In search of a better education

They came to Britain in the Fifties, full of hope and expectation, she a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Trinidad and he 11 years older, already a graduate from Ghana.

Raymond and Esla Cathline met at a Lyons Corner House cafe in Oxford Street, married and sent eight children through London schools.

The children followed their parents up the ladder to professional success, taking advantage of an education system which, for them, lived up to its promises. One is now a teacher, one a social worker, one a professional dancer and another a dentist; two more are managers.

But in the course of a generation, the family's pride in its educational success has turned to angry disillusionment, placing several of Mrs Cathline's children at loggerheads with the school system that served them so well.

Her children see their prospects for their own sons as so bleak that now, 50 years after she and her husband arrived in this country, two have given up on London schools.

They have sent their boys back to Ghana, in search of schooling which will give them a chance of realising their potential. A third member of the family is on the verge of sending her child to Africa. Their solution is the most dramatic, and costly, now being sought by black families refusing to accept the inadequate future which - in their view - some British schools offer their children.

Their response puts a human face on what black MP Diane Abbott has described as the "silent catastrophe" in UK education; the devastating failure, despite high levels of expectancy when they start school, of black boys.

Some academics say the level of that failure means the education system is "institutionally racist". Teachers deny the charge and say failing black children lack their parents' ambition, seeing the school system as an enemy and discipline as an alien concept.

Thousands of black London parents are sending their children to weekend supplementary schools run by black community groups, often staffed by black teachers from mainstream schools, in an attempt to improve their chances.

For a close family like the Cathlines, it is a massive wrench to see children and grandchildren sent to school in Ghana, three thousand miles from home.

"It is truly heartbreaking to have to remove your children from what is now their own British culture, the country in which they were born," said Mrs Cathline, who worked as a nurse before returning to education, going to university at the age of 40.

The problem for two of her daughters' boys was the same, she said. "They were getting into the wrong company and they were being held back in class. Their teachers weren't taking enough interest in them."

For her daughters, the choice was stark. The eldest, Deidre, a social worker now back at university studying for further qualifications, was candid about the prospects for her son Leonard, who had been suspended from school and was heading for the scrapheap if she had not spent £10,000 to send him to private school in Accra, where her father's relatives still live.

"The only future I saw for Leonard was in Feltham," said Deidre, a single parent, referring to Europe's largest youth jail.

A report yesterday highlighted the level of black youth crime, showing 3,000 mobile phones are snatched every month in London - and 71 per cent of those accused of stealing them were black, most of them young males.

One of Deidre's sisters has since followed her example with her own 14-year-old boy, who fell behind at school in London. When he was sent to Accra and started school he was so far behind its rigorous academic standards he was placed in a class two years below his age.

Now 19, he benefited enormously from an African education, attaining the equivalent of eight top-grade GCSEs. He is now studying at City and Islington College, hoping to go to university next year to study accountancy.

But six years ago, his future appeared very different. "Things were not too bad in primary school, but at secondary school, they went downhill fast," his mother said.

Leonard attended St David and St Katherine C of E school in Haringey. "He was following the wrong crowd," Deidre said.

"I've always said to him that as a black boy, you have to be just that little bit better to get by. You have to mind your behaviour and not let anybody run you down, but listen to what your teachers say in class.

"Unfortunately, he didn't take my advice and he got into trouble. He was never kicked out of school completely, but there were several fixed-term exclusions.

"When he started, his first teacher was very supportive. But after that there were so many other teachers who were not. One of his teachers was a black woman, which I thought would be positive. But in fact Leonard used to say she didn't seem to like black boys. She didn't expect them to do anything. She ran them down in class."

As Leonard moved up the school, his teachers appeared to expect even less, Deidre said. "It was noticeable that as he and his classmates got bigger and taller, the teachers decided not to confront them. They let them get away with murder."

Leonard agreed. "At my school in Haringey, there were too many distractions; too much disruption and too many fights in the school. In Africa, everybody had to sit down and do their work. The teachers had the cane and they used it.

"In this country, teachers have really low expectations of black boys. When they marked your work, they would be careful not to be too discouraging when you got something wrong, and would compliment you on something else, even if you hadn't done it right.

"If I had stayed studying here, I would be a different person. I wouldn't be thinking of education. I would be like a lot of youths thinking that happiness is just about girls and smoking and drugs."

Official figures illustrate a dramatic turnaround in the prospects of thousands of black youngsters, who start school at least as well prepared for education as other ethnic groups, supported by high family expectations and often already well-versed in the basics of numeracy and literacy.

THE evidence shows that these expectations are not fulfilled in British schools. In Caribbean and African countries, by contrast, many parents believe their children will face more rigorous academic standards and teaching which reflects their own culture. Most of all, they believe black teachers will prove effective role models.

Too many teachers in the UK, Government-funded studies suggest, are too ready to accept poor standards of work from black children, reinforced in their attitude by stereotypes of teenage black behaviour.

In some cases, Ms Abbott claimed at the weekend, white teachers confronted by " challenging" black adolescents appear afraid to lay down the law, depriving those children of the behavioural "limits" they need to succeed, and are often unlikely to get elsewhere.

The number of black London families sending their children back to Africa or the Caribbean, while small, is rising. A spokesman for the Jamaican High Commission in London said there had been an increase in the numbers requesting information in the past two years about schooling in the Caribbean.

Black parents were "not happy with the education system in the UK. They think the level of discipline has gone down and they are concerned about the level of expectations for their children".

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