It's not only black boys failing in schools

Teaching boys and girls separately might be a more practical step than moving straight to racial splits

Trevor Phillips, in his time, has said a few controversial things about education and black boys. Two years ago, the outspoken chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality was keen on exposing the schools that failed black pupils most spectacularly.

Trevor Phillips, in his time, has said a few controversial things about education and black boys. Two years ago, the outspoken chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality was keen on exposing the schools that failed black pupils most spectacularly.

"I'm talking about naming and shaming schools and that's only going to be the beginning," he said. "People used to say the most dangerous thing in the world was a nigger with a gun. Well, a black man with the power of law and the ability to put schools in the High Court is a pretty dangerous thing."

Back then Mr Phillips seemed focused on the idea that it was racism at state schools that damaged black boys. He put his faith - and his daughters - in private education and argued that, for black parents, decisions about whether or not to opt for the private sector were much less "complex" than those facing whites. A vociferous defender of Diane Abbott's decision to educate her son privately, he insisted that "people like Diane Abbott's son have only one chance".

Ryan Bell, he argued, was a victim of educational racism as well. He plucked the boy from a south London housing estate, where he was hanging about after being excluded, and turned the TV cameras on him as he enrolled at Downside, a prestigious Catholic boarding school. Here, Phillips argued, his guinea pig would thrive. Academically, Ryan did better, excelling particularly at Latin, which he'd never studied. But behavioural problems dogged him, even in this new environment, and after two previous incidents, he was expelled for drunkeness.

Perhaps Ryan's experience has had some bearing on the development of Phillips's own views. For while the headlines still screech controversy, what he is saying is comparatively conservative, and in line with some of the Blairite policies presently emanating from the education department. Phillips has suggested that black boys may benefit from being taught separately in some classes.

Liberals gasp in horror at such a wheeze because it appears to smack of apartheid. But actually, the idea of teaching people with a shared pool of cultural experiences and values together is pretty much what Blair himself is espousing when he talks of his admiration for faith schools. Essentially, what Phillips is now saying is that selection in state schools, not just in terms of academic ability, but of other needs as well, has to be re-evaluated.

As for Phillips's presumably off-the-cuff comments about fathers being denied access to their children if they do not attend parents' evenings, these views too, are significant. More than half of black boys are brought up in single-parent families, yet in the past black leaders have shied away from making a connection between the two-dimensional masculine construct that dominates in some of the most influential aspects of Afro-Caribbean culture, and the stuff that happens in the classroom.

Wherever Phillips's change of heart has come from, it is certainly realistic for him to start looking at what goes on outside the school gates as part of the issues contributing to low attainment inside them. Parents, more and more, are being viewed by the educational establishment as the malign influence that is undermining their work.

In the past, Phillips and others who have been concerned about the long-standing crisis in black male attainment have sometimes expressed views almost calculated to encourage such uncooperative attitudes. Diane Abbott once commented that "a black boy doesn't have to be long out of disposable nappies for some teachers to see him as a miniature gangster rapper", with Phillips at that time advocating black-only schools as the solution to the pernicious influence of frightened, prejudiced, white, female teachers. With his latest suggestions, Phillips has mellowed.

And rightly so. It is irrefutable that black boys respond least well to the present educational dispensation. Only 27.3 per cent of Caribbean boys achieved five C-grade GCSEs last year, a woeful statistic made even more awful by the worrying fact that they are four times more likely to be excluded. But recent statistics from Ofsted suggesting that half of boys and a quarter of girls entered secondary school without the literacy skills that this new phase in their education demanded, imply that boys generally are being less well served by the system than girls, and that even girls - doing so much better than boys as they are - are hardly a blueprint for perfection.

Isn't it possible that the particular failure of black boys might be a clue to how the whole system is failing pupils more widely, rather than sui generis proof that racism is operating in schools? It is clear, for example, that boys are thriving less in schools than girls, when years ago it used to be the other way round.

Girls partly do better now because it is clearer to them that their efforts have value in the wider world. But they also do better because they have responded positively to changes in the way education is delivered. At primary level particularly, teachers are called by their first names, they dress casually and they tend to arrange their charges in chummy groups rather than stern rows. Subtle encouragement and praise are used to motivate children, rather than blunt command and criticism. Maybe, where swaggering boys are concerned, there's more room for the latter.

Primary schools in particular are feminine places, mostly peopled by women and children. More relaxed and informal schooling appears to suit girls better than it does boys. Black leaders are fond of making calls for more black male teachers, and it is generally recognised that the lack of male teachers is not serving boys well. The received wisdom is that it is boys who benefit from mixed ability teaching. But perhaps that is only when the mixed ability teaching is informal.

Maybe Mr Phillips might concede that in most schools, teaching boys and girls separately in some classes - with efforts made to recruit male teachers - might be more a more practical start than moving straight into the controversial territory of racial splits.

As for Mr Phillips's other controversial suggestion - that parents who don't support their children's education should be censured in some way - it's probably practically unworkable except in the extreme circumstances when the law can be brought to bear. But one thing our policy makers could stop doing is attempting to shape all state education under the assumption that parents are feckless, and instead tailor extra attention - even the change of boarding school places to get children out of stressful situations without going into foster care - towards those children who clearly do have problems in that direction.

Again, this amounts to the same thing as Phillips's demand for separate classes for black boys. What is needed is the option of separate classes for any groups of young people whose experiences are similar, perhaps in short courses outside of school hours. Perhaps in a more permanent fashion when that is possible.

One thing is certain though. A pattern of achievement that lets down particular groups in particular patterns is a sign that one-size-fits-all isn't working. That's the essence of what Phillips and others are saying. In black boys we see where this approach fails most appallingly. But it's still a symptom of the wider fabric's failure, rather than an isolated case.

d.orr@independent.co.uk