How Would Dad have Coped with these Pushy Parents?

26 Oct 2005
Evening Standard

My parents were raised in rural Jamaica and left school at 14. They cared very much about my education, so they made sure I did my homework, encouraged me to excel and turned up dutifully to parents' evenings.My father was a metal worker, but he always took a briefcase to these evenings. He never brought it out for anything else. And it was always completely empty.

It baffled me for more than 30 years, until I realised my bold and intrepid father was frightened of those meetings: frightened of the middleclass parents at the grammar school where I was the only black girl; of the teachers and words he might not understand; and above all, frightened they would look down on a workingclass black man who worked with his hands. The briefcase was his talisman.

Tony Blair's education reforms announced yesterday are meant to address the needs of parents like me - London white-collar professionals willing to pull any trick in the book to get the best education for their children. But I wonder how it will help ordinary working-class mums and dads like my parents. The Government half-recognises this issue by saying it will provide special advisers for parents to help them choose secondary schools. But will those advisers be there five years ahead of time to warn parents they have to be regular churchgoers to get into many faith schools? Will they give parents the money to buy houses next to the best schools? Will they provide the money for extra tuition and give advice on which tutor to choose?

Will they pass on the insider gossip about head teachers? Will they pay for the music lessons to enable children to get into top schools on "musical ability"? Will they get parents bigger flats so children do not have to do their homework in a crowded kitchen with the television on? And these are just the issues for the mass of well-meaning parents. What about the tiny minority of lazy, selfish and neglectful parents? What will happen to their children if everything is down to "parent power"? Another test of the reforms, particularly in London, is what they will mean for black and ethnic minority children. I sailed through the education system - going from a state grammar school to Cambridge.

But righting the wrong of how the system fails most black children is a passion of mine. The Government has set up a special scheme, Aiming Higher, to target Afro-Caribbean children, and I believe that the Secretary of State Ruth Kelly and the Education Minister Andrew Adonis are truly concerned. But the proposed reforms may result in the further marginalisation of black children. I give Tony Blair credit for good intentions. But I am wary of reforms designed to appeal to people like me if they are at the expense of millions of mums and dads like my own parents.



back ⇢