. But it’s all nonsense. 

“They roll out the GCSE attainment for those on free school meals, which is probably the only thing you could look at. But free school meals aren’t really about class, it’s about who’s disadvantaged.

“It’s a measure of something, but not class. Black Caribbean students are twice as likely to be on free school meals. So it is racial science, it’s fabricated. If you looked at the big picture, in education, housing, and health you’ll see the reality.”

Andrews warns that this phenomenon is not new and is part of a national history of denying anti-Black racism, while framing calls for racial equality as an attack on the ‘white race’.

According to Andrews, Black education is not just under-resourced but is in crisis, and is arguably worse than it was 50 years ago.

“This idea it’s got better is lunacy.  Definitely for Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups, in terms of GCSE it’s got better. Black Caribbean hasn’t improved, it’s basically stayed the same and Black African, interestingly, has probably gone a bit down. 

“Overall if you look at exclusion rates, A-Level results, they are terrible. Actually, in terms of ethnicity, a lot of those gains have disappeared, for all groups.

“At university, if you’re not white, you’re much less likely to get a good degree, no matter your background but particularly for Black students. 

“The statistic that is really important for this white working class argument is that white working class boys are much more likely to get good jobs.  

“So even if you’re going to say there’s a problem in schools, it doesn’t translate into real life. 

“Some of us seem to be convinced it’s not discrimination. It’s us, it’s the culture. Where’s the resistance?” 

For Andrews, demands for more funding are necessary but of equal importance is the need for the community to organise solutions independently.

“There hasn’t been any sustained investment on the issue of race when it comes to schools or anything else. The only thing really was the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant but that was so little money. 

“If you look at what’s kept the Black Caribbean community afloat, it’s not the government but Saturday schools. I think that’s what we need to understand.  We’ve got to go back to that old mentality which is, we need to do things for ourselves.”