Educational Justice for Black Children

Community North West works closely with the BEM Network - Black Equalities Merseyside and is hoping to set up a planning group to help run a Commission for Educational Justice in Liverpool. Here are a few articles, reports etc which are helping us to highlight the education needs of Black Children.

May 2005 HANSARD  HOUSE of COMMONS;

Mrs. Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op):

….I want to draw attention to two concerns about education. The first is under-achievement. Liverpool is a city with growing success, yet despite that it contains some of the strongest concentrations of deprivation in the country. I should like the Government, with the local authority in Liverpool, to consider the areas of under-achievement that I consider to be of great concern. Take-up of higher education is still far too low. Take-up of skills training is also low and I look forward to the impact of the Government's new policies on that area, where more opportunities are required. Young people need to be attracted to the opportunities that are available. The Greater Merseyside learning and skills council is considering new proposals to try to capture the imagination of young people, too many of whom leave school with inadequate qualifications, and I hope that those efforts are successful.

I have a particular concern about the educational under-achievement of many black and ethnic minority pupils in Liverpool. I hope that Liverpool education authority will hold an inquiry into what is happening in relation to those minority groups in the city.

I have been very shocked to see figures that reveal falling attainment rates among some Somali and Yemeni children in Liverpool's schools. I am not clear whether any proper record is kept of how many children in those groups, and indeed others, are not being entered for examinations, so looking simply at percentage success rates in examinations is not an adequate reflection of what is happening in those schools. That issue has been ignored for far too long, and I should like to see renewed interest in it.

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24 May 2005 : Column 637

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The Government have an excellent record on education. We have seen major improvements nationally, and I and my constituents have seen dramatic improvements in the opportunities being given to people in the city of Liverpool. I call on the Government not only to continue their policies for investment, but to ensure that there is indeed equality of opportunity. That involves looking at under-achievement in our schools. I have referred to the situation of Somali, Yemeni and other black and ethnic minority children in Liverpool, but the problem relates to all those children in Liverpool who are not achieving their full potential. I ask the Government to continue with their determination to secure opportunity for all and with their programme of investment to give all people opportunities for the future.

8.17 pm