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Film-maker Steve McQueen says racism which resulted in a disproportionate number of black pupils being sent to schools for the so-called “educationally subnormal (ESN)” in the 1960s and 70s continues to disadvantage black pupils in England today.
McQueen is the executive producer behind a new documentary to be broadcast on BBC1 next week, which describes the devastating impact of now defunct ESN schools on those who were sent there as children and tells the story of how black parents, educators and activists exposed the scandal.
In an interview with the Guardian, McQueen paid tribute to those who fought to change the system and as a result improved the life chances of those that followed, including himself.
He warned however that injustices in the education system continue, including the disproportionate number of black pupils who are excluded from mainstream schools, but said young people today have a voice and a better chance of being listened to than his generation.
The idea for the documentary, Subnormal: A British Scandal, came to McQueen when he was working on Education, a fictional account of the experiences of black children in the English education system in the 1970s, which formed part of his ground-breaking five-part anthology series Small Axe.
Directed by Lyttanya Shannon, the documentary describes how from 1945 children thought to have limited intellectual ability were described by a new term, “educationally subnormal”. In the 1960s and 70s it was applied to black children – whose parents had travelled to the UK from the West Indies with high hopes of the education system – who were then sent to ESN schools, with devastating and lasting consequences.
“I was told I was a dunce,” said one casualty of the ESN school system who has since gone on to gain more than dozen academic qualifications. “Leaving school without qualifications is one thing, but leaving school and thinking you are stupid is a different ball game altogether, because it knocks your confidence. Having those labels put on you year after year, you become that person.”
A leaked report by the now abolished Inner London Education Authority revealed the scale of the discrimination against black children who were being funnelled out of mainstream school and disproportionately sent to ESN classes based on IQ tests which were biased against black migrant children.
The subsequent publication of Bernard Coard’s seminal book, How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System, exposed the racism in the system and galvanised parents and educationalists to fight for justice and set up supplementary Saturday schools to support their children’s education.
Asked about the victory achieved by black parents and black educators, McQueen said: “It was huge. ESN schools do not exist now. It’s why I’m talking to you on the phone today, because I would have been definitely put in one of those schools and bussed out to wherever, limiting my possibilities and prospects.
“They’ve changed people’s lives, not just black people, white people too. Those black parents made it possible for any and everybody to have a chance of succeeding at what they want to do. This is not just about the black community. It’s about the whole community.”
Asked about continuing racism in the education system today, he said: “The amount of black pupils, particularly boys, who are being excluded from schools, the crime and knife crime – this is the evidence of things going badly wrong at an early stage in people’s lives, and of the discrimination and racism which happens at a very early age to children, the labelling and targeting, people feeling unloved and unwanted.”
Analysis by the Guardian recently revealed that exclusion rates for black Caribbean students in English schools are up to six times higher than those of their white peers in some local authorities.
McQueen described his own school experiences in the 1970s and 80s. “All I can do is talk about me and the people who were around me when I was in education and how some people just did not make it because of the education system. I got through because I could draw, that was the only reason. I had a talent that was undeniable.”
“Looking back at how people were treated, it was sheer and simple racism. We knew it but we had no voice. We had no power. No one would listen to us. Now people are talking about it, but back then people’s lives were destroyed. These kids have a chance because now they have a voice.”
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