The school experiences of mixed-race white and black Caribbean children in England

ABSTRACT

This research aims to explore the school experiences of mixed white/ black Caribbean children in English schools. The overarching findings of this research confirm that although the mixed-race population as a whole is achieving above the national average, the mixed white/ black Caribbean group is consistently the lowest performing mixed-race group in the country. Views of pupils, their parents and teachers in two London secondary schools suggest various reasons why mixed white/ black Caribbean pupils might continue to be the lowest performing mixed group in the country. These included experiences of marginalization and invisibility in school life, the low expectations that teachers held about them, the lack of knowledge about how to support them at school and how all these issues were exacerbated by the friendship groups they mixed in. This research paper discusses these critical factors in detail and their implications for policy and further research.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed race
• mixed white and black Caribbean
• achievement
• schooling
• expectations

Acknowledgements

This paper research evidence is derived from recent empirical data on mixed-race children and PhD research thesis by co-author Kirstin Lewis in 2013 entitled That queue is just for white people. Is that one for black ones? Where do I go then? mixed heritage children's experiences of school. Doctoral thesis, Institute of Education, University of London. The authors would like to acknowledge that all the extracts and the quotations used in this article are with the kind permission of the authors and that the work on research paper was funded by proceeds of a National Conferences to raising achievement in schools which the two authors were responsible in organizing. The authors also would like to acknowledge the help offered by the anonymous reviewers of the paper. Their comments have helped to improve this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The term mixed race in official statistics is denoting to a person whose parents belong to white British and other racial or ethnic group. The existence of mixed ethnicity people is now officially acknowledged in statistics and it is the term used in the England and Wales Census which includes a section entitled “Mixed”. This is split further into white and black Caribbean, white and Asian, white and black African and Other Mixed. The census was critical to putting mixed race on the national map and as a result there is now a surge in the use of the terminology and scholarly interest in mixed race in UK. (Aspinall 2015, 5).