Mayor backs drive for more black teachers

A third of all teachers in London should be from ethnic minority backgrounds, Ken Livingstone said today as he unveiled radical plans to combat underachievement by black teenage pupils.

It also says the curriculum should include Afro-Caribbean history, and that African meals should be offered in school.

Other ideas include guaranteed job interviews for all black teacher applicants and a huge recruitment drive in the Caribbean, Africa, Canada and the US.

Just over seven per cent of teachers

in London are from ethnic minority backgrounds, while 43.5 per cent of pupils are black or Asian.

The education commission report by the Mayor's London Development Agency includes research showing that most black pupils believe they are treated differently in the classroom from their white counterparts. About 30 per cent of boys of Afro-Caribbean families leave school with five or more GCSE passes, compared with 51 per cent for the population as a whole.

As a group, they have had the worst school performance of any ethnic minority for the last four years in virtually every age group.

A conference this weekend, titled London Schools And The Black Child, will assess today's report and bring together education chiefs from across the city. In a foreword to the report, Mr Livingstone said the failure of schools to improve results for black boys over the years had been "catastrophic". He pointed out that last year only 2.9 per cent of London teachers were Afro-Caribbean, while the proportion of black pupils, at 19.6 per cent, was more than six times higher.

He said he had "enormous regard" for the professionalism of London teachers, but that the racial balance of teaching staff "must change dramatically to fully reflect the diversity of London's children".

The report partly blames peer pressure and lack of parental involvement for the low performance of Afro-Caribbean boys.

But it says the main problem is stereotyping by white teachers. "Low teacher expectations for black pupils, born of a predominantly white teaching workforce, have no place in 21st century school," it states.

It suggests too many recruitment programmes target Eastern Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand - and too few target the Caribbean, Africa and America.

It adds: "Without careful screening of overseas teachers who may have had little experience of working with children from black communities, black children can easily be exposed to very racist attitudes."