I loved being a teacher. But I wasn’t a proper teacher. I didn’t teach in a classroom full of 30 kids; I did not set any homework. I was a different sort of teacher. Technically, I wasn’t a teacher at all but a tutor, and I worked either with one student or in small groups of up to five. I would take the pupils out of their classes, we would go to a spare room in the school, and I would try to make them better in the subject of English Literature.
From Macbeth to metaphor, from Dickens to description, I loved imparting my knowledge to the next generation because it felt like continuing the excellent tradition carried out by my own beloved teachers at school. But the kids I taught at a comprehensive school in south-east London were struggling. I was teaching those who were most severely hampered by the Covid-19 lockdowns and I taught at a very ethnically diverse school. But what struck me most about this experience was not race: it was gender. The kids who struggled most were the boys.
Black Caribbean pupils are more likely to be suspended and excluded from schools than black African pupils
All too often, though, when we think about inequality in education, and elsewhere, we look at it simply through the perspective of race. Let us imagine two black people. One of them is called Michael. The other is called Mary. They were both born in the UK, but their grandparents came to London in the late 1950s from Jamaica.
Both Michael and Mary qualify for free school meals because they both come from poor family backgrounds. The odds seem stacked against them. They are black and poor. Discrimination in school, at work, in the criminal justice system, in terms of access to health: this is the lot of their disenfranchised and marginalised lives.
It is a powerfully seductive picture, and it is tempting for anyone committed to fighting racism to absorb it completely. It contains a great degree of truth. Racism still exists in British society. For instance, last December the London Fire Brigade was put into special measures by the chief fire inspector, Matt Parr, after a report that found examples of racism and other failings. The Casey report in March this year concluded that the Metropolitan police was racist and sexist. The example of Child Q also shows schools are not always safe for black girls. In 2020, the vulnerable teenage girl in Hackney was strip-searched by the police, while she was on her period, on the unfounded suspicion of possessing drugs.
But looking at disadvantages simply through race doesn’t tell the full story. It misses out on other salient factors. One problem with the example of Michael and Mary, for instance, is that it describes the experiences of black Caribbean people, not all black British people.
Up until 25 years ago, the average black person in Britain was someone from a Caribbean background. This is no longer the case. Because of a large influx of immigration from Africa, there are now twice as many black people who come from an African background as come from a West Indian one. This is important because the experiences of black African people differ from the experiences of black Caribbean people in ways that matter.
Let us go back to education. Rather than Michael and Mary, let us look at Michael and Moses. The parents of Moses did not come from Jamaica in the late 1950s, they came from Nigeria in the late 1990s. Like Michael, Moses was born in the UK and qualifies for free school meals. But Moses is far more likely to progress to higher education, also known as further education (FE), by the age of nineteen than Michael.
According to the latest “Widening participation in higher education” UK report, which was published this year, only 20 per cent of black Caribbean boys on free school meals are in FE by nineteen. The figure for black African boys, however, is 52 per cent. More than half of black African boys from a poor background now progress to FE; only a fifth of poor black Caribbean boys do.
Black Caribbean pupils are also more likely to be suspended and excluded from schools than black African pupils.
The suspension rate for black African pupils is 4.96. For black Caribbean pupils it is 11.74. The permanent exclusion rate for black African pupils is 0.05 per cent. For black Caribbean pupils it is 0.16. This means that black Caribbean pupils are twice as likely to be suspended from school and three times more likely to be permanently excluded.
These figures matter if we genuinely care about inequality and are interested in helping out the most disadvantaged communities in our society. This is not to say race is irrelevant. But if we look at disadvantages simply through race, we miss out on many of the groups that are genuinely struggling. This stops us from effectively improving their lot because we conflate their experiences with other groups that are not struggling to nearly the same extent. This is why we need a more nuanced approach when we think about disadvantages, not a reductive one.
If we look at disadvantages through the perspective of gender, it is clear that boys and men are struggling in many areas. The Times columnist Caitlin Moran recently published a book entitled What About Men? in which she explores why boys and men are struggling in education, employment, with suicide, with addiction to drugs and pornography, and in forming long-lasting friendships.
Richard Reeves, the British-American policy wonk, published a book last year entitled Of Boys and Men in which he pointed out that “The gender gap in college degrees awarded is wider today than it was in the early 1970s, but in the opposite direction.” In every developed country in the world, more women graduate with a bachelor’s degree than men. In terms of work, meanwhile, “the wages of most men are lower today than they were in 1970,” but “women’s wages have risen across the board.”
The fact boys and men are struggling in certain areas should not be taken as a feminist conspiracy. But these primarily male struggles do exist, and they do have implications for when we think about racial inequality.
Girls in all ethnic groups are more likely than their counterpart boys to progress to higher education
Let us go back to Michael and Mary. Michael is male. Mary is female. Despite their shared racial background and poverty, the progression rate of higher education by the age of nineteen amongst black Caribbean boys on free school meals is 20 per cent. It is 41 per cent for black Caribbean girls. Mary is twice as likely to be in further education than Michael.
The female counterpart to Moses is also more likely to progress to FE than he is. Girls in all ethnic groups in fact are more likely than their counterpart boys to progress to higher education. White working-class girls are more likely than white working-class boys to progress to FE. White middle-class girls are more likely to progress to FE than white middle-class boys.
In America, it is not working-class black people who are struggling the most in terms of school and work but working-class black men in particular. According to a study by the American economist Raj Chetty, which Reeves cites in his book, “Black men [in America] are much less likely than white men to rise up the income ladder, while Black and white women raised by poor families have similar rates of upward intergenerational mobility.” Chetty also finds that black women are more likely to attend college than even white men from a similar socio-economic background.
In the UK, meanwhile, black Caribbean girls on free school meals are more likely to progress to higher education than black Caribbean boys who aren’t. Strikingly, these girls are also more likely to go on to FE than white boys who do not qualify for free school meals. In other words, the poorest black Caribbean girls are more likely to get into university than more well-off black Caribbean boys and white boys.
There are many ways in which girls and women face sexism and misogyny in contemporary British society – from the continuing existence of sexual violence and harassment to those who believe female-only spaces should be open to literally anyone who identifies as a woman. Any account of the inequalities in educational attainment should not be used to present women as an essentially privileged group. That is both untrue and likely to breed toxic grievances against women.
Nevertheless, when we look at those who struggle most in our schools, race and class are obviously important factors to consider, but we also have to consider gender. And by that, I mean the problems faced by the male sex. I grew close with some of the boys I taught. But I could never shake the impression that there were so many of them compared to girls.
Tomiwa Owolade’s book, “This Is Not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter” is published by Atlantic (£18.99)
